Category: Murder

Profile of a Serial Killer: Research Paper Thesis

Theodore Robert Bundy was born on November 24, 1946, to a single mother in Burlington, Vermont. At the age of three, his mother moved him to Philadelphia, where he was raised as the adoptive son of his maternal grandparents in a religious, working-class family (Kettler, 2020). As a child, Bundy struggled to fit in with his peers and was a frequent target of bullying due to his shy and introverted nature. He spent most of his time alone, looking at pornography and engaging in disturbing behaviors (Jenkins, 2022). However, it was not until his late adolescence that the darker side of his character began to emerge when he started engaging in other criminal activities such as peeping through windows and shoplifting (Kettler, 2020). Shortly after graduating from the University of Washington in 1972, Bundy began his murderous rampage across the western United States.

Between 1974 and 1978, Bundy kidnapped and sexually assaulted 36 young women across seven different states, including California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Bundy would approach his victims in public places and often lure them into his car by feigning injury, asking for their help, or impersonating an authority figure (Jenkins, 2022). He would abduct his victims and knock them unconscious. Once they were in a remote secondary location, Bundy would rape his victims and strangle or bludgeon them to death. Afterward, Ted Bundy would decapitate some of their heads and keep them as mementos. He would also mutilate decomposing bodies until putrefaction made any further sexual interactions impossible (Crime Museum, 2019).

After his reign of terror across the United States, Bundy became one of the most infamous serial murderers in American history. He confessed to killing 36 women across seven different states over four years. Bundy was sentenced to death by execution in Florida and died on January 24, 1989 (Kettler, 2020). Decades after his death by execution in 1989, Bundy’s gruesome crimes and staggering body counts continue to seize media attention, making him a well-known figure in popular culture today. He has been a recurrent subject of various true-crime-inspired movies, documentaries, and television shows each aiming to understand Bundy’s murderous mind and his motives. The most recent documentary series, Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, directed by Joe Berlinger attempts to help viewers understand the mind of this notorious serial killer through the use of interviews, archival footage, and audiotape recordings made by Bundy during his death row sentence. The docu-series highlights how Ted Bundy exhibited several of the typical characteristics of a serial killer, including growing up in an abusive household, psychopathy-related personality traits, and organized crime-scene dichotomy.

Physical Child Abuse and Criminality

Growing up in an abusive household is one of the most common characteristics among lust serial murderers. In the article “A Behaviour Sequence Analysis of Serial Killers’ Lives: From Childhood Abuse to Methods of Murder” by Abbie Marrano, researchers examined the relationship between the four serial killer typologies- lust, anger, power, and financial gain and the three categories of child abuse- psychological, sexual, and physical (Marrano et al., 2020). In a study of fifty serial killers, researchers found that those who were victims of physical childhood abuse were more likely to sexually assault their victims before murdering them (Marano et al., 2020). Additionally, researchers found that these serial killers’ crimes most often fit the criteria for lust murder, which is the act of killing someone purely for sexual gratification. It includes the activities of rape, torture, insertion of objects into bodily orifices, cannibalism, and postmortem sex (Marrano et al., 2020).

In the documentary, viewers may notice many of the features of a lusty serial murderer present in Ted Bundy, starting with him being the victim of childhood abuse. For the first three years of his life, Bundy was raised as the adoptive son of his maternal grandparents in their Philadelphia home, where his grandfather was regularly physically violent towards his wife and children (Kettler, 2020). Like most lust serial murders, the early physical abuse Bundy suffered led him to develop an inclination for aggression and violence as he got older. Bundy’s childhood mistreatment may potentially explain why he was sexually violent toward his victims. For example, Bundy admitted to sexually assaulting his victims before murdering them on tape. After killing them, he stated that he would remove the clothes of his victims and occasionally insert foreign objects, such as hairspray bottles, into their bodily orifices (Berlinger, 2019, 52:48). Bundy also admitted to engaging in necrophilia on the tapes (Berlinger, 2019, 54:59). Days after the crime took place, he would revisit the site where he left his victim’s naked bodies and engage in postmortem sex with their corpses until putrefaction or animal activity made it impossible for him to do so any longer (Berlinger, 2019, 55:19). Bundy’s history of childhood abuse and patterns of sexual violence indicates that he shared some traits common to lust murders.

