The Top 11 Movie Serial Killers
Steve Barton
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Serial killers have long been the stuff of which nightmares are made. The serial killer sub-genre of horror has brought us some amazingly memorable characters that still haunt us to this day. On February 19th Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will bring us a new name in fear with The Factory.
Starring John Cusack and Jennifer Carpenter as detectives tracking a murderer, The Factory is set in the bitter cold of a Buffalo winter. A great place to hunt a hunter. And to celebrate the release of this newest addition to the sub-genre, we’ve compiled a list of the Top 11 Movie Serial Killers.
There is certainly a long list of names to choose from, but we narrowed the field a bit by limiting it to those who were just regular human people. No supernatural involvement here, just a person or group of people who’ve gone off the deep end and made hunting and killing others their main hobby. Not exactly the bunch you want to have over to the house for drinks and a rousing game of Scattergories.
We’ll start the honorable mentions out with a couple of newer faces. Perhaps one of the more popular serial killers right now, whose story is currently unraveling before us, is Joe Carroll, the mastermind behind all the deviousness going on in “The Following.” And we’ve also got to throw a little love to Vincent D’Onofrio for his outstanding work as the killer simply known as “Bob” in 2012’s Chained.
But we mustn’t forget some of our old favorites. Dee Snider’s Captain Howdy in Strangeland was nothing if not unique. And as original stories go, Leslie Vernon’s tale in Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is as original as they come. Billy Loomis and his sidekick, Stu Macher, were genre-revivingly brilliant in Scream. And Kurt Russell brought a whole new meaning to “hell on wheels” and was a completely new style of hunter with the most unlikely weapon you’d ever expect as Stuntman Mike in Death Proof. Just missing the Top 11 was the incredibly creepy, unnamed and basically unseen (aside from a disturbing eyeball shot) killer from 1974’s Black Christmas; the man that taught us never to pick up anyone walking along the side of the road in The Hitcher, John Ryder; and a man just trying to instill love of life in his victims, John Kramer (a.k.a. Jigsaw) of the Saw franchise.
And now we give you…
Inspired by one of the most disturbing books you’ll ever read, written by Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho hit the big screen with huge anticipation from fans. Just how were the filmmakers going to recreate some of the unspeakable atrocities committed by Patrick Bateman, the featured psycho in the book? Before emaciating himself for The Machinist or bulking up for Batman, Christian Bale was thrilling audiences as one of the most unique and charming serial killers we’ve ever seen. Bale creates the ultimate anti-hero with his portrayal of Bateman, a character that horror fans hold close to their heart even to this day, nearly 15 years after American Psycho was released and challenged us to believe that anyone is capable of anything…especially a guy specializing in “murders and executions, mostly.”
Categorized:Lists
