Among the hundreds of unmissable movies of world cinema there are many dedicated to the perverse psychology of serial killers. Before going into the list of films on serial killers to see, let’s try to find out a little more about the real serial killers of history, and how criminology and investigative techniques have evolved towards them.
Definition of Serial Killer
A serial killer is an individual who kills 3 or more individuals, usually for psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over a period of more than a month and with a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a limit of three murders, others expand it to four or minimize it to two.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says serial killers’ motives can include anger, thrill seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking. Often the FBI focuses on a particular pattern that serial killers follow. Based on this pattern, the killer will provide key clues to be found.
Although a serial killer is a classification that differs from that of a mass killer, mass killer, or contract killer, there are conceptual overlaps between them. There are some debates about certain requirements for each classification.
Meaning of the term Serial Killer
The English term and the idea of serial killer are typically attributed to former FBI Special Representative Robert Ressler, who used the term serial murder in 1974 at a lecture at the Police Staff Academy in the UK. . Writer Ann Rule argues in her 2004 book Kiss Me, Kill Me, that the term serial killer is attributed to LAPD investigator Pierce Brooks, who developed the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program in 1985.
The termthe German concept was coined by criminologist Ernst Gennat, who described Peter Kürten as a Serienmörder (“serial killer”) in his article “Die Düsseldorfer Sexualverbrechen” (1930). In his book, Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (2004), criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky notes that while Ressler may have coined the English term “serial homicide” within the law in 1974, the term serial killer appears in John Brophy’s book
The Meaning of Murder
There is the mass killer, or what is called the “serial” killer, who could be stimulated by greed, like insurance policy, or lust for power, like the Medici of Renaissance Italy, or Landru, the “bluebeard” of the First World War, who killed several spouses after taking their money.
In his most current research study, Vronsky states that the term serial murder initially came into more comprehensive popular American use when it was published in the New York Times in the spring of 1981 to explain Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams. Subsequently, throughout the 1980s, the term was repeated in the pages of the New York Times, one of the major national newspapers in the United States, on 233 events. By the late 1990s, the use of the term had actually increased to 2,514 articles.
When discussing serial killers, researchers typically use “three or more murders” as a standard, considering it sufficient to offer a pattern without being restrictive. Regardless of the number of murders, they must have actually been committed at different times and in various places. The absence of a significant pause between murders highlights the distinction between a killer and a serial killer. Cases of sequential homicides over periods of weeks or months with no apparent “period of reflection” or “return to normal” have actually led some professionals to identify a crossbreed category called a “spree-serial killer.”
In Controversial Issues in Criminology, Fuller and Hickey write that “the aspect of time included among murderous acts is primary in the differentiation of mass murderers, serial and insane,” later elaborating that insane killers “commit the crimes in weeks or weeks. days “while” murder techniques as well as types of victims vary. “Andrew Cunanan is mentioned as an example of murder, while Charles Whitman is reported for mass murder, as is Jeffrey Dahmer for serial murder.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI) defines serial murder as “a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by a killer acting alone.” In 2005, the FBI hosted a multidisciplinary symposium at San Antonio, Texas, which brought together 135 serial homicide experts from a variety of fields and industries with the goal of identifying commonalities in knowledge about serial homicide. He also established a definition of serial murder that FBI investigators broadly accept as standard: “The killing of two or more victims by the same offender in separate events.”
Serial killer in history
Juhani Aataminpoika, a Finnish serial also called “Kerpeikkari” (meaning “executioner”), was among one of the most terrible serial killers of the 19th century, killing up to 12 people in 1849 in 5 weeks before to be caught. Criminologists tell of serial killers throughout history. Some sources say tales such as those about vampires and werewolves were influenced by medieval serial killers.
Liu Pengli in China, grandson of Emperor Han Jing, was made prince of Jidong in the sixth year of Jing’s reign (144 BC). According to the Chinese historian Sima Qian, he would surely “go out on expeditions with 20 or 30 servants or with young people who escaped the law, killed people and took their belongings as if it were a sport”. Although many learned of these murders, it was not until the 29th year of his reign that the boy was reported. Eventually, it turned out that he had killed around 100 people. Court officials demanded that Liu Pengli be executed; however, the emperor could not have his nephew eliminated, so Liu Pengli was acquitted.
