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Celluloid Serial Killers

The History of Serial Killers in the Movies

The history of real-life and fictional serial killers in the movies dates back to as early as 1943, though the villains in those days weren’t known as serial killers. They were labelled as psychopaths, psychotics, sex criminals, maniacs or mass killers. They didn’t officially get the title of ‘serial killers’ until the late ’80s.

Research indicates that the first serial-killer movie ever made was in 1943, and it only seems right that it was made by the original master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. It was called Shadow of a Doubt and is about an outwardly respectable relative known as Uncle Charlie, played by Joseph Cotton, who was in fact the Merry Widow Murderer.

Also made in 1943, Arsenic and Old Lace is a light-hearted affair about a pair of delightful old dears who murder vagrants and bury their bodies in the cellar. They were labelled as neither psychopaths nor insane, just a couple of public-spirited senior citizens doing their civic duty by hurrying along the inevitable and saving the City of New York the cost of pauper’s funerals. Also released in 1943 was Bluebeard, starring John Carradine, about the infamous turn-of-the-century strangler of women.

Released in 1947, Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, a black ‘comedy of murders’ about a Parisian Bluebeard who murders his wives for their money, was widely rejected by critics and audiences alike and rapidly faded into obscurity, although these days it is acclaimed as a masterpiece.

Released in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was the first genuine modern-day serial-killer movie and at the time, and for many years later, was arguably the scariest movie ever made. Just prior to Psycho’s release, competitions were held in major cities throughout the world to find couples who were game enough to view the movie, alone, in a pitch-black theatre, at midnight. If they survived dying of fright they won a prize, which from memory was a life-size pin-up of Norman Bates. But, as frightening as it was for the time, and no doubt to the disappointment of the promoters, no one came to grief.

Psycho was followed by three sequels, all of which suggested that poor demented Norman should have been lobotomised and left in the rubber room at the local mental facility rather than be let out and inflicted on an unwitting general public over and over again. Fortunately for Mr Hitchcock, and no doubt to his eternal gratitude, he died before the sequels were made.

Also in 1960 came the disturbing Peeping Tom, which was denounced at the time as being too distressing to sit through. It tells the story of a psychopathic killer who photographs his victims as they draw their last breath. Certainly not to everyone’s taste, but it was critically acclaimed in the years to come.

In 1968 came The Boston Strangler, which was the first movie/documentary of the activities of a serial killer. From 1962 to 1964 Albert De Salvo terrorised Boston, raping and strangling 13 women in their homes, each time leaving his calling card: he strangled his victims with their own stockings, which he tied in the same knot every time. Unfortunately it was a grossly inaccurate portrayal of the facts of the killings – and casting Tony Curtis as a multiple strangler, when the world was still laughing at his hilarious antics in Some Like it Hot and The Great Race, must rate as one of the worst cases of miscasting in the history of the movies.

Also in 1968 came the much-acclaimed No Way To Treat A Lady, a romantic black comedy with Rod Steiger as the serial- killer strangler and George Segal as the cop on his trail.

It was the chilling 10 Rillington Place, the true story of the horrors perpetrated by the fiendish serial killer and necrophiliac John Christie in London in the early ’50s, that had audiences fainting in the aisles in 1971. In 1972 it was Alfred Hitchcock again who thrilled us with Frenzy, the edge-of-the-seat drama about a man wrongly accused of the serial murders of young women in London. This time Alfred got right into serial-killer mode and had the naked bodies turning up with a man’s necktie tied tightly around their necks, the signature of the Necktie Murderer. It is believed that Hitchcock got the necktie idea from the Boston Strangler case.

Also in 1972 Clint Eastwood was magnificent as Dirty Harry, who was hot on the trail of a serial killer named Scorpio. This was the first in a string of excellent Dirty Harry Callahan serial- killer movies, such as Magnum Force, Sudden Impact, The Dead Pool and the thrilling Tightrope, in which Eastwood broke the Harry Callahan mould and played the part of a New Orleans cop in search of a sex murderer. All of these films were action-packed and carried plausible story lines, but all of them stood in the shadow of the original.

It is worth noting here that while the 1974 movie Badlands is listed in some movie guides as a serial-killer movie, it isn’t. Admittedly the main character, Charlie Starkwell (Martin Sheen), did kill 10 people in Texas and South Dakota in 1959, but they were what is known as ‘spree killings’ in that after he murdered his girlfriend’s father he killed his other victims while he was on the run from the police. That is not serial murder.

In 1980 in Cruising, chameleon detective Al Pacino went deep undercover looking for a serial killer who picked up gay men in the most sordid bars imaginable and then sliced them up. It was widely panned by the critics and strongly criticised by the gay community for its sordid content and the depiction of homosexual men as sexual deviants.

