House of 1000 Corpses

This zombie not featured prominently.

"Life and Death are Meaningless...And Pain Is God."

Always one for subtlety that Rob Zombie. Anyway welcome to the spooky conclusion of my October reviews! Today I will round out this celebration of spook by talking about one of my favorite terrible horror movies that's great because of how completely ridiculous it is. Obviously this is going to be a Rob Zombie movie I'm talking about (see also here and here) in this case his directorial debut, House of 1000 Corpses. Though it may be his first, This movie bears all the great hallmarks of Zombie's films, including lots of gore, intense and overbearing background music and soundtrack, Syd Haig doing random shit, and Sheri Moon Zombie being naked on camera, and dressed in a bunch of kinky outfits. Sound familiar? Well YEAH IT IS, but there's so much more to enjoy! You ain't seen nothin' yet. House of 1000 Corpses starts with an almost completely irrelevant scene where two assholes try to rob Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen. It doesn't work out so great and they both end up getting shot. Later two dumbasses named Jerry and Bill stop in with their girlfriends Mary and Denise because they're trying to write a guide of off-beat tourist attractions, because they're douchebags. On Spaulding's tour they learn about Dr. Satan, a crazy guy who used crude brain surgery to try and make an army of super-soldier zombies, which sounds a lot like the plot of Frankenstein's army actually, a really gross C-budget movie you can see on Netflix ANYWAY. The two assholes decide they just have to find the tree where this guy was hung, so they go driving out into the middle of nowhere in a thunderstorm, and nothing bad happens and they all make it home.

Maximum Overdrive

What a fantastic poster.

"The day horror went into overdrive."

Hi folks, welcome back to the Tagline, where its Spooktober all month, or at least until I get bored and decide to review something completely unrelated because I tend to do that. Today I am talking about a really scary movie, scary because it was DIRECTED BY STEphEN KIIINGGG WOOOOooOOOo. Sounds pretty chilling right? Well sort of. Have you ever heard of Trucks? It was a short story that Stephen King wrote in the early 70s that is about trucks (and other machines and electronics) coming to life to terrorize and murder people. If that sounds like a serviceable short story idea and not a great movie idea, I'd generally agree with you. Movie producers however did NOT agree, and they made not one but TWO movies based on this kind of absurd premise, the first one being written and directed by King himself, and that's this weird ass movie MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. What could make a movie like this better than being about killer trucks? I'll fucking tell you what, if it was starring Emilio Estevez, and lo' and behold it does, as a parolee who works at a truck stop that becomes besieged by trucks. There's also some other losers at the truck stop, a kid riding his bike tirelessly for at least a whole day, a really annoying newlywed couple, and some drifter girl who was hitchhiking with a molester who sells bibles. King admitted later to being "coked out of his mind" for essentially the entire production of this film, which actually explains a lot of what happens during the film (this movie was released in 1986 and that was about the height of King's substance abuse problems). Keep that in mind while I talk about the rest of the movie.

Red Dragon and Manhunter

So 80s man.

"Enter the mind of a serial killer... you may never come back."

"Before the Silence, there was the Dragon"

Hello everyone, welcome to a new week filled with creepy murderers and their half-eaten victims! Today I'm going to be doing something a little bit different, and instead of talking about a single movie I will be talking about two different movies that were both adaptations of the same novel. The first is Manhunter, released in 1986, and the second is Red Dragon, which was released in 2002, as the third and last film in which Anthony Hopkins portrayed Hannibal Lecter. While based on events from the same novel, the two present very different takes on the same plot, in terms of theme and overall tone. This is partially because they were made during very different time periods (the mid 80s have cinematically essentially nothing in common with 2002) but also due to the context in which they were released. Manhunter was released simply as an adaptation of the novel Red Dragon, whereas Red Dragon was released as the third "Hannibal Lecter" movie, and the cultural import of that character had a real impact on the way the movie's plot was framed and presented. Both concern special agent Will Graham as he is brought back on with the FBI in an attempt to stop a serial killer being called "The Tooth Fairy", due to the distinctive bite marks he leaves on his victims. To help him get into the mind of the killer and prevent further victims, Will seeks the insight of Hannibal Lecter, who was the killer behind Graham's last case, before he went into retirement, due to the strain of assuming the mindset of killers to deduce their motives. Lecter of course is a genius and a madman, and has his own motivations for assisting Graham. Now that the basics are established, let's compare and contrast!

