Serial Entertainment: A Content Analysis of 35 Years of Serial Murder in Film

• Date: 01 November 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1088767919841660
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767919841660

Homicide Studies

2019, Vol. 23(4) 362 –380

© 2019 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/1088767919841660

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Article

Serial Entertainment: A

Content Analysis of 35 Years

of Serial Murder in Film

Corey Call1

Abstract

Serial murder is a rare phenomenon, yet an incredibly popular topic as evidenced

by the availability of various types of entertainment media about serial murder. The

present study provides a content analysis of serial murder in film utilizing 50 randomly

selected films covering a 35-year period (1980-2015). Data were coded for 53 fictional

killers and 362 victims to generate profiles of the typical serial killer and their victims

in film. The results are discussed in relation to real-world data on serial murder to

describe the accuracies and inaccuracies of the portrayal of serial murder in film.

Keywords

serial murder, serial killers, movies, content analysis

Jeffrey Dahmer raped, murdered, and cannibalized over a dozen victims from the late

1970s to the early 1990s (Newton, 2006). Beginning in the early 1980s, Hannibal

Lecter murdered and cannibalized dozens of victims (Simpson, 2000). While Dahmer

was a real person and Lecter is a fictional character, Dahmer and Lecter share two

commonalities. First, Dahmer and Lecter would be classified as serial killers. Second,

their stories have been told in multiple films.

Serial murder is statistically rare compared with other types of offenses including

other violent crimes. Official statistics indicate that there were 383,977 arrests for

aggravated assault, 95,734 arrests for robbery, 23,632 arrests for rape, and 11,788

arrests for murder and nonnegligent homicide in the United States in 2016 (U. S.

Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2016). Although there

1Longwood University, Farmville, VA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Corey Call, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies, Longwood University, 201 High Street,

Farmville, VA 23909, USA.

Email: callcp@longwood.edu

841660HSXXXX10.1177/1088767919841660Homicide StudiesCall

research-article2019

Call 363

is no official arrest data for serial killers, Hickey (2016) estimates that there are

between 35 and 100 active serial killers in the United States in any given year.

Despite the rarity of its occurrence, serial murder receives substantial attention

from the news media (Gibson, 2006; Schmid, 2005). Serial murder is also a theme

found in various works of entertainment including movies, television programs, books,

comics, music, and video games (Schechter, 2003). Movies, however, may be the

greatest medium of serial killer entertainment as hundreds of films about real and fic-

tional serial killers have been produced (Cettl, 2003; Hickey, 2016). While the quality

of these films varies, serial murder is a popular theme in film for audiences and critics

alike (Cettl, 2003; Jenkins, 1994; Schmid, 2005; Simpson, 2000).

Despite the popularity of the subject, there is little empirical research addressing

the portrayal of serial murder in film. This gap in the research requires attention

because the general public often uses the media as their source of crime knowledge,

particularly when the crime is out of the ordinary and unlikely to impact them

directly (Rafter, 2006; Surette, 2015). Although films about serial murder are pre-

sented as entertainment, it is likely that a portion of the viewing audience believes

that the portrayal is an accurate representation of reality (Dowler & Zawilski,

2007). The present study aims to analyze the content of a sample of serial murder

films from 1980 to 2015 to understand what types of information the public may

learn about serial murder from film.

Literature Review

Understanding Serial Murder

The acts constituting serial murder have occurred worldwide throughout history, but

the term “serial murder” has only been in common parlance since the 1980s when the

FBI sought to differentiate between different types of multiple murder (Hodgkinson,

Prins, & Stuart-Bennett, 2017). Despite having a specific term devoted to it, there has

been difficulty establishing a precise definition of serial murder. According to the fed-

eral Protection of Children From Sexual Predators Act of 1998, serial murder involves

the killing of three or more individuals by the same party. This definition, however,

was put in place only to establish when the FBI could assist local law enforcement

with serial murder cases and not intended to explicitly define serial murder (Morton &

Hilts, 2008). During this time period, academics utilized varying definitions of serial

murder revolving around the number of victims, the time dimensions of the killings,

and the motivation of the killer (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 1992; Egger,

1984; Ferguson, White, Cherry, Lorenz, & Bhimain, 2003; Kraemer, Lord, & Heilbrun,

2004; Skrapec, 2001).

In 2006, the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit hosted experts in various fields at a

symposium in San Antonio, Texas, to create a standard definition of serial murder for

investigators and researchers (Morton & Hilts, 2008). The agreed upon definition of

serial murder from the symposium was “the unlawful killing of two or more victims

by the same offenders in separate events” (Morton & Hilts, 2008, p. 12). This is still