S&D: Serial Killers

Most serial killers have no interest in being artistic. They are gratifying other urges. The majority try to keep their activities as low-profile as they can, so they can operate as freely as possible. Movies and tv require stories filled with terror and heroics. Serial killers are usually just sordid and disgusting.

Yeah it's important to draw a distinction between the culture around these guys and their pathetic realities. nevertheless there is often a certain consciousness in how they present themselves to the police and media. zodiac certainly good example of that.

nowadays I'm much more frightened that some random guy will open fire on me at the mall or something. but then again thinking of someone crawling through your window on a warm summer night has a special horror of its own.

something where there can be months or even years between incidents is handicapped in an age where a story that goes two or three days w/ no developments is dead in the water

That seems exactly right. The Columbines and Auroras and Boston Marathons, awful one-time events that unfold minute-by-minute, are much more in sync with the internet age.

the boy in the homemade balloon who wasn't in the balloon, although the balloon spent a couple hours live on CNN == perfect internet age story

no serial killers involved :-(

maybe the distinction between local and national news matters too. there was a murder in Austin on New Year's Eve a year ago and i won't bore with all the details but it definitely had all the hallmark elements. Huge story for a few weeks, parts of the community around UT especially were very on edge. We found out later he had killed himself a few days after the murder, possibly after seeing police sketches of himself plastered all over town. It was an eerie time.

I'm watching The Snowtown Murders right now and wondering if this is such a good idea...

creepy + v disturbing

i liked it but it's hard to watch

serial murder is a p bad idea

yea i know there was a praise-heavy thread on it but i had to turn it off

I'm working while watching it so I have a little bit of a buffer, but the bit with the wallaby heads was the first indication of what I was in for.

It is staggeringly good but it really fucked me up.

It's not helping that I think Daniel Henshall is handsome.

Oh no not the dog.

I'm going to try not to liveblog my viewing of this movie, but I may have to pop in for support now and then.

Is he the protagonist or the charismatic? You're in for some whiplash either way...

Btw my mustache needs cutting so badly ATM that I kind of resemble the drugged out sunken cheeked accomplice :(

Ugh the dog scene.

The movie actually gets more disturbing btw so strap in!

Daniel Henshall plays John, who is the charismatic, I believe. The guy who gets the kid to go along with his killing spree. This fella:

http://www.boudist.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Daniel-Henshall-Snowtown-209-590x885.jpg

Yep he is a magnetic motherfucker.

We'll talk later abt the particular scene where his performance will haunt me to the end of my days

yeah he's really great -- and I get a weird Australian Ricky Gervais vibe from him

apparently a good portion of the supporting cast and extras are all locals

oh wow all of them except the 2 main stars were locals!

Apart from Daniel Henshall and Richard Greene, the actors were locals with no acting experience that Kurzel had found in the area where the murders occurred, with most from Davoren Park. Kurzel himself grew up in the area and felt that using locals would move the film from being a one dimensional horror show to a tragic human story showing what happens when people are disadvantaged. Davoren Park is considered one of the most violent and dysfunctional suburbs in Australia and a place where emergency vehicles fear to go without a police escort. According to Kurzel, far from the "wow, I'm going to be a movie star" attitude that he had expected, he had some difficulty convincing them to take part.[8][9]

that last line is kinda... dude, I could have told him that

is this on tv right now y/n

It's on Netflix streaming

Yes. That's where I'm watching it.

That's amazing about the actors. The kid who plays Jamie is fantastic.

The mom, too.

Yeah the Mom is great

Uh oh

lol

DUN DUN DUN

A thing is happening.

A bad thing.

ohhhhh my god

those bad things will continue to happen fyi

all bad things all the time from here on out iirc

heres my thoughts from the horror thread:

Snowtown/alt title The Snowtown Murders - well if you are craving a soul-destroying bleak horror skincrawler ala Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer this is one for you. its fairly brilliant, and incredibly well-acted, and deeply in the camp of "movies that are so hard to watch that i dont really recommend them". its a rough one, and gets worse when you find out that it is a true story.

otm

I went to school with Eire's biggest serial killer, was friends with him at different periods between infant school(Our Lady of Lourdes, Brackenhall, Huddersfield) and the last 2 years at high school(All Saints High School,Bradley, Huddersfield). He was the type who would try and instigate other people to "do stuff" like "c'mon let's throw a brick through that window, you do it". I never felt threatened by him and got the better of him in a few pathetic adolescent pushing matches. I was talking to an aunt in Dublin and he is a major folk devil over there, the tabloids put "Nashy" on the front cover on quiet news days. This was my lesson in the banality of evil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grangegorman_killings

All right. It's over.

I actually had a hard time keeping track of all of the people they killed. Some of them were just random, right? Like not for revenge or because they were child abusers? The last scene was, for being completely bloodless, was just brutal.

We'll talk later abt the particular scene where his performance will haunt me to the end of my days

― Thelema & Louise (Jon Lewis), Wednesday, July 10, 2013 7:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Very much want to know which scene. I can think of a few contenders. "Again... stop. Again... stop." being pretty high on the list, and also the bit outside with the kid and the bricks. The look on his face.

As far as I know from the actual story, pretty much everyone was killed with some kind of imagined 'justification', though it wasn't always very apparent. using drugs, or being overweight, or mentally handicapped, or child-abuse...the more he killed, the wider his net was cast.

There's good background on the wiki page that makes a lot of the stuff they left out or glossed over in the movie a bit clearer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowtown_murders#The_murders

Nash is also linked with the unsolved murder of a pensioner in Huddersfield from the mid 90's and I bumped into him a few times in this period and had a fight with him on a bus when he tried to nick my walkman in '93. I am only going into this because he could be up for release soon. He wants to be moved to England to get an earlier release.

Xpost yes "again... Stop." is the scene I meant. The bright, elevated look in his eye as he searches the vic's face for every precious sign of death.

Boy yeah. Visually, his clean, unblemished face up next to the victim's brutalized face really reinforced that bright elevation (good way to put it).

I'm reading the wikipedia article and these dummies just killed all sorts of people they knew, huh? And they moved and left a barrel behind, like it was a box of old magazines or something.

I rly want to read a book abt the case but the one which is available readily in the US looks like it might not be the strongest of the 3 that have been written.

Also: damo holy crap!

Also: damo holy crap!

I imagine people would think I am a bullshitter when I say this stuff, it is the truth. I would think the same myself to be honest. Whenever I bump into old school friends, the first topic is Nashy.

I believe you! I was too immersed in Snowtown before to respond.

He was the type who would try and instigate other people to "do stuff" like "c'mon let's throw a brick through that window, you do it".

People like that make me fundamentally uneasy and always have. Not because I think they are going to be serial killers, probably.

My mother often sees his mother in the area and she confessed to me that she hides from her and avoids eye contact. She has this very Irish "bad apple comes from a bad tree" attitude. Don't blame her tbh.

Yeah, I don't think "how to casually interact with the mother of your region's most notorious serial killer" is covered in most etiquette books.