Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life
headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and
lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films.
The necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy; Chicago's Jazz Age
crime of passion; the fatal hookup in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; the
high school horrors committed by the costumed slasher in Scream. These
and other cinematic crimes have become part of pop-culture history. And
each found inspiration in true events that provided the raw material for
our greatest blockbusters, indie art films, black comedies, Hollywood
classics, and grindhouse horrors.
So what's the reality behind Psycho, Badlands, The Hills Have
Eyes, A Place in the Sun, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Dirty Harry?
How did such tabloid-ready killers as Bonnie and Clyde, body snatchers
Burke and Hare, Texas sniper Charles Whitman Jr., nurse-slayer Richard
Speck, and Leopold and Loeb exert their power on the public imagination
and become the stuff of movie lore?
In this collection of revelatory essays, true-crime historian Harold
Schechter takes a fascinating trip down the crossroads of fact and
fiction to reveal the sensational real-life stories that are more
shocking, taboo, and fantastic than even the most imaginative
screenwriter can dream up.
