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.
A film from the slasher era – the scenes of the psycho of the show incinerating victims with a flamethrower were the cause of censorship controversy. Less a slasher film and more a psycho film, this pushes into some disturbing headspace
One of the ‘don’t __’- titled entries of the 1970s/80s. This was an entry in the decade’s popular slasher cycle with a hulking manic stalking trampers in the backwoods
Nicolas Roeg’s masterwork. Ostensibly a film about grief and precognition, this is a film that exists as a series of taunting visual clues that constantly map over onto each other with a hidden geometry
The 1980s slasher fad brought a number of ventures into the Christmas slasher film, which has grown into its own genre niche since then. This is one British entry in the genre about a killer targeting people dressed as Santa
One of the early films from Lucio Fulci – the film that he always insisted was his best – concerning a series of child killings in a small town. Quite different to the sort of film Fulci became known for
Entry from the 1980s heyday of slasher film made by students at the UCLA film program with a killer stalking the dorm. Featuring an unknown Daphne Zuniga as one victim
Psychic thriller that draws much from Eyes of Laura Mars as photographer Michael Callan has visions of his models being killed before they are in reality
George Cukor was one of the legendary Hollywood directors. Here he dives into film noir with Ronald Colman as a stage actor who psychopathically over-identifies with Shakespeare’s Othello
Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura creates a gripping survival thriller about a group of friends driving home who become trapped on a small stretch of road by a sniper
French film about true-life serial killer Marcel Petiot, a respectable doctor who operated a lifeline for Jewish refugees during WWII only to kill them
Brian De Palma’s homage to Psycho. With De Palma at absolute peak form, this is dazzlingly stylish in its directorial set-pieces and comes with an often outrageous sexual pathology
Film based on real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas and his exaggerated claims to have killed hundreds of victims. Starring Antonio Sabato, Jr in the title role
The first film from Abel Ferrara, a seething, angry work about an artist who lets his frustrations out by randomly killing with a power drill. Listed as a Video Nasty and banned in several countries
Thriller where Sylvester Stallone is a detective who goes into alcoholic rehab after his wife is killed by a serial killer only to realise that the killer is posing as one of the attendees
An anthology film produced by Charles Band where assorted directors turn in seven episodes all centred around a videogame warrior put through a series of tests by The Devil
Admirably sordid slasher film, an early effort from Chad Ferrin, that quickly gets twisted and comes up with an amusing line-up of lowlifes and an Easter bunny masked killer
The first film that Tobe Hooper made immediately after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a dementedly OTT Southern Gothic with Neville Brand as a backwoods motelier serving up his guests to the crocodiles
A film based on true-life necrophile killer Ed Gein starring Steve Railsback. While accurate to the case, this suffers a crucial tameness of spirit when it comes to depicting Gein’s activities
Film based on the exploits of necrophile killer Ed Gein that throws the facts up in the air and essentially makes up its own story, while the role is miscast with a hulking Kane Hodder
A film based on true-life serial killer Ed Kemper. Director Chad Ferrin made the terrible Pig Killer, a true crime film that got everything wrong about its subject. Here however Ferrin gets it right and makes one of his best films yet
A witty parody of the giallo film from members of Canada’s Astron-6 collective who are proving themselves the masters of a certain type of movie spoof
Gus Van Sant makes a film about the high school shooting phenomenon, although has almost nothing to say about it. Where the film does mesmerise is in Van Sant’s seemingly naturalistic style and non-linear narrative.