It was 1986 that gave us Manhunter, the first serial-killer (though they never use the term) movie to give an insight into how the modern FBI builds a psychological profile on these killers and how they track them down with modern technology. Manhunter is the screen adaptation of Thomas Harris’ inter-national bestseller Red Dragon (the forerunner to The Silence of the Lambs) and is the macabre tale of a ‘psychotic killer’ who specialises in slaughtering entire families, and how FBI agents Will Graham and Jack Crawford track him down before he kills again.

But as yet the term ‘serial killer’ had never been used in a movie. From all of my research I believe that the first time it was ever actually spoken on screen was in 1988 – a few years after FBI agent and world-renowned serial-killer profiler Robert Ressler coined the phrase – in the almost unnoticed yet enthralling serial-killer thriller Cop, starring James Wood as a strung-out detective who stumbles across a series of murders that follow a similar pattern.

Also in 1987 two top-quality serial-killer movies were released, Black Widow and the spine-tingling Al Pacino thriller Sea of Love, though neither referred to their villain as a serial killer. Black Widow, featuring Debra Winger and Dennis Hopper, is unique in that the murderer is a woman, a very rare breed indeed in the annals of serial murder, even in the fantasy world of the movies.

Then in 1990 came the dark, depressing and grizzly (yet highly acclaimed) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, about the life and times of America’s most prolific serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. This was followed in 1991 by To Catch a Killer, the TV movie that went to video about Illinois serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 teenage boys and buried their bodies beneath his house. Curiously, Gacy was never referred to as a serial killer in this movie so the name hadn’t quite stuck yet.

But it was only a matter of time before the serial killer phenomenon would hit and it is indisputable that it was director Jonathan Demme’s 1991 screen adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel The Silence of the Lambs that deep-etched the term ‘serial killer’ into the vernacular forever.

The impact of The Silence of the Lambs was extraordinary and Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter and the term ‘serial killer’ became household words overnight. The Silence of the Lambs went further than any serial-killer movie had gone before and took up where Manhunter left off, using some of the same villainous and heroic characters, though portrayed by different actors.

The serial-killer craze had well and truly arrived and in The Silence of the Lambs the now legions of salivating serial-killer movie fans even got to hear the beast himself, Dr Hannibal ‘the Cannibal’ Lecter, boast of his exploits as he told terrified FBI agent Starling that he once ate a census taker’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. They lapped it up … so to speak … to the tune of more than $US270 million worldwide.

After The Silence of the Lambs the serial-killer movie floodgates opened and if anything was ever going to challenge it for riveting, edge-of-the-chair, cop-tracking-down-a-serial-killer suspense, it was episode one of the 1991 English TV miniseries Prime Suspect (which, along with the rest of the series, went to video in 1996), starring Helen Mirren as the tenacious Jane Tennyson, serial-killer sleuth extraordinaire. Episode six in the series is also a superb serial-killer thriller.

In 1992 came the sleeper Jennifer 8, which was mostly missed at the box office. This was a shame because it is a serial-killer classic, with cop Andy Garcia hot on the trail of a killer who specialises in killing blind women. Jennifer 8 has since created its own cult following and deservedly so.

In 1995 there were more serial-killer movies released than in any other year to date. There was Citizen X, which depicts the real-life adventures of a charming bit of work named Andre Chikatilo, who murdered and ate children. Copycat is about a serial killer with a difference – one who copies infamous American serial killers from the past such as Son of Sam and Ted Bundy.

1995’s Se7en is a stand-alone classic of the genre and one of the best serial-killer movies of all time. It’s a believable action-packed drama that has you hanging by your fingernails until the very end. The cast is superb; Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey and Gwyneth Paltrow, and the story is like nothing you’ve ever seen before with an ending that you really don’t want to know about, but you just can’t take your eyes away it. Se7en blitzed ’em at the box office, taking $US328 million worldwide, putting it just behind Hannibal and a long way ahead of The Silence of the Lambs in the all-time money stakes.

Oh, yes, serial-killer movies had arrived. The year 1997 saw the release of the screen adaptation of James Patterson’s international bestseller Kiss the Girls, a roller-coaster-ride thriller that introduces us to cop Alex Cross, whose niece has gone missing, and then there was Switchback, which features the screen’s very first serial killer of a certain type of human being. You’ll have to see it to find out what I am referring to.

Denzel Washington led a star-studded cast in the 1998 Fallen, but the longer it went the cornier it got. Summer of Sam, a 1999 release, is about the lives of fictional New Yorkers at the time that the nonfictional David Berkowitz, better known as the serial killer Son of Sam, was running around bumping off young couples in cars with a Bulldog 44. Also in 1999 we saw The Bone Collector, a classy but grisly tale of a quadriplegic detective’s pursuit of a signature serial killer on the loose in New York’s underground.