Oculus

THE MIRROR'S BEHIND YOU.

"You see what it wants you to see."

I sure did, and that wasn't the most pleasant thing that ever happened to me. Hello folks, it's time for more fun in the New England gloom here at The Tagline, and I thought that to celebrate that I would talk about Oculus, a movie that proved to be a viscerally unpleasant experience for me to watch. Here is a little piece of free advice from me, that you can apply to your own life, and I really think you'll get a lot of mileage out of this. So here we go: Do not under any circumstances purchase a large, ornate, and very old mirror, with a black oak frame carved into a sinister looking design. Do not then hang that mirror on the wall next to your desk in your study. I'm not saying no mirrors at all, but if you come across any great deals on mirrors at like an estate sale or something? Maybe just keep on walking, go to IKEA or something. Frankly I shouldn't have to add this, but this rule applies to any and all old spooky music boxes, or other similar such objects (see The Possession for reasons why you don't give spooky relics to your small children). Anyway, now that I've put that little disclaimer in, let's talk about Oculus. This film was based on another short film made by director Mike Flanagan, and sort of expands on the original premise. We are introduced to siblings Tim and Kaylie Russell, who were orphaned after a series of grisly events leading up to the torture and murder of their mother, and Tim being forced to shoot his father. Tim is committed to a juvenile psychiatric facility while Kaylie, having not pulled the trigger, is free to live her life, though the siblings promise to one day return and destroy the mirror.

Insidious 2

Baby kidnap GO!

"It Will Take What You Love Most."

Good morrow to you my fair friends! It's that time again! Today's Tagline comes from the horror quadrant. Today we'll be talking about Insidious: Chapter 2, the sequel to the 2011 film Insidious (see my thoughts on it and some other films I enjoyed here). Released this past September, Insidious: Chapter 2 picks up immediately after the end of the first movie, when Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson, see him also here in The Conjuring) had to cross over (with John Edward) to retrieve his astrally projecting son. Unfortunately something followed him back, and murdered his friend and super badass medium Elise (who has a lot of juice in the supernatural department). Things have calmed down since, except for perhaps the ongoing investigation around Elise's death. That being said, it doesn't take long for weird shit to start happening in the house the Lamberts are now occupying (the house Josh grew up in, which is spectacularly creepy looking). You know the kind of stuff, pianos playing themselves, stuff getting knocked over. Just the regular routine. His wife Renai (Rose Byrne here she is as a crazy person) starts to notice something is up as well (given that all the poltergeist shit is happening mostly to her) and decides to seek help.

The Conjuring

I'm not really sure what they conjured.

"Based on the true case files of the Warrens"

Welcome to Halloween everyone! As promised, I will continue my reign of terror, or rather terror will continue to reign over us all, with my last horror post for a little while, I hope, because I am sick of watching horror movies (I'm not that super into them to begin with so I definitely need a break). Today I will be talking about The Conjuring, which was BASED ON TRUE EVENTS AND HAPPENED NEAR WHERE I LIVE WOOOOOOooOOOOoooOO (Well it's a ways away in Rhode Island, but it's less than an hour from my hometown. Also the real life Warrens, who I will say mean things about in a little while, have their home/occult museum in Moroe, CT, which I'm also pretty close to). As always I will open by exploring the "based on a true story" angle of the movie, and move on from there. I'm not saying oh yeah this totally happened (especially considering the by most accounts totally bogus Amityville Horror case, which was also first investigated by the Warrens). So how much of this is based on things that were at least reported to have happened? Well the details evidently are very different, but the basic premise is based on reported events. The Perrons are a real family, they really lived in a house in Harrisville, and they reported a lot of paranormal stuff happening to them in the farmhouse where they lived for some 10 odd years. The Warrens really did pop up one day, and they performed a seance (not an exorcism) that by all accounts of present parties went completely fuckballs. The Warrens and Perrons in real life did not part on super terms, reportedly the Warrens being around just made stuff worse. Andrea Perron, the oldest daughter, has written two books on her experiences and has a third planned. The details of the haunting are substantially different than the movie, but unlike my reading into The Amityville Horror, there's no obvious confession that it's entirely made up. So there that is.

