HOW HOLLYWOOD FELL IN LOVE WITH SERIAL KILLERS!
Movie and TV show producers know that terror sells – and the scarier the monster, the bigger the audience
It was Charlize Theron’s 2003 Oscar-winning turn as female serial killer and prostitute Aileen Wuornos, who brutally killed seven men in 1989 and 1990, that reignited an explosion in movies and TV shows about serial killers. Hollywood has long known that terror sells, with fictional characters such as Frankenstein, Count Dracula, Nosferatu and the Phantom of the Opera frightening cinema goers since the early 1900s. However, these days fiction has been replaced with reality, with Hollywood now churning out movies and TV series based on real-life monsters – serial killers more perverse, ghoulish and depraved than even the most imaginative writer could conjure. Names such as Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz and Wayne Gacy are the objects of today’s horror stories – real-life killers who intrigue and repulse, and are human riddles we struggle to comprehend.
“People might follow a serial killer because they are complex puzzles that they want to figure out,” explains Professor of Criminology David Wilson.
“But I sense this is also driven by co-activation and the titillation of getting close to something frightening with the knowledge you won’t come to any harm.”
Wilson blames The Silence Of The Lambs and its villainous protagonist Hannibal Lecter for creating a cultural thirst for serial killers, turning them into modern day anti-heroes, but others say it goes further back, to London’s infamous Jack the Ripper.
He was never caught, despite murdering and mutilating at least five prostitutes in the late 1800s, a crime spree that whet the public’s appetite for real-life horror and spawned hundreds of novels, poems, comics, TV shows and films.
But serial killers have never been more prevalent in pop culture as evidenced by the popularity of shows like Criminal Minds and Netflix’s Mindhunter, which depicts the FBI’S Behavioural Science Unit’s never-ending hunt for serial killers.
Interestingly, it is women, n not men, who are most likely to w watch true crime according to a 2010 study, with Psychology Today declaring that it can be addictive to viewers.
“People receive a jolt of adrenaline as a reward for witnessing the terrible deeds of a serial killer,” the study found.
“Adrenaline is a hormone that produces a powerful, stimulating and even addictive effect on the human brain. The euphoric effect of serial killers on human emotions is similar to that of rollercoasters or natural disasters.”
‘They are complex puzzles that people want to figure out’