How filmmakers create an attractive criminal image and why it is dangerous in real life

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

For the release of the movie "Handsome, Bad, Ugly" about Ted Bundy, Lifehacker talks about the changes in the image of the typical screen maniac.

Throughout most of the history of cinema, horror and thrillers have always served as a reflection of the real fears of ordinary people, and sometimes they themselves formed images in the eyes of the layman. That is why films about maniacs have not lost their popularity for many years.

But it is interesting to watch how the typical appearance of a movie maniac changes. And it is even more curious that over the past couple of decades, he has become much more charming and handsome. And it's actually quite useful, since the image of an attractive maniac better reflects the real danger in life.

The first movie maniacs

Serial killers have appeared in films as early as the beginning of the 20th century. The first film is considered to be the 1909 film "The Crimes of Diogo Alves" about a real killer of the early 19th century. True, in the modern opinion, there is not much to watch in a seven-minute film, however, it is he who is considered the ancestor of the genre.

The beginning of the next era was the 1931 film with the laconic title "M", anticipating the popularity of noir detectives. It is also based on the story of the real maniac Peter Kurten, who raped and killed underage girls. But here the plot is more about the capture of the criminal and the moral dilemma that arises before those who captured him.

And, of course, the next milestone in the development of the image can be considered the film by Alfred Hitchcock "Psycho" about Norman Bates, who killed hotel guests, disguised as his mother.

It was released in 1960, but in many ways was ahead of its time, since a significant part of the time the maniac is shown here as an ordinary and even very charming person who can hardly be suspected of a crime. The cinema returned to this after years, but at first the screens were filled with completely different killers.

80s: scary maniacs

In the late seventies, film studios conducted polls and found that teenagers were the main fans of horror films. And then the producers and directors decided to change the atmosphere of the genre and turn the intense plot into a fun bloody attraction.

This period is considered the heyday of the slasher genre - that is, films where heroes, among which, many pretty girls, are killed one by one in some bizarre way. And he formed the image of a movie lover typical of the eighties: a monster in a mask (or with a disfigured face), armed with knives, a chainsaw or metal claws.

Franchises like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which kicked off the genre, Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street immediately come to mind.

The maniacs in them may differ in some details - Freddy Krueger died and comes in dreams, Jason does not appear in the first film, Michael Myers is always silent - but, in fact, they are equally creepy and completely unnatural. And they were needed, rather, in order to distract from realistic experiences than to remind of them.

After all, over the past decade, people learned about a variety of terrible maniacs: from the creepy clown John Wayne Gacy and one of the most terrible killers in the history of Pedro Alonso Lopez to Charles Manson and the charismatic Ted Bundy. The maniacs in the movies were simpler, more understandable, and it was not difficult to recognize them, although in reality everything was completely different.

90s: charismatic maniacs

In 1990, the film The Silence of the Lambs was released, marking the temporary end of horror films with masked maniacs. They were replaced by frightening but living killers. Hannibal Lecter appeared in the film for only 15 minutes, but Anthony Hopkins managed to create a truly memorable image that looked mesmerizing and frightening at the same time.

The actor himself said that he was guided by the recordings of interviews with real maniacs like the same Charles Manson and Ted Bundy and adopted some of their manners. For example, Manson hardly blinked during the conversation. This gave Lecter his famous piercing, unblinking gaze straight into the camera.

Charismatic maniacs have been in the movies before. For example, Rutger Hauer played in the 1986 film "Hitcher", at first glance, pleasant, but completely insane John Ryder, who pursues the main character and kills everyone around him, demanding that he stop him.

And one cannot help but recall the image of Kevin Spacey in the 1995 film "Seven". He appears in the frame from the middle of the film, but instantly draws all the attention to himself. His hero does not even have a name - he is simply called John Doe (the traditional designation for the unknown in the United States). He remains completely calm even in the most dire situations, and therefore looks creepy against the background of the natural reaction of everyone else.

Even the classic about masked maniacs returned in a non-standard form. The film "Scream" seems to continue this trend, but in fact deconstructs the genre, showing that under the creepy costumes are the most ordinary cute guys who have seen enough horror films. And it was this image that gradually passed into modern times.

XXI century: charming maniacs

Gradually, the creepy cold maniacs began to recede into the past, giving way to completely ordinary and often cute criminals. And this trend looks both frightening and true at the same time.

Indeed, over the years, partly thanks to the cinema, the audience has developed an image of a maniac killer as a kind of frightening monster that appears out of nowhere. And from the first glance at him it becomes clear that he is a villain.

