Serial Killing on Screen

Sarah E. Fanning is Assistant Professor of Drama and Screen Studies and Director of Drama at Mount Allison University, Canada.

1. Introduction: Screening Serial Murder: Adaptation, True Crime and Popular Culture; (Claire O'Callaghan and Sarah E Fanning).-Section I. Re-viewing Victims: Sex, Gender and Spectacle.- 2. Re-membering "The Five": Violence, Victims and the Dead Female Body in Neo-Victorian Portrayals of the Whitechapel Murders (Claire O'Callaghan).- 3. 'It is happening again': Seriality, Twin Peaks and the Necroaesthetic (Chase Bucklew).- 4. The Diminished Figure of the Serial Killer in A Confession: (Louise Wattis).- 5. Serial Killer 'monster' woman (?): Aileen Wuornos on Trial and on Screen (Jo Aldridge).- Section II. Psycho Paths: Re-Creating the Scenes of Crim.- 5. Wolf Creek, Mick Taylor and Australian Horror (Penny Spirou).- 6.  A Strange Sort of Comfort: Domestic Architecture, Home-Bodies, and the Nostalgia of Suburban Containment in American Serial Killer Narratives (Brenda S Gardenour Walter).- 7. "Be Careful of Uncle Charlie: The Unsuspecting Serial Killer in Shadow of a Doubt" (Douglas MacLeod).- 8. See No Evil: Representations of the Moors Murder Case (Ian Cummins, Marian Foley & Martin King).- Section III. Monstrous Makeovers.- 9. The Sexualisation of Serial Killers in Twenty-First Century Film and the #MeToo Movement (Katrina Jan).- 10. The 'Prison Poet' on Screen: Jack Unterweger and the Art of Murder (Michael Fuchs).- 11. "Homicidal Hams" and "Psycho Clowns": Serial Killer Humor in TV Sitcoms and Sketch Comedies (David Scott Diffrient).- 12. 'Jazz Hands and Strangulation': Serial Killers in Musicals (Louise Creechan).- Section IV. 'Based on': Truth, Authenticity and the Politics of Representation.- 13. Graze Culture and Serial Murder: Brushing up against 'familiar monsters' in the wake of 9/11 (Adam Lynes & Craig Kelly).- 14. 'We're here for something else': Mindhunter, Serial Murder and the Reverential (Rachael Collins & Michele Byers).- 15. 'What follows is basedon actual case files': Adapting the "Truth" in David Fincher's Zodiac (Sarah E Fanning).

"It's a comprehensive guide with insights into the industry that has grown up around serial killers ... . These scholarly studies stress analysis over storytelling, but the familiar figures and well-known screen adaptations each author tackles will appeal to serious students of true crime." (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, elleryqueenmysterymagazine.com, April, 2023)

“It’s a comprehensive guide with insights into the industry that has grown up around serial killers … . These scholarly studies stress analysis over storytelling, but the familiar figures and well-known screen adaptations each author tackles will appeal to serious students of true crime.” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, elleryqueenmysterymagazine.com, April, 2023)