Early variation on the giallo film with a frogman abducting people from the canals of Venice and then preserving their bodies as statues
Another Found Footage entry about a group of people being stalked. This generates some passable tension and one or two surprises
Excellent film based on the true life Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo who preyed upon children. Malcolm McDowell giving a standout performance in the title role
Dull and routine film with Kane Hodder as a psycho backwoods gas station owner. The film miscasts the hulking Hodder in trying to make him look like an ordinary guy
One will go out on a limb and argue that William Peter Blatty’s sequel is actually a far superior work to the original The Exorcist, one that substitutes a literate theological detective story for barf bag theatrics and contains at least one real out there jump
Rather ridiculous action film where Jeff Speakman breaks into a prison to take revenge against a serial killer because he received too liberal a treatment from the justice system
Documentary-maker Joe Berlinger makes an exactingly detailed recreation of the Ted Bundy case, while Zac Efron abandons teen pin-up roles and steps into the title role with unnerving likeness
A strange thriller in the Basic Instinct-mold with surveillance expert Ewan McGregor obsessed with tracking serial killer Ashley Judd, while haunted by the imaginary companion of his daughter
A giallo film from Umberto Lenzi, best known for creating the Italian cannibal film, but Lenzi’s direction is crude and lacking style in comparison to the others working in this genre
Entry from the heyday of the slasher film. Better plotted than most of its ilk, largely because it steals the plot from Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Featuring a teenage Jennifer Jason Leigh in her first film role
Faye Dunaway is a fashion photographer who gains a psychic link into the mind of a killer. From a John Carpenter script but the thriller plotting is never up to the chic suggestiveness the film is given
Cult exploitation director Jesus Franco pays homage to the mad surgeon films of his heyday. Essentially one of Franco’s Dr Orloff films by way of the sadistic despatches of the giallo film
A Dark Horse Entertainment film that traipses through a tired serial killer plot that comes out resembling a weak episode of CSI before a frankly unbelievable twist ending
A clever little psycho film concerning a killer who is obsessed with classic movies. This was doing the movie-inspired psychos thing way before Scream and with quite a degree of ingenuity
Though many people celebrated this as black comedy about Michael Douglas taking up arms on a shooting rampage against the petty frustrations of modern life, it is a film that is really a single redneck rant against the poor and minorities
Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man, makes an Irish-set thriller in which a country girl moved to the city is stalked by a serial killer who sends his victims poetry
Featuring Simon Pegg as a paranoid writer seeing sinister happenings everywhere. This should have been a darkly funny comedy but the film winds everything up to a shrilly hysteric fever pitch
An occasionally amusing Airplane-styled spoof of film noir and psycho-thrillers, including parodies of then recent films like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, among others
Entry in the 1980s slasher fad with a manic killing women at a sorority house that comes with a Jekyll and Hyde rationale. Shabbily made on all counts and often repellent in its nastiness
Troma film that ventures back into their regular bad taste territory. This often feels like a film that never coheses into a particularly clear idea of what it is trying to do, possibly the result of six different directors
Fine copy of Eyes of Laura Mars from Rockne S. O’Bannon in which clairvoyant Ally Sheedy gains the ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer
Psycho-thriller with William Petersen trying to protect daughter Reese Witherspoonan from being ensnared by a charming, psychopathic boyfriend played by an unknown Mark Wahlberg
Abel Ferrara is known for bleak works of social realism. This features a killer targeting strippers but has a superficial blandness that feels like it is made by someone who has never visited a strip joint in their life
Follow-up to the R.L. Stine-based Fear Street films of a couple of years back, this conducts a not bad homage to the 1980s slasher film and gets the period setting right
Internet horror film that rehashes Ring with a haunted website instead of a tv broadcast. This suffers from a muddled concept where it is not at all clear what is happening.
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
British-made film with Tony Beckley as a sexually repressed psycho raised in a religious cult who goes out and kills women. The film seems more interested in the sexploitation elements than it does in the psycho elements
Thriller about two killers who become inspired by tabloid tv and decide to sell tapes of their crimes to tv. This becomes a heavy-handed, tub-beating rant of disgust against modern media
Thriller with Michael Madsen as a detective searching boxing clubs for a serial killer. This has one of the most inanely ridiculous scripts one has seen in some time
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
A wittily clever deconstruction of the slasher film where a bunch of contemporary characters are transported inside a 1980s slasher movie where their modern ways proceed to hilariously upset the cliches
Dreary police procedural with middle-aged detective Frank Sinatra hunting a serial killer. Mostly, the film seems to be about getting old and the thriller aspect is developed with almost minimal interest
One of the earlier films from British director Pete Walker, a whodunnit with a psycho stalking the cast of a theatrical rehearsal. Walker doesn’t stint on the flesh but proves tamer than usual when it comes to the blood
A blatant copy of Misery where Erika Christensen is a popular singer who is abducted and made a prisoner by deranged fan Bethany Lauren James who wants her to write more songs in the style she used to
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
Supposedly a slasher film that purports to tell the truth about university fraternity rites, the delves into depicting hazing rituals with gory relish
A slasher film with a novelty (gimmicky?) premise where the Final Girl and the hulking killer of the show end up swapping bodies. Essentially a conceptual mash-between a slasher film and Freaky Friday