Other serial-killer movies of the late ’90s include the forgettable Diary of a Serial Killer and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, an outer-space serial-murder mystery that should have stayed in deep space.

The 2000 screen adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’s book American Psycho was acclaimed by some reviewers and denounced by others. Some reviewers rated it among the top movies of the year, a serial-killer thriller to rival The Silence of the Lambs. But the vast majority of serial-killer movie buffs rejected it as a trashy, sensationalist, wall-to-wall-blood-and-guts piece of tripe that was an insult to the genre. You judge for yourself. But be warned before you spend your money. If you hated the book then the experts say that the movie is worse, if that is possible.

In 2001 the legions of serial-killer buffs flocked to see Hannibal, the long-awaited sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, and while it wasn’t in the same class as the original (and it’s likely that no serial-killer movie ever will be), from all accounts few walked away disappointed. Director Jonathon Demme and Jodie Foster were sadly missed, but it still showed them that the good doctor hadn’t lost his touch. It brained ’em at the box office, taking over $350 million, the all-time record for a serial-killer movie.

Also in 2001 was Along Came a Spider, another screen adaptation from a James Patterson (The Bone Collector, Kiss the Girls) novel, and again featuring Morgan Freeman as investi-gator Alex Cross, which took more than $US100 million at the box office, and yet another yarn about Jack the Ripper, From Hell, featuring Johnny Depp as the opium-addicted police inspector who gets a lot of his leads from his narcotic-induced dreams.

In 2002 we saw the remake of the 1986 Manhunter, this time under the title of the original book by Thomas Harris, Red Dragon. There’s no shortage of buffs who reckon that Manhunter was the better movie, but that’s a brave call given that the ‘real’ Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is back in Red Dragon along with a stellar cast.

In 2003, in the brilliant Monster, we saw the performance of a lifetime as South African actress Charlize Theron won a Best Actress Academy Award for portraying Aileen Carol Wuornos, a true-life hard-drinking, ex-convict prostitute who serial-murdered seven men. Wuornos sat on Death Row in Florida until she was executed by lethal injection on 9 October 2002. The movie takes you from go to whoa and the transformation of the beauty queen Theron into the hideous Wuornos is one of cinema’s greatest achievements in modern times.

The year 2004 brought us the highly recommended Twisted with Samuel L. Jackson, Ashley Judd and Andy Garcia, the forgettable Taking Lives with Angelina Jolie, the Ben Kingsley shocker Suspect Zero and the Australian-made bone-chiller Saw, which cost $A1.2 million to make and took over $US100 million at the box office.

The serial-killer box office success of 2005 was Saw 2, which was (if it’s possible) grizzlier than the original. The additional blood and guts must have been popular with the punters as it took around $US50 million more (total $US151 million) at the box office than the original. Another 2005 Australian serial-killer thriller was the excellent Wolf Creek, based (very) loosely on the outback disappearance of Peter Falconio and the Backpacker Murders. It’s good enough to get in the Top 20 list at number 12.

Paul B. Kidd’s Top 20 Serial-Killer Movies of All Time

1/ The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 118 minutes

A little-known fact about this extraordinary movie is that the horrific activities of the serial killer Buffalo Bill are loosely based on the exploits of a dreadful trio of real-life serial killers named Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Gary Heidnik.

Ed had a penchant for wearing human skin and he made clothes out of the corpses of females he had either killed or dug up. When the cops eventually caught up with him on his farm in Wisconsin, USA in 1957, they found lampshades made out of human skin, a soup dish made out of a hollowed-out human skull, a belt made of nipples and human-skin slippers.

In The Silence of the Lambs serial killer Buffalo Bill lures his victims into his van by asking them to help him lift an item of furniture because his arm is in (fake) plaster. Once in the van the victim is knocked unconscious and whisked away to Bill’s dress-making dungeon to become a part of his winter collection. This method of abduction was originally used by American psychopath Ted Bundy on some of his victims when he kidnapped, raped and murdered up to 40 female college students from 1974 to 1977.

In Philadelphia in 1986 Gary Heidnik kidnapped women and kept them chained up in his cellar as sex slaves, eventually murdering some of them and eating their remains. The description of Heidnik’s cellar is similar to that of Buffalo Bill’s in the movie, though unlike Bill he kept as many as five women in there at a time, beating and torturing them regularly until one escaped and called the cops.

These were just a few of the many fascinating angles that combine to make this by far and away the best serial-killer movie (and one the best movies in general) of all time. And that’s not just my opinion. The judges awarded The Silence of the Lambs the five top Academy Awards (picture, actor, actress, director and screenplay) for 1991, making it only the third movie in history to achieve such an honour (the other two were It Happened One Night in 1934 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975) and it comes in at number 66 in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies of All Time.

Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn and Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill are unbelievably good in a movie that is flawless in every detail. Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter is mesmerising, particularly when we get our initial glimpse of him in his cell as he meets FBI agent Clarice Starling (Foster) for the first time.

And they thought Psycho was scary! The Silence of the Lambs makes it look like the Wizard of Oz and Hannibal Lecter makes Norman Bates look like Mother Teresa.

2/ Se7en (1995) 126 minutes

Se7en’s serial killer, known only as John Doe (Kevin Spacey) who specialises in bumping off perpetrators of the seven deadly sins – gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, pride and lust – wasn’t modelled after a real-life murderer simply because no one in real life could be this bizarre. And if ever there was a celluloid serial killer with purpose, John Doe is it.

At the beginning of Se7en the teaming of Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as the cops looks like it might not work, but it doesn’t take long to realise that the dialogue between the young, new cop and the old, retiring cop, particularly in some of the grisliest scenes you’re ever likely to see, is a highlight of an excellent thriller that will keep you enthralled until the very end. And don’t tell any of your friends the ending!

Gwyneth Paltrow adds a bright ray of sunlight in a movie that is otherwise black, rainy … and bloody terrifying. If you want to have the daylights frightened out of you, then this is the movie that’ll do it.

3/ Prime Suspect Episode 1 (1991) 208 minutes & Episode 6 (1994) 100 minutes

This magnificent detective series was made for television and both of these episodes were put onto video in 1996 and later onto DVD. Number six is a sequel to number one, though many years later, and both can be found in mainstream rental shops.

Episode one sees District Chief Inspector Jane Tennyson (Helen Mirren) in a brand-new job in charge of a bunch of blokes and investigating a brand-new case involving the brutal murder of a young woman. It becomes increasingly obvious that if Jane doesn’t persist in her line of inquiries, which leads her (and her alone) to believe that the bloke that did this murder has done a few others in different parts of England, the killer will not only get away with one murder, but lots of others as well.

Come with Jane as she battles the blokes who want her replaced with another bloke, the bureaucrats who want to replace her to please the blokes and the booze she quaffs by the vasefull, which seems to be the only thing that can console her after her lover leaves because she’s spending too much time tracking down the serial killer.

During nearly three and a half hours of superb film-making you find yourself almost jumping out of the chair to cheer Jane on through all of her dramas. Watch as she triumphantly brings the case to its riveting finale, spits in the eye of bureaucracy and becomes best buddies with the blokes who started out hating her.

This is much, much more than just another serial-killer movie. This is about life, adversity and winning against all odds. That is why it is must-see viewing. In episode six the bloke who has been locked away for the serial murders in episode one has had a book written about him claiming that he is innocent, which seems highly likely when the bodies of young women start turning up with similarities that only the jailed killer and the police (Tennyson in particular) would know about.

Did Jane lock up the wrong villain? If not, is there a copycat killer on the loose and, if so, how did he/she find out the secrets of the previous killings? It’s riveting stuff. Jane’s love life is still in turmoil, only this time she’s involved with a different bloke, and the bureaucrats are still trying to cut down the tall poppy.

This is a serial-killer movie for all the family and not to be missed by any serious serial-killer movie fan.

4/ 10 Rillington Place (1971) 111 minutes

Be prepared to meet one very scary guy in this true-life classic as necrophiliac serial killer, London’s John Christie, arguably the most heinous fiend that ever lived, murders his way to the gallows. Over a 13-year period, until his capture in 1953, John Reginald Halliday Christie murdered seven women, including his wife and the baby daughter of one of his victims. Christie gassed the women, strangled them and then raped their corpses.

The Christie murders case is one of the most famous in the world, not especially for the murders themselves but for the fact that Timothy Evans, the dimwitted lorry-driver husband of a Christie victim, Beryl Evans, and the father of the murdered baby Geraldine, was incorrectly hanged for their murders while the real killer Christie went free.

Richard Attenborough’s performance as Christie is mesmerising, as is John Hurt’s portrayal of the intellectually challenged Evans. Who will ever forget the spine-chilling scene in court with Evans pointing to Christie, the chief witness against him, and saying, ‘It was Christie what done it, Christie done it,’ after the judge sentenced him (Evans) to death by hanging.

The setting for 10 Rillington Place is exactly where it happened, the depressing squalor of London’s Notting Hill just after the war, then possibly the worst bit of residential real estate on the planet.

It is factual horror at it ugliest and a truly brilliant piece of cinema.