Night of The Living Dead Live Rifftrax Special

A million Taglines!

"They keep coming back in a bloodthirsty lust for HUMAN FLESH!..."

Good morning to everyone, it's the week of Halloween so I thought I would report back about my trip to the live Rifftrax show I went to see on Thursday, where the MST3K gang (That is, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett) were picking apart George Romero's original ‘zombie’ film, Night of the Living Dead. This was the cult hit that spawned what we now consider to be the modern zombie film. Featuring an ensemble cast of unlikeable jagoffs who stupidly board themselves into a rickety old house, Night of the Living Dead is as much as social commentary as it is a horror movie. Really the movie has a lot to say about the era in which it was made (at which time it was a seriously controversial film, I’ll talk a bit more about that later). It’s always interesting to watch a movie from so long ago, and read people’s reactions to it, then weighed against my own reactions, watching it long after its creation. Consider for a minute that when this movie came out, it was considered gruesomely gory and violent. It was considered to be so graphic that it was described by many censors as being 'the pornography of violence'. To a modern audience this is hilarious, the movie is black and white for starters, and the low budget (around 111,000 dollars) meant that even in black and white the effects seem silly to someone in 2013. At the time however, the depictions of people being murdered and of ghoulish, reanimated corpses devouring the remains of their victims was terrifying. Also without a standard rating system, even small children got into the theater to see this movie, and you can imagine about how well that probably went over.

The Lords of Salem

Featuring All Tomorrow's Parties

"The Lords Are Coming."

Good Morning everyone, it's a new week and a new month, and that means it's time for more movies at The Tagline! I figured since it's now October, I should start the month off right with a movie about witches, the occult, and worshiping Satan, and maybe the birth of the Antichrist. If you're looking for one stop shopping in the satanic bloodbath department, I feel like you can't find a much surer thing than Rob Zombie, so I decided to take a peek at The Lords of Salem, his most recent film, released only in a limited circuit this past April. Starring Sheri Moon Zombie (Rob Zombie's wife, see more of her bare-caboose here in Zombie's remake of Halloween) as Heidi, a recovering smack-head radio DJ who gets a weird wooden box with a record inside it. This insidious sounding music disk is addressed specifically to her, left at her office by a group calling themselves the "Lords of Salem", and starting a chain of events that leads Heidi down a dark, dark path from which she may not return. Also featured prominently in this film is Bruce Davison (who you may remember was the lead in The Lathe of Heaven) who portrays Francis Matthias, a writer and historian who is disturbed and intrigued by the music and the name Lords of Salem, and attempts to unravel the mystery behind the record. Also Sid Haig appears briefly, because I mean really how could he not this movie is directed by Rob Zombie get real. This movie was met with a mixed reaction by critics as well as by fans of Rob Zombie, and why that was became immediately apparent to me after watching this movie for about ten minutes.

Perfect Blue

Looks like a healthy girl right?

"The color of illusion is Perfect Blue."

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Tagline! Today I decided I would take a break from psychologically disturbed movies soaked with violence and twisted sexual motifs, and talk about an animated movie that is... all of those things I just said. Written and directed by Satoshi Kon, who's final theatrical length work Paprika might be better known to my writers, Perfect Blue was released in 1998 and is about a J-pop idol named Mima who decides to become an actress. This seems to be going well until she is cast in a role that includes a rape scene (that she assents to despite some hesitation), and then spirals into psychological confusion and madness, while being stalked by a 'fan' calling themselves Me-Mania. To make matters worse, someone claiming to be Mima is keeping a detailed public journal of her life, leading Mima to question whether or not she is going coocoo batshit crazytown. This situation is complicated still further when everyone around her start dying grisly deaths, as the result of an unknown killer, possibly the aforementioned Me-Mania. While the primary plot's affinity for violence and sexualization might at first blush seem unrefined, the direction of the plot is nuanced and pointedly raises questions about certain aspects of Japanese pop-culture.

You're Next

Add disco lights and it's Hotline Miami.

"Did you remember to lock your door?"