In the 15th century, Gilles de Rais, one of the richest men in Europe and former companion in arms of Joan of Arc, allegedly assaulted and sexually killed peasant children, mainly boys, whom he had kidnapped from surrounding villages and had brought to his castle. Her victims are estimated to be between 140 and 800.
The Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory, born into one of the wealthiest families in Transylvania, allegedly wounded and killed up to 650 women and even young women before her arrest in 1610 Members of the Thuggee cult in India may have killed a million people between 1740 and 1840. Thug Behram, a cult member, may have killed up to 931 victims.
In his 1886 book, Psychopathia Sexualis, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing noted a situation of a serial killer in the 1870s, a Frenchman named Eusebius Pieydagnelle who had a fixation on sex and blood. He admitted killing six people.
The never-caught killer Jack the Ripper, who has been called the first contemporary serial killer, killed at least five women in London in 1888. He was the subject of a major manhunt, during which many contemporary criminal investigative techniques were created. A large team of police officers carried out house-to-house investigations, clues were collected and suspects were located and tracked down. Police cosmetic surgeon Thomas Bond put together one of the first accounts of the serial killer’s personality.
While not the first serial killer in history, the Jack the Ripper story was the first to produce a worldwide media craze. The dramatic murders of economically destitute women in the middle of London have drawn the attention of the media on the circumstances of the city and have also gained media coverage around the world. Jack the Ripper has also been called one of the most famous serial killers of all time, and his story has spawned hundreds of concepts about his identification and many works of fiction.
HH Holmes was one of the first documented modern serial killers in the United States, responsible for the deaths of at least nine victims in the early 1890s. At the same time, in France, Joseph Vacher became known as “The French Ripper” after killing and maiming 11 children and women. He was executed in 1898 after confessing his crimes. Most of the serial killers documented in the 20th century come from the United States.
Recent Serial Killers
The serial murder phenomenon in the United States was particularly popular from 1970 to 2000, which has been described as the “golden age of serial murder”. The variety of serial killers in the country peaked in 1989. The source of this spike in serial killings has actually been attributed to urbanization, which places people close and anonymous. Mike Aamodt, a teacher at Radford University in Virginia, associates the decrease in serial killings with much less constant use of probation, greater forensic innovation, and even people behaving much more meticulously.
Psychological characteristics of serial killers
Serial killers can exhibit varying degrees of mental illness or psychopathy, which could contribute to their murderous actions. For example, someone who is mentally ill might have psychotic fits that lead him to think that he is a different individual or that he is being forced to kill by other entities. Psychopathic behavior consistent with traits common to some serial killers includes feeling seeking, lack of remorse or guilt, impulsiveness, need for control, and predatory behavior. Psychopaths can seem “normal” and often quite charming, a state of adjustment that psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley called the “mask of sanity.”
They were usually mentally, physically, or sexually abused by a family member. Serial killers are more likely to be affected by fetishism or necrophilia, which are paraphilias that involve a strong tendency to experience the object of erotic interest almost as if it were a physical representation of the body. Individuals engage in paraphilias which are organized along a continuum; participating in various levels of fantasy, perhaps focusing on parts of the body, symbolic objects that act as physical extensions of the body, or on the anatomical physicality of the human body; in particular with regard to its internal parts and sexual organs.
Many are fascinated by fire. They are associated with sadistic activity; especially in childhood psychologies that have not reached sex-linked maturity, this aspect could take on the torture of pets. More than 60 percent, or simply a large proportion, wetted their beds after age 12. As young people they were often harassed or marginalized by others.
For example, Henry Lee Lucas was mocked as a child and later cited the mass rejection of his peers as a reason for his hatred of everyone. Kenneth Bianchi was teased as a child for urinating in his pants, and as a teenager he was neglected by his peers.
Some have been involved in petty criminal activities, such as fraud, burglary, vandalism or similar offenses. They often have difficulty finding work and tend to do menial jobs. Other sources say they often come from unstable families.
Research studies have recommended that serial killers typically have ordinary or average intelligence, although they are often seen as having above-average IQs. A 202 IQ sample of serial killers had an average intelligence of 89.
There are exceptions to these criteria. For example, Harold Shipman was a general practitioner. He was a point of reference for the local community; he also won an award as an expert for an asthma center for young people, as well as being interviewed by Granada Television’s World in Action on ITV. Dennis Nilsen was a former soldier-turned-civil servant and trade unionist by profession who had no criminal record at the time of his detention.
