It’s here again! THE GREAT VILLAIN BLOGATHON 2016!
One of the most dread-inspiring Blogathons, featuring a slew of memorable cinematic villains, villainesses & anti-heroes… Thanks to the best writers of the blogosphere Kristina of Speakeasy, Ruth of Silver Screenings, and Karen of Shadows and Satin!
Folie à deux (/fäl? ä ?d?,f??l? ä ?d?/; French for “a madness shared by two”), or shared psychosis, is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief and hallucinations are transmitted from one individual to another.
or
Amour fou (ämoi)
1. uncontrollable or obsessive passion.
“The puzzle and threat of random violence is one of the defining tropes of true-crime”-Jean Murley
In Cold Blood (1967) is director Richard Brooks’s (The First Time I Saw Paris 1954, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958, Elmer Gantry 1960) masterpiece of modern nightmarish nihilistic ‘horror of personality.
The film went on to receive four Academy Award nominations: Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Original Music Score, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Columbia Studios actually wanted Paul Newman and Steve McQueen to play the roles and wanted it shot in color. Newman went on to do Cool Hand Luke that year and McQueen starred in The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt in 1968. Thank god Brooks got his way and got to do his treatment in Black & White, on location and with lesser-known actors, who both went on to earn Oscar nominations for their chilling performances of the murderous pair.
A post-war true crime thriller, what author Elliot Leyton terms Compulsive Killers: The Story of Modern Multiple Murder, the film is steeped in expressive realism about two thugs Robert Blake as Perry Smith a dark and damaged swarthy angel of death & Scott Wilson (In the Heat of the Night 1967, The Gypsy Moths 1969, The New Centurions 1972, The Great Gatsby 1974, The Right Stuff 1983) as Dick Hickock, who inspire in each other a sense of anti-establishment negativity.
These two drifters, having heard about a wealthy wheat farmer from a fellow inmate, think there is a safe in the house filled with $10,000. The two dark souls take siege upon the rural Holcomb, Kansas, Clutter family in the middle of the night, hogtie them, and look for the money, only to find this clean-cut, humble family has nothing to steal but $43, a Bible, and pasteurized milk in the icebox. The two proceed to shotgun murder and cut the throats of the entire household so there are… “No witnesses.” – Dick Hickock. There are two surviving daughters, Beverly and Eveanna, who were spared this horror.
