Author: Shaun Kimber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-09-16
Total Pages: 168
ISBN-13: 0230343694
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) is precisely that: a cold-eyed character study based on the crimes of Henry Lee Lucas, who was convicted of eleven murders in the 1980s. Director John McNaughton presents an unflinching portrayal of the semi-fictional Henry's crimes. The film proved immensely controversial, notably in the UK, where it confounded the British Board of Film Classification, which went so far as to re-edit a crucial scene, in addition to cutting others. Shaun Kimber's examination of the controversies surrounding Henry considers the history and implications of censors' decisions about the film on both sides of the Atlantic. Taking account of the views of audiences, critics and academics, both at the time the film was released and in the years since, Kimber also looks at the changing political, social and economic contexts within which the film was produced and has subsequently circulated. Henry continues to represent a key film within the horror genre, the history of censorship, and the study of film violence. Kimber's account of the film's production and its fortunes in the marketplace provides a fascinating case study of film censorship in action, and offers a sustained and wide-ranging analysis of what remains one of the most disturbing films ever made. 'An excellent in-depth analysis... Kimber effectively combines close readings of key scenes with detailed consideration of the history of different versions of Henry and its various engagements with critics, supporters and regulatory authorities.' Geoff King, Brunel University Shaun Kimber is a Senior Lecturer in the Media School at Bournemouth University.
Author: Philip L. Simpson
Publisher: SIU Press
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780809323289
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Philip L. Simpson provides an original and broad overview of the evolving serial killer genre in the two media most responsible for its popularity: literature and cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. The fictional serial killer, with a motiveless, highly individualized modus operandi, is the latest manifestation of the multiple murderers and homicidal maniacs that haunt American literature and, particularly, visual media such as cinema and television. Simpson theorizes that the serial killer genre results from a combination of earlier genre depictions of multiple murderers, inherited Gothic storytelling conventions, and threatening folkloric figures reworked over the years into a contemporary mythology of violence. Updated and repackaged for mass consumption, the Gothic villains, the monsters, the vampires, and the werewolves of the past have evolved into the fictional serial killer, who clearly reflects American cultural anxieties at the start of the twenty-first century. Citing numerous sources, Simpson argues that serial killers’ recent popularity as genre monsters owes much to their pliability to any number of authorial ideological agendas from both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Serial killers in fiction are a kind of debased and traumatized visionary, whose murders privately and publicly re-empower them with a pseudo-divine aura in the contemporary political moment. The current fascination with serial killer narratives can thus be explained as the latest manifestation of the ongoing human fascination with tales of gruesome murders and mythic villains finding a receptive audience in a nation galvanized by the increasingly apocalyptic tension between the extremist philosophies of both the New Right and the anti-New Right. Faced with a blizzard of works of varying quality dealing with the serial killer, Simpson has ruled out the catalog approach in this study in favor of in-depth an analysis of the best American work in the genre. He has chosen novels and films that have at least some degree of public name-recognition or notoriety, including Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Manhunter directed by Michael Mann, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer directed by John McNaughton, Seven directed by David Fincher, Natural Born Killers directed by Oliver Stone, Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, and American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
Author: Ian Carroll
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2018-09-07
Total Pages: 48
ISBN-13: 9781727154696
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It doesn't happen to me very often - perhaps once every ten years, maybe less - I will come across a 'new' film that will blow me away completely. In the last ten years I have to mention 'Drag Me to Hell' (which will feature in a future book) as a movie that stood out and also 'Donnie Darko' (another to be included) eight years before that. But, the one film that really hit me like a freight train when I first saw it in 1990, was this film. 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' is a raw and dirty, extremely realistic film, based loosely around the life (and murders) of loner Henry Lee Lucas and his sometimes accomplice Otis Toole. The film follows Henry - a drifter and a very disturbed individual - as he moves from one murderous situation to the next, with Otis becoming his partner in crime, already being his flat mate. Based around the true-life story of Henry Lee Lucas, who was still in prison on death row in Huntsville, Texas at the time of the films release. This film is a low budget masterpiece. A disturbing piece of celluloid that even some 'hard-core horror' fans struggled to watch, but still built a cult following large enough to demand a follow up in the film 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 2 - Mask of Sanity'. The acting in the film is so realistic that you almost feel like you are watching a 'found footage' documentary and not a low budget horror work of genius. After this film both Michael Rooker (Henry) and John McNaughton (Director) went on to bigger and better things, their careers - especially Rooker - sky rocketing to even greater success. So, in this book you will discover more about the film, the actors, the director, the soundtrack, the real murderers and the thoughts from all the people that count the most the fans - the fans of the great movie 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' and the first book in this new series, which will cover many different genres and styles.