Neither had shown the telltale signs of the serial killer. Vlado Taneski, a crime reporter, was caught after a series of articles he wrote suggested he had actually killed people. Russell Williams was a respected and successful colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, convicted of killing 2 women, as well as episodes of fetishism and rape.
Family Problems
Many serial killers actually faced similar problems during childhood development. Hickey’s model of trauma control describes how early childhood trauma can predispose the child to deviant habits in adulthood; the child’s environment, his parents or society, is the main variable in understanding whether the child’s habits turn into homicidal activity or not.
Family, or lack thereof, is one of the main characteristics of a child’s growth because it is what the child can regularly identify with. “The serial killer is no different than any other person who is asked to seek permission from mom and dad, sexual partners or others.” This authorization requirement is what affects children in trying to establish social relationships with their family and peers.
Wilson and Seaman (1990) conducted a study of incarcerated serial killers, and what they concluded was one of the most important additions to their business. Mostly all of the serial killers in the study had experienced some kind of environmental problem during their youth, such as a house destroyed due to separation, or a lack of parents to educate the young man. Nearly fifty percent of serial killers had experienced some sort of physical or sexual abuse, and even more of them had actually experienced emotional neglect.
When a parent has a drug or alcohol problem, the focus in the home is on the parents rather than the child. Hickey’s trauma control model supports how parental abandonment can facilitate deviant behavior, especially if the child sees substance abuse. If a child receives no support from anyone, they are unlikely to recover from the traumatic event in a positive way.
Serial Killer Fantasy
Kids who don’t have the power to handle the mistreatment they suffer from time to time create a new reality they can escape to. This new world becomes the fantasy they are in control of and also enters their daily existence. In this dream world, their psychological growth is blocked. According to Garrison (1996), “the child ends up being sociopathic due to the fact that the normal advancement of the ideas of right as well as wrong and compassion towards others are delayed because the emotional and social growth of the child occurs at the time. within his self-indulgent fantasies.
An individual cannot do anything wrong in his own world, just as the pain of others is irrelevant when the purpose of the dream world is to satisfy someone’s needs “(Garrison, 1996). The boundaries between dream and reality are lost and fantasies focus on control, sexual activity, physical violence, which at some point lead to murder. The dream can realize the main passage of a dissociative state, which, in the words of Stephen Giannangelo, “allows the serial killer to leave the stream of consciousness for what is, for him, a better place”.
Criminologist Jose Sanchez reports, “The young criminal you see today is more detached from his victim, more ready to hurt or kill. Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Gangster (2001), explains how potential criminals are labeled by society, which can then lead their offspring to similarly develop through the cycle of violence. Serial killers’ ability to appreciate the mental life of others is severely impaired, presumably leading to their dehumanization of others.
Could be considered a cognitive deficiency relating to the ability to do clear distinctions between other individuals and inanimate things. For these people, objects can show animistic or humanistic power while individuals are seen as objects. Serial killer Ted Bundy has stated that the media violence and even porn had actually increased and heightened her need to engage in murder, although this statement was made during her desperate attempts to avoid her death penalty. There are exceptions to the typical serial killer patterns, as in the case of Dennis Rader, who was a loving family man as well as the leader of his church.
Serial Killer Classification
The FBI’s Crime Classification Manual places serial killers into three groups: organized, disordered, and mixed. Some killers go from being organized to disorganized as their killings continue, such as when it comes to psychological failure from avoiding capture, or vice versa, such as when an already chaotic killer determines one or more particular aspects of the act of killing as their own. source of satisfaction and also establishes a modus operandi.
Organized serial killers often prepare their crimes carefully, usually by kidnapping victims, eliminating them in one place, and getting rid of them in another. Others specifically target street women, who will most likely happily go with a complete stranger. These serial killers maintain a high level of control at the crime scene and usually also have a strong track record that allows them to eliminate their own tracks, such as burying the body or throwing it in a river. as if it were all a big project they closely follow their crimes in the media and are often proud of their actions.
Among serial killers, those of this type, in case of capture, could be described by acquaintances as kind and are unlikely to harm anyone. Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are examples of organized serial killers. In general, organized serial killers’ IQs tend to be normal, averaging 98.7.