Hello and welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! I know I promised you a psychedelic disco dance through a garden of bedazzled banana hammocks today, but I saw another movie on Monday night and decided that I'm not quite ready to relive the horror of a cut-rate 1980 musical. So you all get a stay of execution, while I talk about You're Next, a movie where no one gets a stay of execution. Whenever a horror movie manages to claw itself out of the 10-30% range of critical reception, I sort of feel compelled to go see it, if only to deduce whether the positive reviews are stemming from the movie being good, or the movie being just pretentious enough to garner favor. When a movie makes the jump from film festival to wide release, that also gets my attention. So it was with You're Next, a movie first screened in 2011 at the Toronto International Film Festival, that presents itself as a home invasion movie, and then... takes a bit of a turn. Like any good movie about people being murdered in their home, this movie takes place in the middle of nowhere, at the home of the Davisons. The very huge, one might almost say palatial, home of the Davisons. To be more specific, the vacation home of Paul and his wife Aubrey, where they plan to host a reunion of sorts with their three sons, their daughter, and whatever spousal refuse they track in with them (like Ti West in a hipster scarf for instance. Gross). Things are going to get really spoilery under the cut, so prepare yourself and you've been warned.

Halloween (2007)

I can tell from the grainy filter shit just
got REAL BITCHES.

"Evil Unmasked."

Welcome back to The Tagline! I DID see Kick-Ass 2, and you'll hear about it soon, but while I compose my thoughts about it, I'll talk about a Rob Zombie movie instead. No it is not House of 1000 Corpses. I'm talking about the 2007 re-boot of the Halloween franchise, attempting to recover from the Busta Rhymes fueled crapstorm that was the 2002 Halloween: Resurrection (which I heartily recommend you see if only to watch Busta do Karate at Michael Myers). With Rob Zombie at the helm, we could all rest assured that it would be filled with blood, boobs, and people's butt cracks. Lady butts more specifically. His wife's butt most MOST specifically. Because he's just a classy dude like that, and his wife portrays Michael Myers mom who is a pole dancer also. So there's something right off the bat to look forward to! I guess! As mentioned, this film re-imagines the origin story of Michael Myers, starting with a flashback to his childhood, where we first see how shitty his life is, and then get to watch him massacre most of his family in a variety of seriously grisly ways. This sequence makes a good argument for never getting so drunk that you don't notice someone duct taping you in place to your recliner so he can slit your throat. After this charming sequence and a fair amount of boobs and butts, we spend some time observing the troubled young lad's therapy sessions in an asylum, with Dr. Loomis (Malcom McDowell, who I have a tough time not finding creepy no matter what). Then he kills some more people, but there are no butts in this part, so generally that was kind of a let down. We do get to see that the kid is a real aficionado of mask making. Paper mache in particular. He is a really talented fellow in that regard, if you want a horrible nightmare mask to wear around. Which naturally everyone does right?

Cloverfield

Experience the mild motion sickness...OF THE YEAR

"Some Thing Has Found Us."

With an intelligent tagline like that, we HAVE to be in for something good right? Welcome back to THE Tagline everyone, today as promised I will spill all of my negative feelings about Cloverfield a movie about love, a giant monster, and some asshole named Hud. Cloverfield is a film that,is shot in the "found footage from some guy who was there" style, just like the much better Troll Hunter, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. This is a nice place to start, because while they use the same style to film, in one movie that makes sense, and in the other it is a strained, and then later patently ridiculous device that makes absolutely no sense in the context of the movie. This is of course one of many elements of the movie that are either stupid or totally nonsensical. I bet some of you who have had the good fortune of not viewing this movie are wondering what it's all about? Well that's why I'm here. To hurt you that way.

Vampire in Brooklyn

A cocktail of humor, love, and BLOOD.

"A comic tale of horror and seduction."

