• Faculty of Horror

The Faculty of Horror Goes On A Crime Spree With “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer” and “Zodiac”

by Rue Morgue ManorJuly 31, 2019

This month, Andrea and Alex pull back the veil on narrative cinema and the true-crime phenomena. From John McNaughton’s nightmarish debut to David Fincher’s gumshoe epic, the answers to our response and responsibility to real-life events is almost always more complex than they appear on the surface.

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Required Reading:
Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. Dir. John McNaughton, 1986.

Zodiac. Dir. David Fincher, 2007.

Extra Credit:
Violence Incorporated: John McNaughton’s “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” and the Uses of Gratuitous Violence in Popular Narrative. Steffen Hantke’s in-depth examination of violence in the film.

Regarding the Pain of Others. Susan Sontag’s follow up to On Photography.
 
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Michelle McNamara’s search for the Golden State Killer.
 
The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime. Alice Bolin discusses how true crime went from guilty pleasure to pop culture phenomenon.
 
Listen:

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