The long promised crossover between the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films, this seems caught in a juggling act that fails to satisfy the requirements of either franchise
The sixth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films, sold with the gimmick of a 3D release. New director Rachel Talaly refuses to take the material seriously and turns the show into an absurd cartoon
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
Thriller where widow Darlanne Fluegel and radio talkback host Richard Belzer team up to hunt a serial killer shooting people on the L.A. freeways
A low-budget entry in the 2000s fad for true-life serial killer films. This is based on William Bonin who around the L.A. freeways in a van and abducted and killed young men
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a cheap psycho film in which maniac James Courtney (later Michael Myers in the Halloween reboot) pursues a young actress around the desert
Alfred Hitchcock’s second-to-last film, a thriller with Jon Finch as a man on the run wrongly hunted as a serial killer. Hitchcock is on superb form and his dark humour perfectly tuned
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
The killer crocodile/alligator film has not had a great track record (with only a couple of exceptions). This is not one of those exceptions and quickly sinks into risibility
A copy of John Carpenter’s Halloween that proved a big success and spawned a long-running series of sequels. Both films created the slasher film, which came to overrun horror in the 1980s, although this is a cruder film than Halloween
Another 1980s horror remake that had much potential. However, this proves to be just another Friday the 13th film by the numbers, albeit with a bigger budget, and widely misses the mark
The second of the Friday the 13th films. This was the point where the formula of the series slipped into place and Jason emerged to become an invincible killing machine
Third of the Friday the 13th films, shot in the brief fad for 3D films in the early 80s. This is also the one where Jason adopts his trademark hockey mask
The fifth and arguably the worst of the Friday the 13th films. Jason is resurrected and engaged in much butchering, before an end reveals it was someone else altogether
The seventh of the Friday the 13th films, this tries to add some novelty with a heroine who has psychic powers but is mostly the same thing as before
The eighth of the Friday the 13th films that offers the novelty of taking a revived Jason to New York City. Actually, one of the better entries in the series, which plays his encounters with New York locals for some amusement
The fourth Friday the 13th film, called the final chapter in an effort to kill the series off, only to be such a success this was rescinded in the next film. Joseph Zito directs with more style than usual
A modest and well directed psycho-thriller from the Anglo-horror cycle with Susan George as a babysitter stalked by a deranged Ian Bannen
Before The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson flopped badly with this ghost comedy. Jackson allows his obsession with the effects technology to take over at the expense of much else and provides little that is funny
Disappointing attempt, based on a Alan Moore graphic novel, to depict the Jack the Ripper killings. The film feels over-produced and slides off the cliff by throwing its weight behind one of the more ludicrous and implausible Ripper theories
Western based around the idea of Jack the Ripper having relocated out West whereupon he becomes a standard slasher-styled maniac. Featuring Charles Bronson ringer Robert Kovacs as the hero
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
Forgotten Canadian film about a series of murders around a former funeral home that has been converted into a guest house. Released at the height of the slasher cycle but this comes more in the vein of Psycho
Brutal Michael Haneke film where a family’s weekend getaway becomes a nightmare when two boys enter the house and proceed to torture and kill them. Haneke adds a level of meta-fiction that taunts the viewer’s participation
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
A film based on true-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. This adheres to the facts for the most part but is also one of the dullest of the mid-00s spate of serial killer biopics
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
Made in the aftermath of The Lawnmower Man, this utterly ridiculous film has a serial killer uploaded to the internet. Written by people who know nothing about computers and filled with absurdly over-the-top effects
The most obscure among the classic horror titles produced by Val Lewton – a beautifully stark and haunted piece about a man trapped at sea aboard a ship with a murderous captain
Dario Argento makes a disappointing return to the giallo thriller where he made his name. With Argento’s characteristic murder set-pieces having been toned down, the results are nothing special
From Mark Hartley, known for his documentaries about cult cinema, a film that borrows the premise of Disturbia where a teenage girl thinks her neighbour is a serial killer
The last film that Wes Craven is credited with (as producer) – a slasher film more interesting than most. Not to mention features an outrageously obnoxious performance from Kal Penn
Strong and dramatically absorbing Swedish thriller featuring one of the most original and provocative heroines on screen in some time. A word of mouth hit that later underwent a lesser English-language remake
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
Slasher film that comes with the interestingly original setting of a college dorm webcam porn site. Unfortunately, the film takes an awfully safe and tasteful route in delivering it
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
A sequel to The Glass House, this time with different cast or orphaned kids and different evil step-parents. This has the bland feel of a tv movie
Film with a literally off-the-wall premise in which Ryan Kwanten is trapped in a rest stop bathroom with a Lovecraftian deity that speaks through a glory hole in the next stall
Another in the spate of horror versions of children’s stories, this is essentially The Strangers played out with people terrorised by a group dressed as Goldilocks and the Three Bears
This feels like a post-Silence of the Lambs thriller with Amanda Seyfried as an abduction survivor trying to find her missing sister. The film never rises above the cliches of the genre
Stephen King writes a screen adaptation of his own story about a wife who discovers that her husband is a serial killer. A strong premise that oddly misses most of the opportunities.