Psychopathy and Criminality

Several other factors can drive serial killer behavior besides childhood maltreatment. For instance, psychopathy-related personality traits, which are personality traits consistent with antisocial behavior, could influence criminality. Recent studies have begun trying to identify a correlation between psychopathy-related personality traits and criminal behavior. One study conducted by Elizabeth Cauffman and colleagues performed a psychiatric examination on 130 adult male offenders sentenced for serious crimes, including rape and murder, and compared them to non-criminal controls. The Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP), a self-rating questionnaire, was used to measure three dimensions of personality: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism in participants (Cauffman et al., 1999). The three dimensions of personality are defined as follows. Extraversion describes people who are dominant and assertive. Neuroticism describes people who struggle with low self-esteem and anxiety. Psychoticism describes people as aggressive, impulsive, and egocentric (Sinha, 2016). Researchers found that prisoners had higher scores for psychoticism and antisocial conduct compared to non-criminal controls (Cauffman et al., 1999). They were also more likely to show psychopathy-related personality traits such as superficial charm, aggression, manipulative behavior, inability to take responsibility for their actions, and lack of remorse. Furthermore, researchers also found that the vast majority of these psychopathy-related personality traits were common to serial killers suggesting that psychopathy is prevalent among that population of male offenders (Sinha, 2016).

Journalists Stephen Michaud and Hugh Ainsworth, who interviewed Ted Bundy during his murder trial, believe that Ted Bundy exhibited several psychopathy-related personality traits common to serial killers. Beginning in his early childhood, Bundy showed signs of antisocial behavior that persisted into his adulthood. At the age of three, Ted Bundy placed kitchen knives around his aunt’s body while she was sleeping. When his aunt woke up from her nap, she recalls seeing her young nephew staring at her with a sinister smile on his face (Kettler). Although his aunt was frightened by his disturbing behavior, young Ted completely disregarded her feelings and did not feel remorseful about his actions while she was asleep. Instead, he displayed a sense of satisfaction from seeing his aunt fearful of him. Ted Bundy would also torture and kill small animals. The act of killing animals is another well-established sign of antisocial behavior among serial killers (Futterman, 2021). When he was eight years old, young Ted would kill animals, dismember their bodies, and set them on fire (Kettler, 2020). These childhood incidents suggest that Ted Bundy showed a lack of remorse and empathy from an early age.

As the interviews went on, the journalists realized that Bundy began to show more traits consistent with psychopathy during his criminal career. Like most psychopaths, he used his superficial charm to deceive and manipulate his victims (Berlinger, 2019, 25:15). The journalists believe that Ted Bundy often exploited his good looks and smooth-talking skills to lure many of his victims to their untimely deaths. For example, he would approach his victims in public places and feign injury by having his arm in a sling or using crutches to play into their emotions (Berlinger, 2019, 45:49). After Bundy asked for their assistance, he would use his winning smile to deceive his victims into thinking that he was trustworthy. Shortly after winning over their trust, he would rape his victims and strangle them to death (Berlinger, 2019, 14:12). In the final tape, Bundy said that he did not feel guilty about anything that he had done and that he ultimately felt sorry for people who feel guilt (Berlinger, 2019, 52:36). This statement further illustrates that Ted Bundy displayed the typical character of a psychopath because he saw no shame or guilt in his actions even though his antisocial behavior was harmful to the lives of his victims and their families.

Crime-scene Dichotomy

Moreover, psychopathy-related personality traits can influence the organized disorganized dichotomy profile of a serial killer. Sara Rodre and colleagues investigated this research question by studying a group of 72 male offenders who committed serious crimes such as rape and murder (Rodre et al., 2019). First, the subjects underwent assessment using the Psychopathy Checklist. Then, their crimes were categorized into two distinct categories, organized and disorganized crime. The researchers found that those who exhibited psychopathy-related personality traits were more likely to be classified as organized serial killers (Rodre et al., 2019). Organized serial murderers have an above-average level of intelligence, are socially adequate, and are methodological. They strategically plan their crime and maintain control over the scene by carefully getting rid of the murder weapon and body in an undisclosed location. This type of murder is much harder to catch because they are often successful at removing any evidence that can potentially link them to the murder (Ressler et al., 1985). By contrast, those who did not display psychopathic-associated personality traits were more likely to be classified as disorganized serial killers. The disorganized offender has a below-average level of intelligence, is socially inadequate, and is impulsive. They do not plan out their crimes and typically murder when the opportunity arises. As a result, disorganized serial killers leave the scene random and sloppy, with the murder weapon and body in plain view long after the crime took place (Ressler et al., 1985).

