Philip L. Simpson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604734539
- eISBN:
- 9781621031048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604734539.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter offers a critical overview of the serial killer film, especially in the light of the subgenre’s intense cultural significance during the 1980s and 1990s and its subsequent descent into ...
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This chapter offers a critical overview of the serial killer film, especially in the light of the subgenre’s intense cultural significance during the 1980s and 1990s and its subsequent descent into relative insignificance after 9/11. While pondering the larger questions of why and how horror film archetypes drift in and out of the culture’s focus of attention, it also demonstrates how the serial killer film, though often pronounced dead, has instead managed to spread throughout a field of cultural production much larger than that of a strictly defined and narrowly circumscribed cinematic genre. The chapter argues that the serial killer has even made a comeback with recent high-profile productions directed by auteurist filmmakers such as Spike Lee (Summer of Sam) and David Fincher (Zodiac).Less
This chapter offers a critical overview of the serial killer film, especially in the light of the subgenre’s intense cultural significance during the 1980s and 1990s and its subsequent descent into relative insignificance after 9/11. While pondering the larger questions of why and how horror film archetypes drift in and out of the culture’s focus of attention, it also demonstrates how the serial killer film, though often pronounced dead, has instead managed to spread throughout a field of cultural production much larger than that of a strictly defined and narrowly circumscribed cinematic genre. The chapter argues that the serial killer has even made a comeback with recent high-profile productions directed by auteurist filmmakers such as Spike Lee (Summer of Sam) and David Fincher (Zodiac).
Austin Fisher
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474411721
- eISBN:
- 9781474464727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411721.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyses films connected through their depiction of serial killing in contemporary Italy, which are usually categorised within the giallo filone. These are shown to demonstrate a variety ...
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This chapter analyses films connected through their depiction of serial killing in contemporary Italy, which are usually categorised within the giallo filone. These are shown to demonstrate a variety of ways in which filone cinema was characterised by tensions between cosmopolitanism and parochialism, in turn providing further insights into how particular filoni sought to capitalise on a preoccupation with the recent past. The giallo's broader obsessions with past traumas, fragmented memories and the unravelling of supposed facts are thus placed in the contexts of Italy's contested recent past, illuminating the extent to which wartime memory weighed heavily on the 1970s present.Less
This chapter analyses films connected through their depiction of serial killing in contemporary Italy, which are usually categorised within the giallo filone. These are shown to demonstrate a variety of ways in which filone cinema was characterised by tensions between cosmopolitanism and parochialism, in turn providing further insights into how particular filoni sought to capitalise on a preoccupation with the recent past. The giallo's broader obsessions with past traumas, fragmented memories and the unravelling of supposed facts are thus placed in the contexts of Italy's contested recent past, illuminating the extent to which wartime memory weighed heavily on the 1970s present.
Samm Deighan
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781911325772
- eISBN:
- 9781800342422
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781911325772.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Fritz Lang's first sound feature, M (1931), is one of the earliest serial killer films in cinema history and laid the foundation for future horror movies and thrillers, particularly those with a ...
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Fritz Lang's first sound feature, M (1931), is one of the earliest serial killer films in cinema history and laid the foundation for future horror movies and thrillers, particularly those with a disturbed killer as protagonist. Peter Lorre's child killer, Hans Beckert, is presented as monstrous, yet sympathetic, building on themes presented in the earlier German Expressionist horror films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Hands of Orlac. Lang eerily foreshadowed the rising fascist horrors in German society, and transforms his cinematic Berlin into a place of urban terror and paranoia. This book explores the way Lang uses horror and thriller tropes in M, particularly in terms of how it functions as a bridge between German Expressionism and Hollywood's growing fixation on sympathetic killers in the 1940s. The book also examines how Lang made use of developments within forensic science and the criminal justice system to portray a somewhat realistic serial killer on screen for the first time, at once capturing how society in the 1930s and 1940s viewed such individuals and their crimes and shaping how they would be portrayed on screen in the horror films to come.Less
Fritz Lang's first sound feature, M (1931), is one of the earliest serial killer films in cinema history and laid the foundation for future horror movies and thrillers, particularly those with a disturbed killer as protagonist. Peter Lorre's child killer, Hans Beckert, is presented as monstrous, yet sympathetic, building on themes presented in the earlier German Expressionist horror films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Hands of Orlac. Lang eerily foreshadowed the rising fascist horrors in German society, and transforms his cinematic Berlin into a place of urban terror and paranoia. This book explores the way Lang uses horror and thriller tropes in M, particularly in terms of how it functions as a bridge between German Expressionism and Hollywood's growing fixation on sympathetic killers in the 1940s. The book also examines how Lang made use of developments within forensic science and the criminal justice system to portray a somewhat realistic serial killer on screen for the first time, at once capturing how society in the 1930s and 1940s viewed such individuals and their crimes and shaping how they would be portrayed on screen in the horror films to come.