Messy serial killers are normally much more spontaneous, usually dedicating their murders with a random weapon available at the time, and generally don’t attempt to hide the body. They are likely to be unemployed, lonely, or both, with very few friends. They usually end up having a history of mental disorder, and their modus operandi or absence of it is typically characterized by too much physical violence and occasionally by necrophilia or sexual assault. Chaotic serial killers have been found to have a low average IQ compared to organized serial killers, at 89.4. Mixed serial killers, with organized and even chaotic traits, have an ordinary IQ of 100.
Serial Killer Doctors
Some individuals with a pathological interest in the power of life and death have a tendency to be drawn into clinical careers or getting a job such. These types of criminals are often described as “angels of fate” or angels of mercy. The doctor will kill his patient for money, for a sadistic sense of pleasure, for the belief that they are “relieving” the client’s pain, or simply “for the fact that they can.”
Arguably one of the most prolific of these serial killers was British physician Harold Shipman. Another serial killer was nurse Jane Toppan, who confessed during her murder trial that she was sexually aroused by death. He would surely have provided a mixture of medicines to the people he selected as his targets, looked after them on the bed, and held them close to his body as they died.
Another professional medical serial killer is Genene Jones. He is believed to have killed 11 to 46 infants and children while working at Bexar County Medical Center Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, United States. A similar case occurred in Britain in 1991, where nurse Beverley Allitt killed four children in the hospital where she worked, attempted to kill three more and injured six more over the course of two months. A 21st century example is Canadian nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer who killed elderly people in the retirement home where she worked.
Must See Serial Killer Movies
Among the best movies in the history of cinema there are some that tell stories of serial killers that are absolutely worth seeing. Others are not masterpieces but, in one way or another, they have become cult. To other lesser known films that are definitely worth a look. Here is a selection of some must-see serial killer movies.
Halloween
October 31, 1963, in a small town in the American province, Haddonfield, Little Michael Myers stabbed his sister Judith. He is hospitalized in a psychiatric institution but 15 years later, he manages to escape and return to his city. Dr. Sam Loomis, the psychiatrist who has followed Michael over the years, knows him very well and knows what his moves may be. Michael kills a mechanic, puts on his clothes and returns to his dilapidated, now abandoned, native home.
independent film shot on a very small budget, it grossed over $ 80 million worldwide at the time. It is the most successful slasher movie and one of the 5 most profitable films in the history of cinema, which has become a cult with countless sequels and reboots.
Watch Halloween
Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)
On Christmas Eve 1950, Wilfred Butler dies in a burning accident outside his mansion in East Willard, Massachusetts. The residence is bequeathed to his grandson, Jeffrey. Twenty years later, in 1970, attorney John Carter arrives in East Willard on Christmas Eve with his assistant and mistress Ingrid, having been hired by Jeffrey to sell the house. Carter meets the main citizens of the city: Mayor Adams; Sheriff Bill Mason; the mute Charlie Towman, owner of the local newspaper; and Tess Howard, who runs the city’s telephone exchange.
Everyone agrees to buy Butler’s mansion on behalf of the city at the bargain price of $ 50,000, which Jeffrey must pay in cash the next day. Carter and Ingrid spend the night in Butler’s mansion, but are brutally murdered in bed with an ax by an invisible attacker. American slasher from 1972 unreleased in Italy, is a cult horror forerunner to the genre several years before Carpenter’s Halloween, with a complex script and first person shoot of the killer, which inspired many subsequent films.
Watch Silent Night, Bloody Night
M (1931)
Masterpiece of Fritz Lang , considered one of the founders of the noir genre that was successful in Hollywood in the 1940s, is inspired by the heinous crimes committed in Germany in the 1920s by Fritz Haarmann and Peter Kürten.
The city is terrified of a child killer, and the police cannot find any trace. The criminal organizations have continuous problems with the raids of the police and decide to hunt down the monster on their own, managing to discover a clue: the “monster” whistles a macabre motive in approaching its victims.
The Hitcher (1986)
Nei horror film, there is something appealing to an unstoppable and relentless destiny whose function is only to damage life with nihilistic, almost mythological enthusiasm. The Hitcher operates on the exact same levels, with the simplicity of the story of a couple being harassed by a hitchhiker maniac murderer (Rutger Hauer), and heightens the conundrum surrounding the killer’s inspirations.