Taking a deeper look into the crime-scene behavior of Ted Bundy, we can see that he displayed the typical characteristics of an organized serial killer. For instance, the vast majority of organized serial killers have an above-average level of intelligence (Ressler et al., 1985). Ted Bundy’s IQ score was 136, indicating that his high level of intelligence may have played a role in helping him to outsmart his victims and the authorities. Not only was Bundy intelligent, but he was also methodical. When journalists asked him how he began organizing his crimes later in the docu-series, Bundy told them that he methodically planned out every detail of his crime well in advance, starting with determining who his next victim would be (Berlinger, 2019, 45:09). First, he would stalk his potential victim for several days to determine whether or not they were a good target. Then, Bundy would win them over with his good looks and superficial charm. As soon as he found the perfect opportunity to strike, Bundy would kidnap his victim and murder them in a remote location. Like most organized criminal offenders, Bundy buried bodies and disposed of any potentially incriminating evidence such as the murder weapon and bloody clothing in the woods (Berlinger, 2019, 57:04). Similar to other organized serial killers, Ted Bundy was a successful criminal because he left the crime scene virtually spotless, making it extremely difficult for authorities to find him for many years.

Conclusion

Commonly referred to as the Golden Age of Serial Murder, the 1970s is known as one of the deadliest decades in American history. During this time, American serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy went on a murderous rampage. He killed dozens of young women across seven different states over four years. Bundy was eventually caught and convicted for his crimes in 1978. Over the last few years, his murder case has gripped public interest, inspiring plenty of movies, documentaries, and television shows transforming Bundy from a criminal into a household name. The public was captivated by his violent crimes because the idea that an educated, handsome, and charismatic man like himself was capable of committing such unspeakable acts of violence against women was mind-boggling. Since he did not match the typical profile of a serial killer, it was hard for the general public to believe that Bundy had murdered anyone.

At first glance, Bundy did not appear to be a murderous monster. However, the documentary series, Conversations with a Serial Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, directed by Joe Berlinger, revealed that evil comes in many different forms. Behind the charming public image he put forth, Bundy displayed many characteristics common to serial killers. Based on the information provided in the documentary series and various criminal typologies, we can see that Ted Bundy did not deviate much from the standard typology of a serial killer. Like most serial killers, Bundy was the victim of physical childhood abuse, displayed psychopathy-related personality traits, and fit the organized dichotomy profile of serial murder. Therefore, one can conclude that Ted Bundy did share several of the typical characteristics of a serial killer.

Essay on Female Serial Killer

Life Experience and the Female Serial Killer

PURPOSE: The purpose of this is to justify the lack of research into the link between childhood trauma and abuse to violent tendencies as an adult, specifically women serial killing. More research needs to go into this as the current research is primarily based on the link between childhood trauma and violence as an adult male.

Background

To explain the issue, I will be relating the human experience of childhood trauma to the life and eventual serial killings performed by Myra Hindley. By definition, a serial killer is a person who commits a series of murders, typically following a characteristic. Myra Hindley was an England-born serial killer, who was driven to commit deviant crimes by her father pushing her towards deviant behavior, the childhood trauma that came with watching her friend drown at age 15, and her boyfriend who tested her loyalty by getting her to commit these crimes. Her capture by police came at the hands of her brother, who witnessed one of the murders but chose to keep quiet for a period of time for fear that he might have the same fate. In total, Myra Hindley committed five murders and sexually assaulted four of them.