5/ Manhunter (1986) 119 minutes

Say hello to the Tooth Fairy, a really likeable guy whose speciality is murdering and butchering entire families on the full moon. Mum, dad, kids, pets, the lot. What with the teeth and the full moon you could be fooled into thinking this is some sort of a vampire movie, but it certainly isn’t – even though the serial killer does have a nibble on his victims (that’s how he got his name) with his outrageously large choppers.

But that’s not what the plot is all about. Adapted from Thomas Harris’ international bestseller Red Dragon (the novel before The Silence of the Lambs), it’s the tale of how FBI serial- killer catcher Will Graham, played by William L. Petersen (he went on to bigger success as Grissom in CSI) is brought out of retirement to catch the Tooth Fairy before he kills another entire generation of a family.

Will’s claim to fame is that he caught Dr Hannibal Lecter in the first place, and if he could do that he can catch anyone. We get to meet Dr Lecter (Brian Cox) in his cell, which is very disappointing if you’ve seen Anthony Hopkins’ later portrayal of Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. For all its complications, twists and turns Manhunter is a classic in the serial-killer genre and the scientific detective work used to track the killer down is awesome. A must for every serial-killer movie buff.

6/ Red Dragon (2002) 124 minutes

A lot of enthusiasts maintain that this remake of the 1986 Manhunter (adapted from the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon) isn’t as good as the original. I’m inclined to agree with them, even though Anthony Hopkins is back as Hannibal Lecter and the rest of the cast is stellar. I think that it’s because the original was streets ahead of anything else in the serial-killer genre at the time, and was the first movie that gave us an insight into FBI profiling.

And while it’s impossible to go past Anthony Hopkins in the role that he was born to play, I believe that Manhunter’s Tom Noonan was a much better Tooth Fairy than Ralph Fiennes, Dennis Farina a far superior Jack Crawford to Harvey Keitel (and Harvey Keitel’s one of my all-time favourite actors) and CSI’s William L. Peterson played Ed Norton off a break as serial killer profiler Will Graham.

Having said that, I believe that Red Dragon is brilliant in that it took the liberty of filling us in on all of the bits we had wondered about over the years, such as how did Will Graham actually catch the cannibal quack? Fantastic stuff.

Both Manhunter and Red Dragon are superb. Do yourself a favour and watch them back to back – Manhunter first – and see what you think.

7/ Monster (2003) 111 minutes

True to form, it was the American media, where serial-killer hype was first born, that claimed Aileen Carol Wuornos, a hard-drinking, ex-convict prostitute, as the world’s first female serial killer. Of course it wasn’t true, even though Wuornos murdered seven men on separate occasions by shooting them in the torso with a small-calibre handgun after they picked her up as she hitchhiked throughout Florida in 1990. There had been many female serial killers before Wuornos, but none who murdered adult males with a handgun. Maybe that’s what they meant.

Anyway, it had the desired effect. The punters flocked to it in droves. That and the fact that South African actress Charlize Theron and Wuornos were hard to pick apart in looks and mannerisms. Theron won a Best Actress Academy Award for portraying Wuornos in what has been described ‘the performance of the decade’.

8/ Hannibal (2001) 121 minutes

The long-awaited sequel to The Silence of the Lambs isn’t in the same class as the original, but only the world’s greatest optimist could possibly have hoped it would be, given that originals Jodie Foster and director Jonathon Demme vetoed the project. But there are lots of other serial-killer treats to make up for it.

Anthony Hopkins is yet again brilliant in the role that he seems to have been born for, that of the evil Hannibal Lecter: scholar, teacher, intellectual and bon vivant of exquisite taste, especially his penchant for certain cuts of meat.

And we get to meet possibly the most grotesque screen villain of them all; billionaire paedophile, disgruntled outpatient and long-time Lecter nemesis Mason Verger, who wants to have a word with the good doctor about the time he filled him full of drugs and encouraged him to shave his own face off with slivers of broken mirror. As a result Mason looks like Cyclops who’s had all of the skin from his ass grafted onto his face by a surgeon on a bad acid trip. Actor Gary Oldman passed up a mention in the credits, claiming that no one would have known it was him anyway.

While in lots of folk’s eyes only Jodie Foster will ever be Clarice Starling, Julianne Moore makes a fist of it. She is convincing as the boots-and-all FBI agent in pursuit of the dreaded Lecter in an attempt to regain her job with the FBI after being discredited by Verger cohort and FBI agent Paul Krendler, played by Ray Liotta.

Set in America and France, Hannibal bowls along at a ripper pace and, while it doesn’t stick too closely to the book, especially the ending, it is still an excellent film for the genre. With more twists and turns than a bucket of blood worms, viewers shouldn’t be dissatisfied with Hannibal, but they must not compare it with the original, which must have been one of the hardest acts to follow in the entire history of the movies. It took over $US350 million worldwide and is the highest-grossing serial-killer movie in history.

