I'm doing research for a game and I was wondering if you guys could help me out a little.
The game is going to be a crime thriller in the vein of Zodiac and Se7en and I'm looking for other examples of movies or games which follow that format.
And as a side note which serial killer from fiction is your favorite in terms of characterisation and MO?
While they're not quite serial killers, I'm fascinated by murderers like Gaear Grimsrud and Anton Chigurh from Fargo and No Country for Old Men, respectively, as they embody unstoppable killing forces. I do have to give props in terms of creepiness to Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. You might also want to play Condemned, it had a few serial killers who were done quite well.
Probably one of the most renowned so it might seem cliche, but Ted Bundy. Mad props to him.
I mean..he was a sick, sick person. ::)
Genghis Khan? Does he count? :P
Or maybe Timur, his descendant.
Andrei Chikatilo from "The real life" :)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Chikatiloaged22.jpg) (http://i.cdn.turner.com/trutv/trutv.com/graphics/photos/serial_killers/notorious/chikatilo/PG15-Chikatilo-mugshot.jpg)
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V-Z0hF385_Y/Re87nJ5f12I/AAAAAAAAAPM/ihK4S1GuIqI/s320/andrei_chikatilo_exposed_shrunk.jpg)
Bourbon Kid from "The Book With No Name", and, if he counts, Freddy from the NOES flics.
Man, did you just made me confess I have favourite serial killers??
That dude from Night Watch cant recall his name...
Jason Voorhees dammit. I'm obssessed with him. I even got a replica of his hockey mask at home AND a signed photo by Kane Hodder himself :D hehe
Y'know, I think I agree with 1kth now. If we are thinking of the same one. Not the dude who was the bumbling, artistic sidekick, but the other guy. I think he was called Pilch or something like that.
THIS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_rex), above
everything...
Spoiler
...unless it is a zombie pirate phoenix...
J/K obviously, and I couldn't add a smiley here to make the spoiler too obvious. I just couldn't imagine how a serial killer could be one's favourite, otherwise.
Quote from: Babar on Mon 25/10/2010 10:48:10
Y'know, I think I agree with 1kth now. If we are thinking of the same one. Not the dude who was the bumbling, artistic sidekick, but the other guy. I think he was called Pilch or something like that.
Mr Pin. But he was in "The Truth". The one in "Night Watch" was
Carcer, and really much worse.
Lars Thorwald from Rear Window (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_Window). Wow it's a good film.
Woody Harrelson as Micky in Natural Born Killers :D
Charles Manson was of particular interest, mostly for me because my parents have been to his cabin in the desert before, and he just had one hell of a presence. Aside from him, if literary characters are alright (as it hasn't been mentioned before), Dexter Morgan, the eponymous 'protagonist' of the Dexter series on Showtime is a good example.
I like the Dexter character because his character revolves around a twisted but very set-in-stone sense of personal rules and regulations. He is a monster and a sociopath, but he kills for the betterment of his little slice of the world.
Also, if you want to go even further out on to a limb, the character "Yagami Light", though taking a much more supernatural path on the serial killer thing, was interesting. I think I just like characters who do bad things for good reasons - road to hell paved with good intentions, and so on and so forth. A character who just kills for the sake of killing, or just because they can, risks becoming 2-dimensional and uninteresting.
And, of course, let's not forget Hannibal Lecter.
I still enjoy stories about Jack the Ripper :D
Zodiac is excellent.
Ed Gein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein).
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Edgein.jpg)
Movies (loosely) based on his character:
Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Not exactly serial killers, but this should do. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_guys_1_hammer)
Wicked serial killer & canibal:
Albert Hamilton Fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish#Known)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Albert_Fish_1903.JPG)
If you want suggestions and insipiration, I suggest the show Criminal minds. Not always "real" but within dialog they mention a lot of example casses of serial killers. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452046/
Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 25/10/2010 14:05:53
Zodiac is excellent. But well, my ol'time favorite is Hitler. Man, we're talking about "let the bodies set the flow" epic body count.
While it might seem nitpicky, Hitler was actually a mass murderer and ordered the comitting of genocides, not a serial killer in the usual way...although you might just make him seem like a serial killer on a grander scale and he does seem to have similar mental illnesses, motivation is certanly different.
Plus, IMO, I don't think Hitler was that bright of a fellow and he certanly went too mad later in the war, just that a lot of people took advantage of his ideas to take power, and those people knew how to organise things, I'm toalking about Himmler, Goebbels, Rommel etc.
I liked:
Brad Pitt as Early Grayce in Kalifornia,
Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho
and most of all Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster.
Nobody can top H. H. Holmes! He used an entire hotel he had built in Chicago as his murder weapon!
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/H.H.Holmes.gif)
"The ground floor of the Castle contained Holmes's own relocated drugstore and various shops, while the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of over one hundred windowless rooms with doorways opening to brick walls, oddly angled hallways, stairways to nowhere, doors openable only from the outside, and a host of other strange and labyrinthine constructions. Holmes repeatedly changed builders during the construction of the Castle so only he fully understood the design of the house, thus decreasing the chance of being reported to the police.
After the completion of the hotel, Holmes selected mostly female victims from among his employees (many of whom were required as a condition of employment to take out life insurance policies for which Holmes would pay the premiums but also be the beneficiary), lovers and hotel guests, torturing and killing them. Some were locked in soundproof bedrooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them at any time. Some victims were locked in a huge soundproof bank vault near his office where they were left to suffocate. The victims' bodies were dropped by secret chute to the basement, where some were meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and then sold to medical schools. Holmes also cremated some of the bodies or placed them in lime pits for destruction. Holmes had two giant furnaces as well as pits of acid, bottles of various poisons, and even a stretching rack. Through the connections he had gained in medical school, he sold skeletons and organs with little difficulty."