In reality, Ted Bundy used his charm for a long time to lure victims, and then avoided arrest, because eyewitnesses could not believe that a nice young man with a legal education could be a murderer.

This is how Patrick Bateman appeared on the screens in the movie American Psycho. He is handsome, attractive, looks after himself and always dresses well. Therefore, people do not even suspect that he may be a maniac. And before the filming of this film, actor Christian Bale was warned that such an image could damage his career. But in a strange way, the audience fell in love with the hero, despite the fact that he embodied almost all possible human vices on the screen.

In 2006, Showtime launched the Dexter series about a maniac who kills other criminals, trying to channel his passion for the benefit of humanity.

The entire series is presented on behalf of the main character, played by the charming Michael Hall. And the voiceover even voices his thoughts. And the audience really liked this character: they empathized with him and believed that the hero is a really good person. Which did not negate the main thing: he is a murderer. Moreover, throughout the series, Dexter repeatedly breaks down, killing innocent people. But it still seems pleasant.

And even Hannibal Lecter, who returned to the screens, has changed a lot. If in the rest of the full-length films released after "The Silence of the Lambs" he remained frighteningly cold, then in the TV series "Hannibal" he was turned into a very stylish and pedantic intellectual.

Of course, the appearance of Mads Mikkelsen is specific, but the stylists and designers did a great job here. In contrast to the protagonist Will Graham, he literally embodies aristocracy in every movement. Suffice it to compare the character's attack on the guard in The Silence of the Lambs, where Lecter bit off his nose, and the scenes of preparing food from people in Hannibal. Even such horror is presented stylishly and somewhere aesthetically pleasing.

But this approach reached its apotheosis in the TV series You, about a bookstore worker Joe Goldberg, who falls in love with a girl and begins to stalk her. First, he steals her phone and reads the correspondence, then follows her, and then gets rid of her boyfriend, girlfriend and everyone who interferes with the love he invented.

In this series, the authors deliberately shifted the emphasis to the main character's charm, his sincere desire to help his beloved and the stupidity of others who behave very rudely. And even the filming itself in the series often resembles romantic films, where the heroes kiss against the backdrop of the light of a lantern.

And in a strange way it worked: the maniac had a lot of fans on the Web, who began to claim that he did the right thing, and his victims were to blame. After that, the leading actor Penn Badgley even had to remind the audience about the hero's crimes.

From movie maniacs to reality maniacs

The projects listed in recent years clearly emphasize that the audience, sometimes unconsciously, justifies the hero if he looks good. Even if he does terrible things. If Patrick Bateman looked like Freddy Krueger, and Joe Goldberg resembled Harvey Weinstein, the authors would hardly have been able to make them so attractive and controversial characters.

And in many ways, this idea is useful. Such films clearly show the manifestation of the "halo effect" - a cognitive distortion, when a person who is pleasant in appearance is considered by default to be more intelligent or kind. But in reality, unfortunately, the effect sometimes turns out to be exactly the opposite.

And if in the case of on-screen villains this only translates into funny fan clubs, whose members claim that he is not so evil, then in ordinary life this leads to more frightening consequences.

At the trial, the maniac Ted Bundy formed a whole support group of women - and all because of his attractive appearance. Even when the court proved that he had raped and killed several girls, including one minor, they continued to believe in his innocence and came in droves to the courthouse.

As if in the form of irony over this approach, the movie "The Beautiful, the Bad, the Ugly" is now being released on the screens, where one of the main handsome men of Hollywood, Zac Efron, was taken on the role of Bundy. He really got used to the image of a real criminal very well, which caused even more controversy. Someone began to write that the on-screen Bundy was "hot", while others criticized the author for being too good-looking, and Netflix representatives even had to remind viewers who he was …

And the very plot of the film plays up the version of his possible innocence. Throughout the action, his crimes are not shown, but everywhere he claims that he was framed. And viewers who are not familiar with the real story of the criminal may well believe him and even feel sympathy for the hero, finding themselves in the place of all the same fans. However, after watching it, it is worth getting into Wikipedia and reading about how he raped, killed and dismembered girls. He has more than thirty deaths on his conscience.

And Bundy's case, unfortunately, is not an isolated one. In the same way, in the early 1990s, the girls confessed their love to the maniac-cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, and in 2014 they wrote massively compliments to the criminal Jeremy Meeks.

Despite numerous examples, people continue to trust more those who are pleasant on the outside, even if there is no objective reason for this. And alas, this sometimes leads to tragic consequences. Therefore, it is better to revisit "American Psychopath" or "You" once again to remember: even behind an attractive appearance, black thoughts can be hidden.