From Horror Hacker @ AMC Blogs:
One of the foremost arguments against horror movies is that they desensitize people to real-life violence. There may be some truth to that, but not for me.
While man’s inhumanity to man depresses me, I find the aberrant human mind fascinating. I’ve spent years watching Jason Voorhees go nuts with his machete, but I don’t want to be “entertained” by footage of real-life murder. I watch some crime shows, I read some true crime books and I talk with people who like the remake of April Fool’s Day better than the original. It’s sociological: What makes these wackadoos tick? That may be an unanswerable question, but filmmakers have tried for years to open a window into the serial-murdering mind. While the accuracy and inspiration may vary from movie to movie, there’s no denying that these reel killers are more frightening than Freddy Krueger could ever be, because they’re all real.
Ed Gein
“The Butcher of Plainfield” may have inspired more cinematic psycho killers than any other murderer, and with good reason: When police searched his property in connection with the disappearance of a local woman named Bernice Worden, the first thing they found was her body strung up in his barn, gutted like a deer carcass. More horrors waited inside Gein’s farmhouse: He’d been stealing corpses from a local cemetery and… well, literally decorating with viscera. Lampshades, masks and shade pulls made from human skin, skulls used as soup bowls… Gein was judged insane (you think?) and committed to a Wisconsin psychiatric hospital. He died of cancer-related heart failure in 1984.
Films: Psycho (1960), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Deranged (1974), Ed Gein (2000), Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007).
Click the link below for more.
via AMC – Blogs – Horror Hacker – Stacie Ponder – When Serial Killers Go From Real to Reel.
