The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Psychos and Serial Killers is an all-embracing term that refers to anybody of murderously psychopathic disposition in genre cinema. This can range from general murderers and Stalkers to persons of Disturbed Psychology and to those that fall under the modern description of a serial killer.
In textbook psychology terms, a psychopath is merely someone who displays antisocial behaviour and is lacking empathy – so we will specify here that a psycho refers to those with murderous intent and disturbed psychology in a horror context (so as not to include general all-purpose villains too).
The field is so prolific it is hard to say who the first screen psycho would have been. The first time this became a major genre was with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and its memorably gender-contorted, split-personalitied Norman Bates. The Psycho-Thrillers and Giallo Films that followed offered up a range of similarly gender-conflicted characters with strange psychological quirks.
This morphed into the psycho films of the 1970s, which placed less an emphasis on the thriller aspects and more on disturbed individuals and their often sordid states of mind. Plentiful psychos were found lurking in backwoods America to attacks passers-by in the Backwoods Brutality cycle.
The 1980s brought the Slasher Film where the psycho became a hulking Boogeyman or else a member among a group of teens nursing some troubled psychic split. Fatal Attraction (1987) produced a series of stalker films with vengeful women (usually) striking back for past or perceived slights.
The success of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) brought a public fascination with the term ‘serial killer’ and created the Serial Killer Thriller. In these, what was previously lumped together as being just ‘disturbed psychology’ was examined in terms of behavioural patterns that drove an individual to act, all of which could be deduced by minute examination of forensic evidence that gave key clues to their identity.
There is also a sizeable body of films about true-life psychopaths and serial killers. These are discussed under True Crime Films.
Everyone has a certain idea of what Bollywood cinema is – romantic interludes and elaborate song and dance numbers no matter the genre. This is one Bollywood film that defies convention – based on a true-life Mumbai serial killer, it comes with a harsh realism and features an electrifying central performance
The third film from Ben Wheatley who here makes a black comedy about two tourists on a murder spree, eliminating those they don’t like. A film that digs into British class and provincial small-mindedness with scabrous regard
Teens on a road trip play a practical joke using an old CB radio but prank a psychopathic truck driver. A film where director John Dahl delivers the goods with considerable style
Matthew Bright’s extraordinary modernisation/trashing of Little Red Riding Hood who becomes Reese Witherspoon’s juvenile delinquent who goes hitchhiking and is targeted by serial killer Kiefer Sutherland
A side-splittingly funny spoof of Found Footage films as a crime scene video crew uncover evidence of a serial killer and decide to make a documentary about it
A Mike Flanagan film that keeps you in a state of seat-edge tension. The premise is a simple one – a deaf woman is terrorised by a killer waiting outside her house – but Flanagan delivers it with electrifying effect
A thriller that develops quite a degree of eerie suspense as Juliette Lewis moves into a new apartment and finds she is surrounded by some very strange neighbours
Stylish French slasher film about actors being stalked as they put on a performance of Little Red Riding Hood at a country estate. The fairytale is adeptly wound in and out as metaphor.
Intelligent and well written film where freak weather conditions allow a son to communicate with his late father by radio across thirty years in time. Where the film starts to get interesting is when this creates unexpected changes in the present
A standout South Korean film about a deaf girl pursued through the streets by a serial killer
Not to be confused with The Final Girls that came out earlier this year, this is an extremely original work, neither quite slasher nor a vigilante film, yet turning the expectations of either on their heads
Excellent British tv mini-series that tells the story of true-life serial killer Dennis Nilsen who preyed on gay men in London in the 1980s. David Tennant gives an electrifying performance in the title role
Adam Wingard has been a director on the rise in the last few years, although his films often feel as though they could have been more than they are. This mumblecore serial killer film is his most satisfying and fully achieved work so far
Italy’s Dario Argento laid out the essence of the style – the arty murder set-pieces; flamboyant camerawork; the stylish music scores; and the psycho-thriller plots – in his first giallo film here
Excellent film based on true-life serial killers Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono with C. Thomas Howell and Nicholas Turturro giving electrifying performances in the respective roles
Standout sequel to Maniac Cop, the best of the series, where Larry Cohen turns in a remarkable script and William Lustig delivers incredible action sequences
A true crime film based on Martin Bryant who went on a shooting spree, killing 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia in 1996