Hello everyone! Welcome back to The Tagline, and to the second part of my expose on shitty movies laid like dead birds at the front step of Wes Craven. Today, I will explore a movie he actually WAS responsible for, at least in par:, the intensely bizarre Vampire in Brooklyn. Made in 1995, Vampire in Brooklyn was an attempt to do... something, I'm not really sure exactly what. Eddie Murphy's career had cooled somewhat by 95, and perhaps in an attempt to reassert himself, Eddie Murphy embarked on this strange endeavor. To clarify, Wes Craven directed, and had some other creative input, while Eddie Murphy and his brother Charlie wrote the story and screenplay. Together, these forces conspired to create Vampire in Brooklyn, a film that was apparently supposed to be part comedy, part romance, and part horror. What it actually accomplished was being a confused mess of a movie that succeeds at being none of the three things it tried to be. As a quick rundown, Eddie Murphy portrays Maximilian, the last of a race of vampires, who has traveled to Brooklyn in order to find the one woman who can be his mate. This woman is a police detective, Rita, portrayed by Angela Bassett. Max seems to be operating on a fairly strict timeline, and so enlists the help of some low-life, turning him into a ghoul to help while Max is confined to his coffin during the day.

They

I feel like the German version makes the
poster at least suck a little less.

"The fear is real."

Hello everyone! Exciting news, over the course of last week, around Tuesday's post, The Tagline crested 50,000 lifetime hits! How exciting is that? Also exciting is that this Friday, The Tagline will be celebrating its one year birthday (since I re-started posting in earnest at least). To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'm going to post two reviews of two horror movies by Wes Craven, only one of them isn't really a horror movie, and the other isn't really by Wes Craven in any way. Today I'll be reviewing that one, the delightfully titled Wes Craven presents They. Normally when a movie is 'presented' by some well known director, they are at least an executive producer or something, but Wes Craven has literally nothing to do with this movie. He is credited on IMDB as the presenter, which I'm pretty sure is a made up thing.

So now that we've established that Wes Craven is presenting this the way a horse might present its ass to you, we can talk about the atrocious title. They. They. When I try and talk about this movie (which I seldom do), generally people get really confused, thinking that I'm starting a sentence, when really I'm just saying "have you seen they?" "have I seen that they what?" "who?" Like I get it, it's what everyone says in the movie "They will get me" "They are coming" but you couldn't call it Them? Or any of a number of other names that sound less stupid. I'm getting carried away about the name though, what about the actual movie itself?

The Caller

Victoria is held captive by a past lunatic.

"Some calls are best left unanswered."

Like the call to be in a Twilight movie or two for instance! Welcome to another gripping edition of The Tagline! Today I'll be talking about The Caller, a film that somehow merges horror, being stalked, time-manipulation and land-line telephone service. Starring the bountifully tressed Rachelle Lafevre (who was Victoria in the first two Twilight movies, but NOT the third) as Mary Kee, a woman who is attempting to escape her abusive husband who she is trying to divorce. She moves into a new apartment and finds an antique phone which she decides to use. Around that time she begins to receive phone calls from a clearly crazy lady named Rose. What's really freaky though is that Rose is apparently from the past. Rose seems to be calling from somewhere in the 70s or thereabouts, and despite Mary's attempts to stop the calls, Rose just keeps on a'callin. This only adds to Mary's problems, because her ex-psycho is stalking her. Fortunately she meets John (Stephen Moyer, who most notably portrays Bill Compton on the series True Blood), who is a really nice guy. Things might turn around for Mary, right? not likely.

Mama

Apparently Jessica Chastain's the
only one who really matters here.

"A mother's love is forever."

Hello folks, welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! As promised, I got out to the theater and saw Mama, directed by NOT Guillermo Del Toro (he is just the executive producer big whoop), who brought us other movies that were weird and frightening, such as Pan's Labyrinth. This movie was directed by Andres Muschietti who I have no idea who he is, but he directed this movie and not Guillermo Del Toro, and deserves the credit. Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, a guy played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (hereafter referred to as Jaime Lannister, who he portrays in Game of Thrones) decided that he would kill his wife, and then drive his two very young daughters off a cliff in the snow, wander through the woods, find a creepy old cabin, and then kill them there. Alas, before he could make his grab for dad of the year award A nightmare specter murders him, but we can't get a good look because we see this through the eyes of the older daughter Victoria, who has lost her glasses. I was frankly relieved that he was savagely murdered by some vengeful monster-spirit, because I certainly did not want to watch a bullet emerge from the face of a dead 4 year old. The movie is PG-13, so I was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen, but still I was fearful. Anyway, so the girls are stuck in a cabin now, with this... thing, and its five years later before they are found, by some grizzled old guys on behalf of the girls' uncle, Jaime Lannister 2 (he is dead-dad's twin brother). Jaime Lannister 2 takes custody of the girls, despite the protestation of their maternal aunt. Along with Jaime2 is his girlfriend Annabelle (Jessica Chastain the only person important enough to appear on the poster apparently) who, who is presented to us as a really lame rocker lady with tattoos who plays bass for a band I imagine is called like V.J. Powerhouse or Vagiantess or something. The point is, they seem really lame. Under really shady, deeply unethical circumstances, Jaime2 and Annabelle are given a big house to live in with the girls by their psychiatrist who is obviously using them, to try and draw out a horrible crazy momghost. As you might imagine, this doesn't end great.

