Violence, Depravity, and the Movies: The Lure of DEVIANCY.

• Author: Dupre, Anne P.

"We may be enticed by violence on film because we are so afraid of it in life. We can sit in a theater, enjoy the violent scene on the screen from a distance, and then go home--we hope--to safety."

I AM NOT a psychic, but I am going to make a prediction, though I hope I am wrong. I predict that, if and when the film "American Psycho" is released, the police will deal with at least one killing which copies the murders and mutilations in the movie. The prospective picture is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, and its makers attempted to sign Leonardo DiCaprio to the lead role.

The book depicts a Wall Street Yuppie who tortures and kills for the fun of it. He murders 18 people, including a child that he kills at the zoo. He reserves his most sadistic torture for women. In one scene in the book, the killer attaches jump leads to a female victim's nipples. In another, he has sex with the head of a woman he has decapitated. Some favorite weapons he uses on women are a nail gun, power drill, chain saw, and, it' you can imagine (or want to), a hungry rat. Get ready, America, and pray that this movie does not light a fuse in someone living near you.

You may question why--if I can make a prediction that someone will die--the law has no mechanism to prevent this potential harm. It is no secret that some people like to copy killings they see in movies. Films give people a sense of what depravity is possible and a movie star to model after. Copycat killings are alleged to have been linked to such pictures as "Natural Born Killers," "Warlock," "The Money Train," "The Basketball Diaries," and "Child's Play 3," among others. It is true that people also can read about psychotic killers in books, but words on the page do not seem to inspire the same kind of frenzy blood on the screen can. Psychotic killers generally are not bookworms. Moreover, films reach a wider audience than most books.

The first response to my prediction undoubtedly will be a shake of the head and an explanation that this is the price we have to pay for freedom of speech under the First Amendment. Anything else would be censorship. After all, the highly acclaimed "Saving Private Ryan" is graphically violent. Nightly news shows report violent acts every evening. In fact, the same day Kip Kinkel was arrested after shooting a number of schoolmates in Oregon, three boys in Missouri were foiled in an attempt to imitate the massacre in Jonesboro, Ark., wherein two boys shot fellow students...