Summer of Sam – Panic in New York (1999)
Summer of Sam is not about the Son of Sam killer, who scared New York City all summer of 1977 with his .44 caliber pistol. In a way, Summer of Sam works. like Do The Right Thing, focusing less openly on race and even more on how culture marginalizes people. When Richie (Adrian Brody) returns to his conservative Italian neighborhood dressing up as a proud member of a British punk band, his old friends’ quick response is that he is a monster, so he must be responsible for the murders that plague the city. Spike Lee, treating the Son of Sam adventures as a subplot, Summer of Sam might seem a bit lengthy, in fact, with too many characters and subplots, and it really works in increasing the shock of the film’s murders: the kill scenes. they don’t have the thrill of a regular serial killer movie.
The Driller Killer (1979)
The artist Reno Miller (Abel Ferrara) and his girlfriend Carol enter a church where a tramp approaches who wants to talk to the artist, but Reno and Carol, frightened, run away. Reno comes home and finds a big electricity bill, a phone bill, and can’t afford to pay the rent. He shares an apartment with Carol and her drug addict lover Pamela in a run-down New York neighborhood. Reno decides to go to the gallery owner Dalton and ask him for an advance for his next painting, but Dalton replies that he first wants to see the painting and then eventually buy it.
Grindhouse (2007)
Kurt Russell a grotesque serial killer in this episode of Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse. Tarantino creates his film characters as always, with comic pop culture and insane physical violence. In a gripping sequence, royal stunt double Zoe Bell clings to the hood of a racing car in what is one of the coolest chase scenes. Ultimately, Death Proof is an adrenaline rush and one of Quentin Tarantino’s best films and also one of the most innovative, even if mainstream critics don’t think so.
Dementia 13
Francis Ford Coppola’s first film produced at low cost by Roger Corman, who wanted a low budget Psycho film with a gothic atmosphere and heinous crimes. The Haloran family gathers in their Irish castle to commemorate the untimely death of little Kathleen, who drowned seven years earlier. Mysterious events begin to occur, such as the apparitions of the dead child, and a killer armed with an ax roams the place.
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Deranged (1974)
Ezra Cobb helps run a farm in the rural Midwest with his elderly mother, Amanda, a spiritual fanatic who indoctrinated him considering he hates women. Amanda dies of a prolonged health problem and Ezra retires. Almost a year after his death, he has acoustic hallucinations that force him to exhume his mother. One night he goes to her and exhumes her decaying body, bringing it back to her house where he patches it up using the discarded fish skin and wax. Deranged is inspired by the story of Ed Gein and the shocking realism of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, released the same year, and is a rather transgressive and extreme film. Deranged becomes disgusting, a universe where there is no reason or purpose for evil.
Maniac (2012)
An excellent reinterpretation of the horror film 1980 exploitation. Although you practically never see Wood’s face, as the entire film is recorded from the killer’s perspective. Instead, the audience hears the background noise of his mental chaos as he mumbles to himself and follows his victims.
Be warned: Maniac’s violence is hard to keep an eye on even for seasoned horror veterans, and the continued POV filming of the point of view of killer immediately makes one feel guilty about the identification he creates with the killer. Some will call it excessively gratuitous in terms of cruelty, yet the film is so well crafted that it’s hard to resist criticism. With a rotating, Carpenter-style synth soundtrack and classic / opera songs.
Cruising (1980)
Cruising by William Friedkin saw the director immerse himself once again in the gay subculture and, although he moved from the middle class, the alcohol-filled houses of The Boys into the Band (1970) to sweat-stained underground bars. From an alien point of view or not, the link between his adaptation of Mart Crowley’s play and Gerald Walker’s noir is self-loathing. Cruising frames that anxiety in the story of a cop, Steve Burns (Al Pacino), who goes undercover in New York to discover a serial killer who kills men.
Tenebrae
If I wrote a horror book and its publication influenced a daily psychopath a to carry out their own ultraviolent killing spree, would you take that as a compliment? Perhaps this is not the investigation that Dario Argento seeks in his well-known 1982 crime film Tenebrae, but the story recalls an old saying in particular about imitation and flattery: the American author Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) goes to Italy to advertise his new book and also discovers that there is a serial killer on the loose, encouraged by his novel to commit murders. It must be very nice for Neal, not so much for the killer’s victims.
The film stages rivers of blood to drench the scene in red due to Argento’s indulgences as a director. It’s not that Argento condones murder or something that crazy; he is more than willing to confess his hopeless fixation on depicting murder on screen.
