10 Off My Head: Actor Hunter Killer

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Thrillingly for me at least David Fincher's serial killer series Mindhunter starring Jonathan Groff (showering, seen above) is back on Netflix this Friday for its second season. But that's not the only time the subject of "serial killers" has dropped itself into my lap this week -- on Monday I posted about the 1995 thriller Copycat with Sigourney Weaver, which is screening here in NYC this weekend. And on this upcoming Tuesday Arrow is releasing a stellar special edition blu-ray of Cruising, William Friedkin's controversial 1980 gay murder fantasia that stars Al Pacino. Basically, serial killing is having a real moment! (Sorry you blew your load a little bit early, Zac Efron.) 

Anyway all of this made it seem like a good moment to count down our favorite Serial Killer Movies. But then I started making a list and you know what? Depending on your definition of "Serial Killer Movies" -- do you count Slasher Films? -- I seem to like a hell of a lot of Serial Killer Movies. Too many to narrow down to just five, or even ten. My list runs into the dozens. So I decided to be a little more specific and narrow it down to performances as Serial Killers in Serial Killer Films. I still had to up the number to 10, but this is more manageable!

10 of my Favorite Serial Killer Performances

Anthony Perkins in Psycho

Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs

Charlize Theron in Monster

Christian Bale in American Psycho

Jeremy Renner in Dahmer

Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom

John Jarratt in Wolf Creek

Peter Lorre in M

Karlheinz Böhm in Peeping Tom

Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers

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I could name twenty more, but I'll let y'all

name some of your faves in the comments!

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Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Muscle Beach Party (1964)

A little love today for the goofy as fuck 1964 Frankie & Annette surfing movie (although calling it a "movie" is kind of generous Muscle Beach Party, which TCM aired this past weekend and I found myself inexplicably sucked into. Since these movies are harmless that pancake-flattened dude is actually not dead...

... he gets up a second later and dusts himself off as if nothing happened, but I do love a good Looney Tunes joke tucked away into a live-action movie. And give it up for the great Candy Johnson and her murderous hips, everybody...

Anyway Looney Tunes wise Muscle Beach Party definitely feels like the kind of flick that a character might slap a mobile hole into to get out of an enclosed space.

Obviously not a bad thing! You just have to be in the right mood, and I apparently was in the right mood this past weekend. But I'm glad I hung around long enough for Peter fucking Lorre to show up...

... playing The World's Strongest Man, no less!

Any time spent watching Don Rickles be abused
is time well spent, that's what I always say. 

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The guy in purple is supposed to be the Big Kahuna but hello third from the left pic.twitter.com/u5ogob8VBx

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 2, 2017

Hit the jump for links to the Previous Ways Not To Die

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1934

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After a couple weeks spent in the safe confines of the 1970s (has anyone ever described 70s Cinema as a "safe space" before?) where I had seen plenty of movies and could offer up a hefty dose of opinion, this morning Siri, when asked to choose a number between 1 and 100, decided to make it slightly tougher on me and take us back to the 1930s - The Movies of 1934 specifically. That said 1934 isn't a year in film I'm completely unfamiliar with - I managed to choose a respectable Top 5 of movies I very much like with a lovely batch of runners-up too.

But I had to cut short my "Never seen" list because I kind of don't even know where to begin with all that - there are lots and lots that I have not seen! So if y'all want to tell me what I am definitely missing out on in the comments, please I beg you go to town. And until then I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1934

L'Atalante

(dir. Jean Vigo)

-- released on April 24 1934 --

The Thin Man

(dir. WS Van Dyke )

-- released on May 25th 1934 --

The Black Cat

(dir. Edgar G Ulmer)

-- released on May 7th 1934 --

It Happened One Night

(dir. Frank Capra)

-- released on February 22nd 1934 --

The Man Who Knew Too Much

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on December 4th 1934 --

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Runners-up: Imitation of Life (dir. Stahl), Death Takes a Holiday (dir. Mitchell Leisen), 20th Century (dir. Hawks), Of Human Bondage (dir. Cromwell), The Gay Divorcee (dir. Mark Sandrich)

Never seen: A Lost Lady (dir. Green)

Chained (dir. Clarence Brown)

What are you favorite movies of 1934?

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Forget Bogie & Bacall...

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It oughta be a holiday today, the birth of Peter Lorre, but we'll do the next best thing -- we'll use this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" over at The Film Experience to celebrate one of the actor's finest little performances, that of the cane-stroking weirdo Joel Cairo in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon alongside his frequent co-star Mr. Bogart. They had such swell chemistry! I love the two of them together on-screen almost as much as I love this inexplicable picture of the two of them taking a naked steam together...