Issue

The issue, in this case, is that there is a lack of research put into this behavior and how it links to serial killers. It is no secret that Myra Hindley possessed traits that violated traditional gender role stereotypes (Ian Cummins, 2011). Another issue comes in the form of norms, and the fact that just because you have experienced trauma or abuse does not mean you will end up as a serial killer. In a study referenced by Marissa A. Harrison, she states that their most common motive for the murder was financial gain, and their most common method of killing was poisoning. Female serial killers knew all or most of their victims, and most were related to their victims. In all cases, they targeted at least one victim who was a child, elderly, or infirm – those who had little chance of fighting back (Harrison, Murphy, Ho, & Flaherty, 2015). There are a lot of biological, psychiatric, psychoanalytic, psychological, and rational choices that go into being a serial killer or any other form of deviant behavior for that matter. And it is never just one single reason to perform a deviant act such as serial killing. In a link between serial killers and Myra Hindley, a powerless child can generate a compartmentalized dream of sufficiency, which gives them a way of staying intact (Stein, 2013). A book by Carlisle (2000) also states that “intensely painful memories and deep emptiness can lead to intensely experienced fantasies, which over time take on a greater and greater degree of reality” (Carlisle, 2000). This is all accurate, and while there has been a lot of research put into the behavior specifically, it is also true that female serial murderers are thought to be rarer than their male counterparts and have often been excluded from being labeled “serial killers” due to narrowly constructed definitions. Therefore, female serial killers are an even more elusive population to study (Homicide Studies, 2011), hence further research should be conducted on the female serial killer as a whole and how life experiences affect them, and also how they vary from actions and behaviors of the male serial killer. Also due to the rareness of the female serial killer, courts often provide a more lenient sentence than her male cohort, if there is one; Myra Hindley being one of the rare exceptions (Davis, 2014).

Recommendations

The issue focused on the link between behavior and serial killers requires further research. One thing that was abundantly clear while doing research is that the majority of sources are done about men, so a recommendation would be to do further research on what makes a female serial killer specifically. Another research-based recommendation would be to do more research on the effects childhood trauma and abuse can have on women specifically that lead them onto a path of serial killer, and whether male input has led them to do this.

References

1. Carlisle. (2000). The dark side of the serial-killer personality. In, Serial Killers, ed. L. Gerdes. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press.
2. Davis, C. A. (2014). Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers.
3. Farrell, A. L., Keppel, R. D., & Titterington, V. B. (2011). Homicide Studies. Lethal Ladies: Revisiting What We Know About Female Serial Murderers, Vol 15, Issue 3.
4. Ian Cummins, M. F. (2011). Hindley: ‘The Evilest Woman in Britain’? Serial Killers and the Media, 115-134.
5. Stein, A. (2013). Prologue to Violence: Child Abuse, Dissociation, and Crime. Routledge.

When Is Violence Justified: Opinion Essay

Some may argue that in cases of self-defense, tyranny, or if you feel you have a moral obligation to do so, violence can be a justifiable action. You are doing this to save yourself or others from the horror that may fall upon you or them as well. Consider killing as an example. Can killing a morally innocent person, someone who has not given their consent to dying, have their life be taken to save other innocent people, be justified? In this essay, I’m going to look at this topic from an ethical and juristic point of view.

A good entry point for exploring this question is looking at the ‘trolley problem’. This experiment challenges an ethical dilemma. In this problem, you are confronted by 2 possible outcomes: you can deliberately kill an overweight man to save five people, or you do not intervene and let the overweight man live while killing those five other people. But why would 60% of people living in the UK choose saving five innocent people by sacrificing one equally innocent overweight man, and would the outcome of this dilemma change if you were to change some of the components within this problem, such as sacrificing a non-overweight man, a child or someone to whom you are emotionally connected? Probably. This shows that there is a particular difficulty associated with the question of whether violence like killing someone can be justified, you cannot simply answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.

When considering these things, you must recognize the complexity and the context of the incident and the killer’s decision. There are countless scenarios that can be discussed, some are more popular than others. If you had the chance to go back in time, would it be justifiable to kill little Hitler? You would save the lives of millions of people, you would not only prevent World War II but also the Holocaust. And when choosing between one little baby you know will turn out to be a crazed mass murderer and the Holocaust, it’s an obvious decision, isn’t it? However, there are different aspects to consider. There are far more practical ways of preventing Hitler’s rise to power than killing an innocent child. You could kidnap the Austrian baby and perhaps bring him to an orphanage.