Frenzy (1972)
Former RAF army leader Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) is discharged from his job as a bartender at a bar near Covent Garden. Rusk consoles him and offers a tip on a horse race, however Blaney has no money to bet. Broke, Blaney ends up investing the evening in a Salvation Army shrine, where he discovers that Brenda actually stuffed some money in her pocket. After Rusk leaves, Blaney shows up, really hoping to talk to Brenda again, but he doesn’t find her. When film censorship loosened its strict rules in the 1970s, Hitchcock was allowed to show more violence and even some nudity. It’s still little by today’s standards, yet the story of a London serial killer who rapes and suffocates his female victims with a tie generates suspense in most scenes, while preserving the twisty storyline you’d expect.
Manhunter (1986)
The aesthetic appeal of Manhunter a little excessive for the tastes of the reference market in the mid-1980s, more than 30 years later it represents a film released in time, a cinematic work of a distant decade but unique and full of meanings, as well as extraordinarily refined that still seems to hide the feeling of fear within it. The first of several adaptations of Thomas Harris’s books, Manhunter linked dream images to a criminal drama, trying to illustrate the traumatic emotional experience of being an FBI agent.
All the while, Michael Mann focuses on the serial killer, Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), the so-called “Tooth Fairy”, who lives in every scene with the alleged guarantee to get away with it. Supported by Dante Spinotti’s photography drawing shadows as if he were making a detective thriller, in Manhunter Mann discovered a balance between detective film and abstract violence. Manhunter acts in a similar way, getting stronger the more you look at him.
Deep Red
Deep Red is one of those films that could not have been made by any other person – Mario Bava may have tried, but his would not have the soundtrack of the collaborators of Argento Goblin, nor the eccentric shooting work with which we ask ourselves if we are watching the POV of the killer or not. Argento has a real eye for what is literally baffling to see: he somehow takes scenes that are “fundamental” to creating fear and makes them much more unpleasant than you might think.
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Best film alongside 1974’s Black Christmas for being the first to bring all the components together in what is undoubtedly a “slasher film”. However, Mario Bava’s 1964 film is so close to the genre that it almost justifies the title of the first “true” slasher. Blood and Black Lace is a decidedly adorable and superb movie. The story is a mixture of murder and exploitation, with a group of women followed by a strange attacker whose face is covered in a bulletproof mask. It is an image that immediately became famous and left its mark in an all-Italian style, codifying the figure of the murderer, from the black gloves to the mask itself. Numerous have tried to imitate his style.
Male Bites Dog (1992)
Man Bites Dog represents without batting an eyelid a serial murderer in his daily banality, victims ranging from children to the elderly to a woman raped in a group whose corpse is subsequently photographed with her bowels pouring out. all over the table on which she was violated.
Shot as a mockumentary, Man Bites Dog explores distressing dimensions to portray murder dilemmas in the vilest way possible, complementing the hesitation of the film crew recording such fears . The gripping grief shared by the documentary director (Rémy Belvaux) as he realizes what it really means to make a documentary about a serial killer, becoming more and more complicit in the murders as the film unfolds, explicitly indicates our willingness as viewers to tolerate horrors represented.
However, we react viscerally as the film uncovers real criminal activity as a commodity of popular culture and truth TV as well. The protagonist Benoit (Benoît Poelvoorde) is an incredibly intelligent social derelict besieged by xenophobia and misogyny, providing countless neuroses to discover behind his psychopathy and murderous madness, which he treats as a legitimate work, a professional job. The director is particularly concerned about the ways we watch a movie like Man Bites Dog, worried far less about the ostentatious and comical killing, suggesting that the real fault lies in normalizing physical violence and hatred.
Eyes Without a Face
Eyes Without a Face by Georges Franju, a cold, poetic and at the same time made with love film, about a woman and her mad scientist /, a serial killer who simply wants to kidnap girls who share his facial attributes in hopes of grafting their skin onto his disfigured face. Eyes Without a Face has a nerve-wracking, intimate and wicked style as le tend to be horror stories longer lasting meatyIf Franju manages to make most of the story count for this, so does Scob, whose eyes are the best special effect in the film’s arsenal. His is an interpretation that comes from the spirit.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Inspired by the life of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, along with his partner Otis Toole. Henry is a truly scary movie – you feel dirty just watching it, from the dirt-encrusted streets to the unsavory characters that prey on neighborhood women on the streets. Some of the scenes, such as the “mansion video clip” as Henry and Otis torture an entire family, have given the film an infamous reputation, even among horror followers, as a merciless glimpse into the disturbing nature of the banality of evil.