BBC mini-series based on true-life serial killer John Reginald Christie that was earlier filmed as the classic >i>10 Rillington Place. Tim Roth steps into the role and the show adopts an exacting feel for the period to portray Christie’s crimes with considerable effect
On the scale of weird movies, this is about as out there as it gets – Ryan Reynolds has conversations with his cat and dog who urge him to cut people’s heads off, which continue to talk as he keeps them in his refrigerator. A mind-bogglingly warped film and quite brilliant in its dark funniness when you work out what is going on
Fine studied Atom Egoyan thriller in which Elaine Cassidy, a teenage runaway from Ireland, is offered a home and befriended by Bob Hoskins who is a serial killer who targets runaways
Sequel to Shane Ryan’s disturbing snuff Found Footage film. This works with the same effectiveness as the original, where the videography is transformed via a dreamily beautiful series of experiments with editing and colour
From the almost unknown Narciso Ibañez Serrador, this is essentially a giallo thriller made with the lush sensibilities of a Hammer film. Set in a girl’s boarding school, this substantially prefigures Suspiria
Greg McLean and John Jarratt return to the Australian Backwood Brutality saga of Wolf Creek for a second outing that is just as effective as the first. McLean often pushes the material into black humour and creates at least one sequence that makes for genuinely uncomfortable watching
Karen Moncrieff directs a strong and powerful drama that tells five stories of the women whose lives are affected by a serial killer. The film has an amazing ensemble cast who deliver sterling performances
Stunningly photographed yachtboard psycho-thriller with Nicole Kidman (in her first major film performance) and husband Sam Neill taken prisoner by a psycho Billy Zane. Produced by George Miller
Fine Coming of Age story set in 1950s New Zealand with John Carradine as a sinister stranger come to town
Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, this Spanish film is an extremely good work about a blind woman stalked by a killer, featuring a script of sharp twists and grippingly suspenseful directorial set-pieces
French psycho-thriller where Sergi Lopez gives an unnervingly charming performance as a psychopathic schoolfriend who inserts himself into Laurent Lucas’s life
From Jeff Lieberman, a wonderfully malicious film where a young kid befriends and ends up aiding a serial killer on Halloween
Excellent, superbly written thriller loosely based on the B.T.K. killer story where a teen believes his father (Dylan McDermott in a great performance) might be a serial killer
Surprisingly good modern slasher film set in a movie theatre during a festival of old horror films. The films come with surprisingly affectionate and well done recreations of old gimmick films, and the slasher sequences a more than reasonable style
A disturbing Japanese film about a man in a motorised wheelchair (played by a real disabled actor) who turns serial killer and begins to enact revenge for petty injustices
A solid revival of the horror anthology, this tells three stories that all work well. The film also features several before-they-were-known faces
Cult film with Millie Perkins as a disturbed waitress with a troubled background, this takes place in a fascinating swim of dream and symbolism
Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, this centres around Joseph Cotten as the favourite uncle who comes to town as his niece increasingly suspects that he may be a serial killer
Tightly wound British tv thriller where Jemma Redgrave has a big secret that her ex is a jailed serial killer and she now cannot be certain if her son or fiance is responsible for a murder
Another Found Footage film, a mix of interviews and video footage supposedly recorded by a serial killer. Despite some initial amateurishness, the film soon gets a disturbing grip on you in depicting the astonishing cruelty and fiendishness of the killer
Film based on a true-life shooting spree in the tiny nowhere New Zealand town of Aramoana
The most likely response to this is going to be “WHAT THE $%@^* AM I WATCHING?” – a film so far removed from the average experience, so located in its own unique, utterly eccentric universe it has instant cult classic written all over it
This is one of the most twisted films I have ever come across in recent years in which a couple have their home invaded by a clown who makes them into his sexual playthings
This asks the question of what happens to the final girl after a slasher film. This is less a slasher film than a work about post-traumatic stress before reaching a jaw-dropping ending
Possibly the most entertaining no-budget movie ever made. Essentially shot around the director’s own home for a bunch of traded favours, this is a slasher film where the cast have been encouraged to plant tongue-in-cheek and go over the top with frequently sidesplitting results
An exhaustive and very accurately detailed tv mini-series based around the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who targeted prostitutes in the north of England between 1975 and 1981
Chris Sivertson directs a frequently explosive film based on a Jack Ketchum novel that tells the story of a true-life teenage killer and the magnetic sway he held over others
Strong and absorbing serial killer thriller with Ally Walker tracking a killer who severs children’s hands
The original evil child film featuring an unforgettable performance from Patty McCormack (who received an Academy Award nomination along with most of the cast). Dated somewhat today but still holds a real charge