Another essential aspect that must be taken into consideration is self-defense. Self-defense is described as the use of reasonable force to defend one’s self or another. It is seen as a justification defense rather than an excuse by the English law. Does this mean that taking away the life of another person to save your own is justifiable? Let`s look at an extreme case. You are attacked by a person who intends to torture and then kill you. You manage to break out of his hold and take his weapon. If you want to survive, your only option is to kill the person trying to kill you. There is no option of shooting the intruder in the leg or the shoulder. There is a common factor in both this and the baby Hitler scenario, both people are trying to take away your right to living. Is this another obvious decision that can be answered with a ‘yes’? Maybe.

In the UK, the topic of euthanasia has been widely discussed since the 1900s and lately, the amount of euthanasia and assisted deaths, as well as assisted suicides, has been soaring. First, you must distinguish between the three. The main difference between euthanasia and assisted dying is who performs the final, fatal act. Euthanasia is the act of intentionally ending a life to relieve suffering, for example, fatal sedation performed by a doctor, whereas assisted dying is a combination of both euthanasia and assisted suicide because it usually refers to the assisted suicide of a terminally ill person. Assisted suicide on its own is about helping someone to take their own life at their request. When talking about this topic, countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland come to mind, with each one having its laws regarding this topic. For example, in the Netherlands, euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal if the patient is suffering and under unbearable pain. If you are over twelve years old, you can request this, but you need parental permission until you are at least sixteen years old. There is no mandatory waiting period and there is no requirement to be terminally ill. Switzerland allows assisted suicide without a diagnosis or symptom state, and there is no age restriction. However, if your motivation for dying is deemed as being selfish, for example, you assist someone in dying to inherit something earlier, it is illegal. What makes these types of killing different from the rest? In the case of assisted dying and suicide, it is your own decision to take your life, whatever your motive may be. In the case of euthanasia, someone else dictates whether you should live or die, which I think doesn’t make them much different from a murderer.

Out of the 193 countries worldwide, 53 still have the death penalty, and many of those have dozens of offenses that can be punished by death, for example, Pakistan has 27. Even though countless countries have abolished this outdated form of punishment, many still perform executions, but why? It is said that three main reasons justify taking the life of someone who has committed a (usually serious) crime. Arguments say that the death penalty is necessary to instill fear in criminals to refrain them from committing crimes. It is also argued that, from a moral standpoint, the perpetrator deserves such a punishment if he has committed a serious crime, for example, killing another person. Lastly, the death penalty would ensure that that person would never commit a crime again. On the outside, these arguments seem reasonable. However, I feel like they can be taken apart by just a second thought. There is no evidence to prove that the death penalty deters crime. A study that compares the murder rates within the different states of the USA that have the death penalty and those that abolished it shows very little difference. Also, from a moral point of view, some punishments are to be disapproved because they violate human dignity. Would stealing from a thief and violence towards a domestic abuser be considered an ethically correct punishment? Is the extremity of murder a reason to disobey something that would naturally seem logical? Some might argue that capital punishment is an easy way out. A murderer is not confronted with self-reflection, something that is arguably more difficult to live with than to die with. In the end, it would seem logical that punishing a murderer with the most severe punishment there is would bring closure to those affected, but the opposite seems to be true. Studies show that because the death penalty can drag on for years with countless appeals, it would cause family and friends to think even more about the incident, delaying the healing process and delaying closure. There are some reasons why I do not think the death penalty is justifiable.

Overall, I believe that there is no definitive answer to the question of whether violence is justifiable or not. When considering killing someone, the answer is always based on the incident, but it will always lean towards ‘no’. I think the only occasions where you can justify killing someone are in the cases of self-defense, where you have no other option but to kill the person trying to kill or harm you, and assisted suicide. I believe that it is a person’s right to choose when and how they want to pass on, especially in cases of mental and physical sicknesses.

Essay on Leatherface Serial Killer

This essay will look at the Texas Chain-Saw Massacre and how it relates to the concept of freakery in film culture. The definition of freakery is something that is out of the ordinary or seems strange. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre explores this definition on all sides.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the few films that proved as an independent sector that produced the most original and stimulating films, such as Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972) and David Lynch’s unsettling Eraserhead (1977) all marked out different territories for their respective creators (Jonathan Ross, 1993). How this film breaks the taboos of conventional horror cinema is that it heavily relies on the time of day it is and chooses to have most of the horrific events during the day and out in broad daylight. Making the film itself a cut out of the ordinary expanding the thoughts of freakery with this film breaking the conventional telling of how horror is supposed to be, the film itself stands out in the ranks of every other horror.