I Saw the Devil
I Saw the Devil is a brutal South Korean artwork from director Kim Ji-woon, who was also the basis of the greatest horror film South KoreanIt is an absolutely stunning film, about a man seeking revenge at all costs after the murder of his partner by a psychopath. Interesting how the “protagonist” of the film enjoys looking for the psychopath, incorporating a tracker into the killer that allows him to appear repeatedly, tormenting him in the unconscious and then release it again for further torment.
Memoirs of a Murder
Based on South Korea’s first serial killer, this is Bong Joon-Ho. The tension arises from the confrontation between a country investigator and his metropolitan equivalent sent to speed up the investigation, which he constantly thwarts due to irrational apprehensions. One uses fists, the other coroners, and both also function as social archetypes whose actions take place against the backdrop of military violence of the mid-1980s. Murder is also not without laughter, which are both insightful and cruel.
The Honeymoon Killers (1969)
The Honeymoon Killers is a 1970s American crime film created and directed by Leonard Kastle. The story follows a gloomy and obese nurse who is attracted to a charlatan, with whom she begins a series of murders of single women. The film was inspired by the true story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, the infamous “lonely heart killers” of the 1940s. Filmed largely in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, production of The Honeymoon Killers began with Martin Scorsese as the selected director. Launched in the early 1970s, the film was highly regarded especially for its realistic look. The Honeymoon Killers has become a cult film and has even been called his “favorite American film” by François Truffaut.
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
The perfect job of German Expressionism, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet has been defined by Roger Ebert as the “first true horror film”, although contemporary viewing is naturally unlikely to generate fear. The style of avant-garde and extraordinarily creative have actually had a lasting impact on every dream landscape depicted over the next nearly 100 years. You just can’t understand the origins of cinema without seeing the film.
Watch The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
One of the horror movie ever released, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, based on the infamous Wisconsin serial Ed Gein, features the menacing Leatherface, the legendary chainsaw-wielding killer wearing a mask made of human skin, whose sadism is only overshadowed from the introduction of his cannibal family with whom he lives in a dilapidated house in the middle of a Texas wilderness. The brothers are cannibals while the grandfather drinks blood and also models furniture with the bones of the victims. However, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Could is also a film about the underground anxiety of a post-Vietnam American rural population.
Peeping Tom
From a certain point of view, Peeping Tom ‘s Michael Powell is a meticulous, humane and thoughtful film about the emotional impulses that guide the process of making a film. It is a slasher film about a serial killer-documentary maker who kills people with the tripod of his camera. (The tripod has a blade on it.) Firstly, Peeping Tom was considered rather questionable for a time.
Films about women at risk have a means to strike the nerves of their audience and Peeping Tom takes this method to the extreme, giving its list of future victims little space to catch their breath as Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) approaches them, capturing their growing fear by the second as they realize their impending doom. It is a difficult film to endure, as would be any film about a psychopath with a habit of killing women, however it is also detailed, informative, perfectly crafted and even wonderfully considered.
Badlands (1973)
Holly Sargis tells the film as a 15-year-old who lives in Fort Dupree, a gated community in South Dakota. She has a strained relationship with her father after her mother died from pneumonia years before her. Holly meets Kit Carruthers, a 25-year-old street cleaner. She looks like James Dean, a star that she Holly adores. As they come to know each other better, her antisocial and ferocious inclinations are slowly exposed.
Death Runs on the River
Film noir or horror: what classification does death runs on the river by Charles Laughton? The film fits both denominations perfectly, for one point: it’s a hybrid variation of both. Reverend Harry Powell is the villain, a man as quick at distorting reality with honey-covered lies as Laughton is good at distorting the truth with an oblique perspective, a frightening use of darkness and even light and a range of images that transform The city of West Virginia into an otherworldly place.
Psycho
60 years after that Alfred Hitchcock released Psycho the film’s resounding impact continues around the world. The Psycho effect is the direct effect of Hitchcock’s expertise as a director and as a writer. It’s an excellent film, as effective today as it is authoritative: you’ve never met a slasher like Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), and no matter how many times movies try to reproduce his personality on screen, they’ll never get it well enough. . It is, like Psycho itself, unique.