The English-language debut from South Korea’s Park Chan-wook is a supremely controlled film, more like a period arthouse film than drenched in the buckets of gore we expect of Park … Essentially a reworking of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, a film that takes place all in smouldering tensions
Raw and undeniable brutal film in which a plus-size teenage girl forms a relationship with a serial killer after he abducts her tormentors
Another of Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers filled with all his trademark artily extravagant deaths. At the centre of the film is a teenage Jennifer Connelly who can psychically communicate with insects
John Barrymore as a ballet master who controls and dominates pupil Marian Marsh. This was clearly made as an attempt to replicate the success that Barrymore had playing more or less exactly the same type of role in the earlier Svengali
An eight-episode tv mini-series based on true-life necrophile/grave robber Ed Gein. This expands the story out and considerably embellishes the facts but is one of the most outrageously out there pieces of tv watching you will ever come across
Dark and gripping thriller from Denis Villeneuve about child abductions and a distraught parent who decides to torture a suspect to find their whereabouts.; Superbly well written thriller that raises some big contemporary issues about the legitimacy of torture. Both Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal give utterly convincing performances
Low-budget psycho film that bursts with a freshness and originality, not to mention an incredibly perverse kick, featuring an excellent performance from Russell Geoffrey Banks as a mother-dominated killer
Fascinating British mini-series about a series of modern-day Jack the Ripper copycat killings, one where the writers have clearly done their research
Italian horror cinema of the 1970s/80s had some of the most extreme material put on screen. Here Joe D’Amato directs a film about a young man with a necrophile obsession and pushes the material to extremes that take you back
Coolly intelligent road movie with a then-unknown David Duchovny as a writer on a tour of serial killer murder sites and an unknown Brad Pitt giving a charged performance as a psychopathic redneck
A clever and ingenious film from Nicholas Meyer in which H.G. Wells builds his own time machine and pursues Jack the Ripper through time to present-day San Francisco. Lots of witty play around Wells’s cultural bewilderment and some great performances
Film in which Sean Penn plays the real-life figure of a man frustrated by the pressures of everyday life who snaps and attempts to fly a plane into the White House
Witty psycho-thriller with Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime as a psychopathic landlady who becomes fixated on a handsome border
Cited as the first film noir, this is a fascinating psycho film about a man tormented by guilt over convicting the wrong man
The second film from Indonesia’s Mo Brothers follows the internet friendship between a serial killer and another he decides to mentor in the ways of killing. The Mo’s take to the material with a dark relish
Fine Australian psycho-thriller about a couple on the run from an accidental murder. This comes with sharp twists and ambiguities and a great sense of humour
A harrowing home assault film that highlighted the debut of Bryan Bertino, a new director of considerable promise. The surprise about the film is just how much influence it has had on other works subsequently
UK. 1976. Crew Director/Producer – Pete Walker, Screenplay – David McGillivray, Photography – Peter Jessop, Music – Stanley Myers, Makeup Supervisor – George Partleton, Art Direction – Chris Burke. Production Company – Peter Walker (Heritage) Ltd. Cast Lynne Frederick (Samantha Gray Falconer/Jean Longmarsh), Jack Watson (William Haskin), John Leyton (Alan Falconer), Stephanie Beacham (Beth), John […]
A modest and reasonably effective psycho-thriller about a brother and sister who are adopted after the death of their parents only to find their step-parents have sinister intent
Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his earlier home invasion film has a sense of pointlessness to it. But in following the original so closely, it also cannot help but work where it did
Portrait of a disturbed teenage girl on a killing and torture spree. Makes fictitious claims to be based on a true story but mostly seems designed to outrage an audience. At which, despite an undeniable amateurishness, you cannot deny it succeeds
Three psychos who imprison the employees of a restaurant announcing they are going to kill and then cook all of them as a gourmet meal. A film made with a devastatingly black sense of humour
David Fincher’s English-language remake of the Swedish film is capably made but a lesser shadow of something that worked perfectly the first time. In particular, Rooney Mara is no substitute for Noomi Rapace
A Backwoods Brutality effort that is somewhat better than usual thanks to a darkly acerbic David J. Schow script that constantly subverts the expectations of the genre
A not bad giallo film from Umberto Lenzi, the director who created the notorious Italian cannibal film. Antonio Sabato [Sr] tries to trace the identity of a killer in black who leaves a silver pendant at each murder
Halfway reasonable entry in the 1980s slasher cycle that sits with one foot in the Old Dark House genre. This also comes with a great cast of genre veterans.