“Through the 1970s, this alignment developed into the cult of horror. It was spearheaded by a relatively small cohort of high-profile controversies, those involving Night of the Living Dead, Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Shivers. Facilitated by increasingly lenient censorship regulations, these films presented themselves as radical, political, and independent-minded. Their horror involved starkly realistic depictions of the detailed, explicit, and abusive violation of bodily integrity – with rape and cannibalism taking a prominent place.” (James Sexton and Ernest Mathijs, 2011. pp. 196)

How this film connects with the term “freakery” is with its dependence on context-specific reception conditions, in particular because of its singular focus on deviant human bodies as sites of transgression (James Sexton and Ernest Mathijs, 2011 p. 103). The film has a prominent character named Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) who has his face hidden under a mask that is made of human skin. He is seen as a freak in his family’s eyes. How would other people seeing him perceive him differently from his family? His having a mask made of human skin is some sort of freakery, as in freakery being a distortion of the human body, making them freaks. So, having him wear that kind of mask would put another layer of freakery, since his mask is also decomposing and rotting. The audience would never see his face even, though he is always seen wearing a mask and dirty clothing. Even the cannibalistic family has a bunch of decomposing bodies in their home. When the friends are at the gas station, they see different people who have deformities and are acting very strange and one person is drunk. Even on the topic of strange, it shows that the whole state of Texas is being put forward as a sense of freakery.

“In normative society, freakery is premised on unequal viewing and social relations. A non-disabled audience retains the power to subject a non-normative body to an ableist gaze as an entertaining spectacle enjoying, a mixture of shock, horror, wonder, and pity. Although it has taken many different cultural forms” (David Church, 2008. pp. 3)

The whole dysfunctional cannibalistic family is all a bunch of freaks set in a town that is filled with other people that are their versions of freaks, it even goes as far as to set the alcoholics in the town as freaks, in the eyes of our protagonists. The alcoholics do not seem out of place in their town, but the outsiders who come from a different state view them as a bunch of weird social outcasts. This shows how you will always be a freak yourself, if someone from a different culture or a different country would look at you with their view of how things should be, then that makes you a freak or a social outcast in their eyes. If the term “freakery” would stretch that thinly as if something as little as just a way you behave out of the ordinary, if it is the way someone walks or the way someone talks or if they have a speech impediment. Although the Texas Chain Saw Massacre is very prominent with the term “freakery” touching upon the very extreme to the very light. The extreme is the decomposing bodies and the skin that Leatherface uses as a mask the light is the alcoholic being there not caring about what people think of him, to the real world where there are a lot of alcoholics walking around not caring what others think of them.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a film about a group of friends, two siblings, and three of their friends, that goes on a road trip to visit their grandfather’s grave. During their trip, they pick up a lonesome hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) who seems harmless in the beginning. This hitchhiker is seen as this babbling crazy maniac, putting him as the first freak. There is a big red flag for the protagonists when he is sitting there talking about all this creepy stuff and showing them photos of animal carcasses. Then suddenly, completely out of the blue the hitchhiker pulls out a knife and starts to attack a friend called Franklin (Paul A. Partain) who is in a wheelchair. The friends stop the car and kick the hitchhiker out. As they continue their trip, they stop at a gas station and discover that the locals are not exactly “normal”, they are quite the opposite. Some have disfigurations, others seem to be drunk all the time and others seem to talk nonsense and get their friends to believe in crazy theories about their life. The friends get back in the car and then drive off, after a while they come across this mysterious house. It seems abandoned so they go to check it out. Inside the house, they find all these different animal carcasses and they explain that it smells awful in there.