27 confirmed victims, and that's only because the bodies were so badly dismembered they couldn't accurately say how many there were. After he fled creditors in Chicago, he tried to construct *another* hotel like this in Texas!
Though for sheer quantity, Harold Shipman still holds the highscore at 218 confirmed kills.
Technocrat, I think you've just pitched the coolest game concept ever. "Murder Castle" - part Dungeon Keeper, part Hitman/Manhunt, and plenty of controversy to get media attention! ;D
I tend to prefer serial killers who are the protagonists of their stories - Dexter Morgan, Norman Bates, Peter Lorre's character in 'M'. But that's doesn't seem to be the style you're going for, so for antagonists - John Lithgow in the fourth season of Dexter and also as the 'Liberty Bell Killer' in 'Blow Out', and Dr. Gull in Alan Moore's 'From Hell' (the graphic novel, not the fucking movie bastardization). Also I recommend you check out 'Peeping Tom' and 'Jennifer Eight'.
Seconding that austrian guy from 40-s with tiny moustache. Dude singlehandedly just... went and did what others couldn't even imagine in their most raging "hate the world" fantasies. Also, going against whole world is guaranteed epic move, no matter how it feels to the "world". Also, it's quite hard to gain so much infamity that whole generations are constantly teached (brainwashed, even) to hate you.
Seconding that he doesn't count as serial killer at all. He's responsible for the millions of deaths, but he didn't murder anyone, he "merely" order other people to kill.
For non-fiction serial killers, after the previously mentioned H. H. Holmes, the next most interesting could be Jack Unterweger. Unterweger is an Austrian who murdered a bunch of prostitutes in the 70s, was jailed, and then was out in 1990 after he wrote a bestselling book and was touted (mainly by himself and bunch of saps who campaigned for his release) as a model of Austrian prison rehabilitation. In the early 90s, he became a minor celebrity as a journalist and talk show host...while returning to his former hobby of murdering prostitutes. He was caught in 1994 for murders both in the U.S. and Europe, and then hung himself in prison.
John Malkovich recently played the guy in an opera.
Definitely Dexter Morgan! Best show to grace TV with its presence in a while ;D
The Dexter of the book was better.
I'm still trying to get hold of the books. However I don't know if I'll be able to see the book Dexter as a different character. I'll always picture him as Michael C. Hall, as he looks on television ;)
Phemar, avoid "Dexter in the Dark" like the plague. I haven't read the two others which are supposedly much better, but that third one was laughably bad.
Quote from: Khris on Tue 26/10/2010 04:01:59
Seconding that he doesn't count as serial killer at all. He's responsible for the millions of deaths, but he didn't murder anyone, he "merely" order other people to kill.
Try saying something like this when you have russians (especially elderly ones) around.
You'd have a whole new bunch of killers to pick!
Quote from: InCreator on Wed 27/10/2010 07:51:24
Try saying something like this when you have russians (especially elderly ones) around.
You'd have a whole new bunch of killers to pick!
I didn't say he wasn't a mass murderer, I said he's not a serial killer (in the traditional meaning of the word, as in not kidnapped people in vans and sliced their eyelids out before skinning them and dropping their bodies in the river or such, he mostly ordered this things)
But, just in case, you could always just run off to Finland if there's any trouble (link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War)). :P
That's true.
However, Winter War was one-time victory. I doubt russkies would fall for weather & lack of motivation twice. Especially since days of trench digging are history and current rocket batteries might even reach Sweden... or something. Afghanistan would be safer haven!
Andrei Chikatilo suffered from a rare disease. His DNA taken from the blood didn't mach to the DNA from his sperm. He was arrested few times, but then released, because the DNA didn't match to the DNA found in sperm in victims' bodies.
Not really a serial killer but I like Hannibal Lecter..
Fed some of his patients to his guests lol. That was sick...
When it comes to movies, I would say the Hannibal Lecter series as others have mentioned. But I am surprised that no one on this topic has mentioned Jeffery Dahmer yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer
Gary Ridgway for total body count alone.
Also, Patrick Bateman is a major favourite from American Psycho.
Reading the autobiography of Michael Petterson "Charles Bronson" the prizefighter at the moment and he is describing some of the most vile and disgusting people imaginable during his track through several mental asylums.... One thing that was stated in the book was "a dangerous/violent man/woman is just unpredictable". It the simplicity behind this overall look at the majority of the criminally insane which puts fear into most people.
Whatever the reason for studying this, just remember to be unpredictable with the character. From serving cupcakes in a professional manner in one minute to forcing the fat round end of a spoon into someone's ear and then brain the next.
We are all killers at the end of the day, look at war footage also or the original uncut version of last house on the left.
Hope this helps.
Quote from: virtualpsycho on Wed 03/11/2010 20:06:26
Reading the autobiography of Michael Petterson "Charles Bronson" the prizefighter at the moment and he is describing some of the most vile and disgusting people imaginable during his track through several mental asylums.... One thing that was stated in the book was "a dangerous/violent man/woman is just unpredictable". It the simplicity behind this overall look at the majority of the criminally insane which puts fear into most people.
Whatever the reason for studying this, just remember to be unpredictable with the character. From serving cupcakes in a professional manner in one minute to forcing the fat round end of a spoon into someone's ear and then brain the next.
We are all killers at the end of the day, look at war footage also or the original uncut version of last house on the left.
Hope this helps.
From the virtual psycho.... :=
8)