9/ Psycho (1960) 109 minutes

And in the beginning … there was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Those of you old enough to remember will never forget the impact Psycho had on our society. For its time Psycho was totally outrageous, over the top, horrifying and ghoulish. After all, it was 1960. Compared with what’s out there today it’s more like The Sound of Music, but even 40 years down the track it still packs a punch and is worth another viewing every few years or so.

Again, it was American serial killer Ed Gein (also mentioned previously in The Silence of the Lambs review) who was the role model for Norman Bates. When poor farm boy Ed’s mother died in 1944 he kept her corpse in the bedroom, leaving everything exactly as it was the day she died. Then Ed took to digging up women’s corpses in a local graveyard and would wear bits of their flesh and play with their sexual organs. When Ed tired of draping the human skin from the corpses over a tailor’s dummy in a crude attempt to resurrect his mother and the smell of the rotting bodies drove him from the house, he took up killing fresh people to satisfy his bizarre fetishes.

So, when the Psycho publicity blurb said that there had never been anyone like Norman before, they were wrong. There had been Ed Gein, hadn’t there? But, as The Silence of the Lambs was the benchmark serial-killer movie of the ’90s, Psycho was the most ground-breaking thriller of the century, even though most of us thought it was total fiction, that folks like Norman Bates could never possibly exist and that it was all a figment of Alfred Hitchcock’s imagination. And it would be terribly remiss of me to let any review of Psycho go by without a mention of Janet Leigh and the shower scene that frightened the living daylights out of everyone, and that she had to live with for the last 44 years of her life.

Ah yes, how could we forget the very forgettable Bates Motel that the super-highway bypassed with its 12 cabins, 12 vacancies … and 12 showers. Do yourself a favour and rent Psycho again (or for the first time) soon. Trust me, it’s as scary as ever.

10/ Dirty Harry (1972) 102 minutes

Who can ever forget Dirty Harry Callahan looking down the barrel of the biggest handgun in the world and begging the crook at the end of it to ‘go ahead, make my day’ by making a move. Prior to this Harry had walked out of a deli and gunned down a team of bank robbers as he munched on a hot dog.

This was the world’s introduction to cool Harry and to a serial killer named Scorpio, who Harry pursues through the streets of San Francisco with relentless vigour. The character of Scorpio (Andy Robinson) was purportedly modelled on a series of real-life murders in California in 1968 and ’69 when a serial killer calling himself Zodiac killed five people and wounded two more over a period of a year. He followed up the killings with letters to San Francisco newspapers giving gruesome details that only the killer could have known, as well as cryptic clues regarding where and when the next killings would be. Each letter was signed by a symbol of the Zodiac: a cross superimposed on a circle.

And so Dirty Harry’s Scorpio terrorises the city of San Francisco, demanding money and threatening to kill at random. Many people may not even be aware that Dirty Harry is a serial- killer movie because it’s so much about the Dirty Harry Callahan character, his mammoth gun and cool dialogue. But a serial-killer movie it definitely is. And a good one at that. Good plot, a really hateful villain and that oh so cool dialogue. And even after all this time it isn’t dated.

11/ Frenzy (1972) 116 minutes

It was 12 years since Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho and he had obviously been waiting for the right idea before he embarked on another psychopathic killer thriller. Frenzy was it. And it was something ghastly that happened in those 12 years that was the inspiration for what would eventually become Frenzy.

In Boston, USA from 1962 to 1964 a heinous fiend named Albert De Salvo raped and strangled 13 women in their homes. He became known as the Boston Strangler and was the first of a kind: each of his victims, who ranged from young students to elderly women, were left with an identifying ‘signature’ – after he had strangled his victims with their own stockings or underwear, the Boston Strangler tied the garment in a neat bow beneath the victim’s chin.

In the same fashion as the Boston Strangler, the evil killer in Frenzy also leaves a calling card after he strangles his victims with a necktie. After a succession of naked bodies of young women are found all over London he becomes known as the ‘Necktie Killer’.

An innocent man is accused of the murders and the hunt is on. But it is the Hitchcock brand of black humour that gives Frenzy its class. The dialogue at dinner between the ever-so-proper police inspector and his wife is priceless as he explains the day-to-day developments of the grisly Necktie Murders and she dishes him up equally gruesome meals she has learnt in her home-cooking classes. Not to be missed.

12/ Wolf Creek (2005) 95 minutes

‘Based on a true story’, the opening credits tell us. Well, not quite. But this Australian shocker that makes the Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like Mary Poppins certainly does have links with two famous Australian murders cases. The most recent is the disappearance of British tourist Peter Falconio in the Northern Territory in July 2001, and the subsequent conviction of Bradley Murdoch for his murder. The second is the most notorious case of serial murder in Australia’s history, the Backpacker Murders, in which Ivan Milat was convicted of murdering seven backpackers between 1989 and 1992 on the outskirts of Sydney.