The tough hard-boiled Korean gangster film is a genre of its own. This uniquely has a detective and a crime kingpin deciding to join forces to track down a serial killer. Slated for remake by James Wan
Not the first but the most famous of the psycho Santa films. At the time, it was just another slasher film exploiting a holiday title. However, this does the slasher movie formula rather well while digging into Christmas sentiment with a bite that takes you aback
What starts out seeming like a frat boy comedy about a guy receiving a list of all the women he will sleep with turns into an intriguingly different beast altogether
Sequel to the 2006 remake of Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic (not to be confused with the sequel that Craven made to his original), this is premised around a series of extremely gory set-pieces
Adam Wingard thriller about a sinister stranger who inveigles his way into a household. This does well playing off the handsomely polished charms of Dan Stevens, less well when it turns into an a left field action film
Following the recent reboot of the Halloween franchise, many of the original cast and a new directorial team resurrect Wes Craven’s Scream franchise in some undeniably appealing ways
Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic gets a gore-drenched makeover from Alexandre Aja. One of the better amid the 2000s fad for horror remakes where the original is dragged into the modern day in some interesting ways
A serial killer film that is fairly strong stuff, starring Ted Raimi as a killer who skins his victims and wears their bodies. This pushed the censorship envelope considerably back in its day. With Ricki Lake as an innocent housewife who befriends Raimi
The second film from Wes Craven, a classic in the 1970s Backwoods Brutality cycle with a family stranded in the desert as they come under attack from a family of cannibals lurking in the hills
Robert Harmon made the classic The Hitcher, but failed to ever follow up on it. This is the sole work that ever came close – a beautifully tense series of games between Jim Caviezel and a motorised killer on the backroads
A film based on true-life serial killer Robert Hansen who would fly girls out into the Alaskan wilderness and then hunt them. Nicolas Cage is the dogged detective up against John Cusack as the killer
Jörg Buttgereit made the notorious NEKRomantik films and is a director about an uncompromising and determined to outrage as possible. This inevitably falls in the shadow of NEKRomantik but is a grim and disturbing in its own right in its kitchen sink depiction of the life of a serial killer
Another psycho Santa film – a genre that is almost gaining its own niche. This British entry fearlessly pushes its elements to an extreme that most of these other Christmas horrors balk at
Vincenzo Natali tackles the ghost story, turning everything on its head in a series of mind-boggling twists. One of the few post-Sixth Sense films to take the film’s big twist as its starting point and build from there
We have had several horror films set around Halloween haunts in recent years. This effort produced by Gale Anne Hurd is well above average and generates quite a degree of tension
Sober realistic True Crime film based on the story of Charlie Cullen, a nurse in New Jersey that killed some 400 patients, injecting them with lethal doses of drugs
This is a film that manages to be both a slasher film and a romantic comedy, two genres that do not at all seem to go together but are made to with undeniably appealing results
An early Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, this starts out as a peculiar deadpan comedy about an office filled with strange characters before emerging as a slasher film of sorts as a hulking security guard eliminating people
Big man Laird Cregar gained a sudden fame as the killer in The Lodger and was quickly repackaged as another psychopathic killer in this vehicle where he plays a mentally disturbed composer
Oxide Pang, one half of the Pang Brothers. goes solo to make a film about an obsessive girl who enjoys photographing death and her journey into a very disturbed mental space
A film from cult director Ray Dennis Steckler about psychos lurking around Hollywood Boulevard. Things get admirably twisted, while the work is a unique time capsule of the period
An hilarious parody of the slasher film in which an undead lumberjack invades a Bible camp, slaughtering the teens in a series of over-the-top deaths to use their blood as syrup on his pancakes
The very first Hannibal Lecter film. Under Michael Mann, this comes with a stylistic flourish very different to what the films became when Anthony Hopkins took the role
Modest psycho-thriller with Tracy Nelson as a psychopathic babysitter who kills all in the way to romancing her employer
Psycho-thriller with an unknown Lucille Ball as a showgirl used by Scotland Yard as a lure to trap a maniac killer
One among the spate of 1960s psycho films with Stella Stevens dealing with her brother and sister, one of whom is a killer
From the people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, this is the horror version of Peter Pan. And good grief, does this go dark with Peter as a child abductor and Tinkerbell who shoots up ‘fairy dust’ through a needle
French thriller where psychiatrist Gerard Depardieu tests a device that allows him to swap bodies with a serial killer – only for the killer to get free and steal his life