End of Days

We're gonna party like it's 1999.

"Prepare for the end."
Hello everyone! I thought since this is more of a approaching the new year movie that I would post it early, though I suspect you won't be reading it until sometime on Tuesday night when you wake up from New Year's Eve festivities. We already saw over the past week and change what I think of when I think of Christmas, but what do I think about New Years? I think that the only proper way to celebrate it is for the Terminator to fight Satan in a battle for the fate of the world. That brings me to today's review: End of Days. Now I don't know what it says about me that apparently holidays all remind me of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies but... there it is. Let me set the scene: It's 1999. People are convinced that the laziness of computer programs is somehow going to precipitate the end of days, and not just make some computer clocks think it's the wrong day. Having just survived another apocalypse related to people keeping track of what day it is, we can all easily relate. Cashing in hardcore on this collective seizure of brain function, Universal Studios produced a movie about the devil making a bid at birthing the Antichrist, using the only vessel appropriate for a movie produced at the end of the 90s (...I guess): Robin Tunney.

Christmas Nightmare Double Feature

Hello all! Christmas is right around the corner, so I had decided I wanted to do a list of Christmas movies that were bad or just scared me. Then I realized that there were really only two movies I wanted to talk about. One was bad, creepy, and depressing. The other was just plain creepy. Actually I found it so unsettling that I didn't even want to watch it again for this post. Alas, duty drove me to it, so now I will share with you all:

PRE-CHRISTMAS NIGHTMARE
DOUBLE FEATURE

30 Days of Night

30 Days of Pee Your Pants Terror.

"They're Coming!"

They sure are! Welcome back to Tuesday at The Tagline, a lovely, gloom soaked Tuesday. Winter gets a boy thinking about snow, and naturally the only thing that recommends itself when you think snow is endless night populated by frenzied blood drinking monsters from your darkest nightmares. That's what got me to thinking about 30 Days of Night. As background, 30 Days of Night came out in 2007, before the Twilight craze robbed the vampire genre of any semblance of credibility for at least the next five to ten years. Based on a comic mini-series of the same name (which later spawned a number of other iterations) 30 Days of Night takes place in Barrow, Alaska, well above the arctic line, where something called polar night occurs. That's a wonderful phenomenon where sometimes the sun goes down and doesn't come back up for a long loooong time. During this time, a wonderful, magical thing happens to the inhabitants of Barrow. A shipload of murderous blood drinking fiends shows up on a ship, and sets about massacring everyone in town. Basically they show up and decide to throw their own little blood orgy. Why not right? Enter Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett, remember I was just talking about him!) the town's sheriff, who along with his ex-wife-to-be and several other survivors, attempt to last out the long night while the vampires set about butchering everyone in town.

The Raven

Rebel Without a Clause. I'm sorry.

"The only one who can stop a serial killer is the man who inspired him."

Welcome to another week at The Tagline! I'm going to resist the urge to start my holiday coverage quite yet, but rest assured that you will be seeing plenty of Arnold Schwarzenegger before the end of the month. Today however I will be talking about the suspense/horror film The Raven, starring John Cusack (who has his own post here) as a fictionalized Edgar Allan Poe. I say fictionalized because, while perhaps a vulgar, high functioning alcoholic prone to ravings, he at no point marries any 13 year old relatives, and seems generally pretty lucid, just a little odd, and so that gives him serious advantage over historical reports of the real Edgar Allan Poe. This movie follows some of Mr. Poe's final days, as he partners with police to try and identify and capture a serial killer who appears to be using Poe's literary works as inspiration for his murders.