Author: Ian Carroll
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2018-09-06
Total Pages: 48
ISBN-13: 9781727137491
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It doesn't happen to me very often - perhaps once every ten years, maybe less - I will come across a 'new' film that will blow me away completely. In the last ten years I have to mention 'Drag Me to Hell' (which will feature in a future book) as a movie that stood out and also 'Donnie Darko' (another to be included) eight years before that. But, the one film that really hit me like a freight train when I first saw it in 1990, was this film. 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' is a raw and dirty, extremely realistic film, based loosely around the life (and murders) of loner Henry Lee Lucas and his sometimes accomplice Otis Toole. The film follows Henry - a drifter and a very disturbed individual - as he moves from one murderous situation to the next, with Otis becoming his partner in crime, already being his flat mate. Based around the true-life story of Henry Lee Lucas, who was still in prison on death row in Huntsville, Texas at the time of the films release. This film is a low budget masterpiece. A disturbing piece of celluloid that even some 'hard-core horror' fans struggled to watch, but still built a cult following large enough to demand a follow up in the film 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 2 - Mask of Sanity'. The acting in the film is so realistic that you almost feel like you are watching a 'found footage' documentary and not a low budget horror work of genius. After this film both Michael Rooker (Henry) and John McNaughton (Director) went on to bigger and better things, their careers - especially Rooker - sky rocketing to even greater success. So, in this book you will discover more about the film, the actors, the director, the soundtrack, the real murderers and the thoughts from all the people that count the most the fans - the fans of the great movie 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' and the first book in this new series, which will cover many different genres and styles.
Author: Dorothy Otnow Lewis, Ph.D.
Publisher: Ivy Books
Published: 2009-02-04
Total Pages: 351
ISBN-13: 0307556557
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A psychiatrist and an internationally recognized expert on violence, Dorothy Otnow Lewis has spent the last quarter century studying the minds of killers. Among the notorious murderers she has examined are Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, and Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon. Now she shares her groundbreaking discoveries--and the chilling encounters that led to them. From a juvenile court in Connecticut to the psychiatric wards of New York City's Bellevue Hospital, from maximum security prisons to the corridors of death row, Lewis and her colleague, the eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus, search to understand the origins of violence. GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY is an utterly absorbing odyssey that will forever change the way you think about crime, punishment, and the law itself.
Author: Herman Webster Mudgett
Publisher:
Published: 2019-09-10
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13: 9781077910775
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →H.H. Holmes was a doctor, real estate speculator, pharmacist, bigamist, swindler, and America's first media superstar serial killer. As he awaited trial, he put out a series of autobiographical documents, press releases, and interviews that revealed his sociopathic tendencies--and lied about his crimes. The infamous killer of the Chicago World's Fair published a memoir and a confession, both of which conceal more than they reveal of the truth. Then he gave a speech at his hanging that recanted everything. This series of documents is edited into a seamless narrative with newspaper clippings that shows the dark but charming side of a man who had nine confirmed kills and who claimed to have killed 27. This edition ends with a description by Matt Lake, author of Weird Pennsylvania, of the strange secret burial of the hanged Holmes, and recent exhumation that calls into question everything we thought we knew about Holmes's last days.
Author: Christopher Berry-Dee
Publisher: Ad Lib Publishers Ltd
Published: 2020-11-12
Total Pages: 159
ISBN-13: 1913543773
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The depraved crimes of both real and imagined serial killers and mass murderers have long transfixed us in newspapers and books, but perhaps nowhere more so than on the big screen. Films such as Silence of the Lambs, Psycho and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer have not only reached huge audiences but also allowed us into the minds of society’s most disturbed individuals. Bestselling author, Christopher Berry-Dee, talks to the serial killers whose wicked stories have most thrilled and fascinated us at the movies and, through far-ranging and disturbing interviews, he tells the stories of the mass murderers who provided the inspiration for some of cinema’s most shocking films. Serial Killers at the Movies takes the reader on an uncomfortable and truly dark journey into a lurid world of murder and deviancy.
Author: Joel Norris
Publisher: Zebra Books
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 303
ISBN-13: 9780821735640
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