John Jarratt plays Mick Taylor, the friendly outback loner who befriends two girls and a young bloke who have broken down in the middle of nowhere. Kind Mick offers them a tow, which they take only to find themselves in the graveyard of lots of other luckless young tourists and their vehicles. All of this peripherally relates to the Peter Falconio disappearance and the real-life murderer Murdoch could be likened to the make-believe Mick.

The similarity to the Backpacker Murders comes when Mick refers to one of his victims as ‘a head on a stick’ after he has severed her spine with a huge Bowie knife. This was the same method used by Ivan Milat on all of his victims to render them helpless, but leave them still alive so he could have his way with them without any interference.

Wolf Creek is a very scary movie. But what is scariest of all is that it is very believable. There could very well be a Mick Taylor, or several for that matter, out there preying on kids on an adventure in their $2000 Holden station wagons and VW Kombis. And I guess it’s us Aussies who would have the best understanding of this, given our knowledge of the vastness of the outback, the times between seeing another vehicle and the distances between civilisations.

So it is little wonder it was panned unmercifully by the unknowing US critics, who couldn’t get past the blood and guts and soak up the reality. The doyen of them all, Roger Ebert, gave it zero stars and said, ‘Wolf Creek is more like the guy who bites the heads off chickens at the carnival sideshow. No fun for us, no fun for the guy, no fun for the chicken. In the case of this film it’s fun for the guy.’ Another said, ‘It made me want to vomit and cry at the same time.’ Yet another: ‘It must be giving Australia’s Outback tourism industry a bad case of heartburn.’

Still, at a cost of about $A1 million, and with worldwide box office takings of over $US24m, I guess the producers couldn’t care less. I thought it was great.

13/ Cop (1987) 110 minutes

If nothing else this excellent, yet hardly noticed, thriller is the movie that will go down in history as the first to use the term ‘serial killer’ in its dialogue. And what a good serial-killer movie it is. James Woods plays the cop who investigates the grisly murder of a woman, only to uncover a can of worms that involves no less than 16 killings dating back donkey’s years, a crooked dope- dealing cop and a short affair with an enormously endowed hooker until she … well, you’ll see for yourself why the affair is so short.

It is a very credible movie that moves along at a rapid pace and includes all of the usual traits of a cop-in-pursuit-of-a-serial-killer movie, in that his boss doesn’t believe that the murders are connected and tells him to get off the case or he’ll be sacked, his home life is a disaster and his detective partner (Charles Durning) keeps covering up for him.

But in the end James gets his man. Definitely worth a look.

14/ Jennifer 8 (1992) 127 minutes

This excellent serial-killer thriller went virtually unnoticed at the box office but has created a huge cult following on video, and deservedly so. Andy Garcia features as the off-the-wall big-city cop working a serial murder case in a small northern Californian town.

Naturally the local hillbilly cops hate the detective from the big smoke and do everything in their power to stop him producing the killer. But all is not lost for Andy, who falls for the stunning Uma Thurman, a blind student who looks pretty certain to be the serial killer’s next victim.

In many ways, Jennifer 8 is a serial-killer thriller in the vein of many that came before: the cop stumbles onto a killer, no one believes him, he pursues it anyway much to the disgust of the hierarchy and with brilliant detective work and against all odds comes up with the goods.

The fact that Andy and Uma are supported by the likes of John Malkovich and Lance Henriksen in a very strong cast only adds to the movie’s class.

15/ Citizen X (1995) 105 minutes

Made originally for TV, and now available on video, this true-life charmer is about the life and times of Russian murderer Andre Chikatilo, one of the most prolific serial killers the world has ever known, and a detective’s (Stephen Rea) dogged eight-year pursuit against all odds to bring him to justice.

Chikatilo tortured, murdered and raped the corpses of at least 53 people, mainly children. He disembowelled many of them and ate their body parts, before he was captured in 1992, tried and executed by a single bullet to the back of the head.

This is a movie, not a documentary, and the story-line about the detective’s continued frustration with Russia’s bureaucracy that hampers his bringing Chikatilo to trial is as entertaining as it is factual. The strong supporting cast includes Donald Sutherland and Max von Sydow.

16/ Sea of Love (1989) 112 minutes

The last thing that alcoholic detective Al Pacino needs as he goes through a midlife crisis is a serial killer who lies his/her naked male victims face down on the bed and puts a bullet behind their ears while the record player pumps out the old 1959 Phil Phillips 45rpm classic Sea of Love, over and over.

Will the case take Al over the edge that he is already precar-iously balancing on? Will the stunning blonde chief suspect (Ellen Barkin) fuck him to death before he solves the mystery? Will a detective he works with, who is married to Al’s ex-wife, end up putting a bullet in him for pestering them at all hours of the night when he’s fallen down the eye of a Jim Beam bottle? Will the serial killer get him?

It’s almost enough to get Al off the turps but when he teams up with another hard-drinking cop (John Goodman) that doesn’t seem possible as they lead each other through one drunken escapade after another in the pursuit of evidence to nail the Sea of Love Killer.

Sounds corny? It isn’t. It’s anything but. This is hard-core, racy drama at its best and there’s not a boring or cornball moment in it. And don’t tell your friends who the serial killer is. Let ’em guess.

17/ Copycat (1995) 125 minutes

Now here’s a serial-killer movie with a difference. A serial killer who copies other serial killers. That’s right. In this highly entertaining, but somewhat dubious, murder spree we have a psycho-path on the loose who is re-enacting the murders of such infamous bygone American serial killers as Son of Sam, Ted Bundy and the Hillside Strangler.

Our killer re-enacts the murders down to the last detail and, in the process, terrorises agoraphobic psychiatrist Sigourney Weaver, who is a world authority and lecturer on serial killers. Sigourney’s terror of leaving her home is justified in that she was attacked and strangled half to death by a demented hillbilly serial killer (Harry Connick Jnr) in a public toilet and, even though he is locked away forever, she fears that he will come back and get her. And what with a re-enacting serial killer on the loose … guess what happens?

If you don’t look too intensely at the plot, and just ignore the holes that you could drive a jumbo jet through, then this could be the movie for you.

18/ The Bone Collector (1999) 117 minutes

Welcome to the world of mega-high-tech serial-killer catching. And somehow director Phillip Noyce plausibly pulls it off without his hero, serial-killer super-sleuth extraordinaire Denzel Washington, the NYPD’s leading forensics expert, laying a finger on the villain.

This is mainly due to the fact that Denzel is a quadriplegic confined to his bed at home, surrounded by nurses and so much computer and surveillance equipment that his electricity bill must eat up every cent of his medical insurance.

Mr Bone Collector conducts his grisly business in New York’s nether world and with pouting policewoman Angelina Jolie standing in for him, Denzel guides her through an earpiece and watches her every move from a camera in her helmet as they pursue the latest in the seemingly never-ending procession of New York’s periodical mass murderers.

No real surprises in this one, but it is cleverly made and very suspenseful. It also leaves you wondering if it really could happen. The policeman tracking down a demented serial killer from his bed, that is. Still, stranger things have happened. Professor Stephen Hocking is a classic example. If you watch The Bone Collector with this in mind it makes for a much more entertaining movie rather than sitting there picking holes in it, which is very easy to do.

19/ Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) 90 minutes

Critically acclaimed as ‘a film of ferocious, haunting power’ and ‘an unpleasant, unexploitative, and brilliantly directed portrayal of diseased minds’, this squalid piece of work is based on just a few of the exploits of America’s most prolific serial-killer Henry Lee Lucas who, in cahoots with redneck buddy Ottis Toole, murdered and raped the corpses of in excess of 150 men, women and children throughout America from 1960 to 1983.

What the movie doesn’t tell us is that in between raping and killing and having sex with each other – they met as cell mates – the Texas good ol’ boys also liked a little Southern ménage à trois with a chicken, a calf, Ottis’ sister Beckie, or all three at once, and that as a kid Henry’s prostitute momma beat him so bad that it gave him brain damage. Gee, really! Henry paid her back in 1960 by murdering her and raping her corpse.

But while Michael Rooker as Henry, Tom Towles as Ottis and Tracy Arnold as Beckie are perfectly cast as life’s redneck losers, the real star of the show is murder itself and lots of it. To my mind Henry was grossly overrated but it will no doubt have its legion of fans of serial-killer movies.

20/ To Catch a Killer (1991)

This excellently produced tale about American serial killer John Wayne Gacy was also originally made for TV and ended up on video. Big man Brian Dennehy is superbly cast as real-life big man Gacy, a Chicago building contractor who gave generously of his time to public charities and often performed as Pogo the Clown at children’s hospitals and benefits.

In the meantime Gacy was luring teenage boys to his home in Des Plaines, Illinois where he tortured, raped and strangled them and buried their bodies under his house. He was arrested in 1978 and found guilty of murdering 33 boys. Pogo the Clown was executed by lethal injection in 1994.

The movie portrays Gacy as he was in real life, an arrogant oaf who thought he could bluff the police because he was a respected member of the community. A must in any serial-killer video library.