The friends split up to look around the house, this is happening during the day. Suddenly one of the friends named Kirk (Willam Vail) hears a scream and he runs towards it. In the very next room, he stumbles, and right in front of him comes Leatherface who hits him in the head with a hammer. Leatherface proceeds to drag him into the room while making weird noises. The audience gets to know that the scream came from Leatherface himself. Later we see Pam (Teri McMinn) go into the same room where Kirk is, and she sees his corpse and starts to scream. That is when Leatherface comes out again and starts running after Pam, only to catch her right outside the door in the bright daylight, she is screaming and terrified for her life while he is having fun laughing and making weird noises. Leatherface brings her to a room where there are two hooks and a freezer. He hangs Pam up on one of the hooks and proceeds to cut into Kirks’s body. Where this film fits into the subject as a cult film, is when we look at the cultural diamond, we have the social world that has garnered the film as a staple in the horror world of its unconventional narrative. The creator Tobe Hooper stated that he wanted to break the barriers of the way horror films are supposed to be made, he broke the rules of what people intended horror films to be. Then we have the receiver, the regular horror film audience, the film had a great opening, impressing both horror fans and critics alike. All the appreciation and following the film has had over the years makes it a definite cultural object. Horror directors are still to this day inspired by Tobe Hooper and his work with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Dustin Kidd, 2014. Pp. 8)

After that, the viewer follows Jerry (Allen Danziger), as he continues to walk inside the house as he was outside the whole time. He comes to the freezer room and is very curious as to what is in the freezer. He opens it up and Pam is there waking up screaming, Jerry starts to scream as well and then obviously Leatherface comes in swinging his hammer in Jerry’s head. This scene is considered one of the most terrifying scenes ever filmed, as it was building up to the perfect execution and the jump scare is justifiable with Pam getting warm and waking back to life as Jerry opens the freezer. Why would Leatherface keep her in the freezer? She is seen as a somewhat mummy. But for Leatherface, she is seen as an outsider, she is the freak for him, and that is why he kills them and uses them for his family to feast upon. This could be a connection to when Julia Pastrana a woman billed as the ugliest woman in the world, was embalmed after her death and continued to be exhibited by her husband and manager (Helen Davies 2015 pp. 17). She in a sense became feasted upon after her death, just because of her being a “freak of nature” in the eyes of other people and becoming an attraction for others to look upon her ugliness. She became a freak just because of her nature of being. Just like Pam being a freak in the eyes of Leatherface, and his family feasting upon her body.

The story then goes back to Franklin as he scoots around in his wheelchair completely oblivious as to what is going on. The darkness has been bestowed upon the land, and Franklin seems helpless, he calls out to the other friend that he was just with called Sally (Marilyn Burns). As he is calling her name, the audience gets a sense of dread since Leatherface may be out lurking after killing the other persons. The film cuts to Sally as she walks around the woods looking for Franklin. After a while, Leatherface comes out chasing her with a chainsaw. She manages to run away from Leatherface, only to run past Franklin who is sitting helplessly in his wheelchair. Leatherface comes out of the dark woods with his chainsaw and kills Franklin with it, making it the first and only killing with the chainsaw. An interesting phenomenon that Leatherface would go on to become synonymous with the use of the chainsaw as a murder weapon becoming a staple in the horror genre. How is it that he was seen using the chainsaw only two times during the whole of the film and using his hammer to kill more people, but the chainsaw was the weapon that became synonymous with the character of Leatherface rather than his use for the hammer. It is mainly because of the sheer shock value it has in the film, being the most grotesque killing and with the film ending with him going crazy with the chainsaw in his hands. Becoming the most memorable scene in the whole film.

“Leatherface got to wield his power tool of choice twice more after the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974, with the first sequel not appearing until 1986” (Jonathan Ross, 1993. pp. 231).

Sally runs into a house; there she is confronted by an old man (Jim Siedow) she thinks is kind and caring. However, she soon figures out that the old man is a sinister person. He knocks her out and when she awakes, she sees the hitchhiker, Leatherface, the old man, and an even older man (John Dugan) who they explain is their grandfather, sitting around a table eating human flesh. She is terrified of what she is witnessing, being strapped to a chair and panicking. There is a jarring sequence of close-ups and eerie music and cuts to the revolting food that is on the table. The family of cannibals is mocking her while she is in a helpless position. They are talking about their grandfather and how proud they are of him for killing lots of people in his youth, him being the catalyst for the family’s horrible behavior, here the audience gets exposure about who Leatherface is and why he is this maniac who is all about killing, and it is his family that made him this way, they told him that his face is too disfigured that he always have to wear a mask, so he wears the skin of his previous victims, this is proven to be inspired by the serial killer Ed Gein (Chris Sun 2018).

After the family keeps rambling on about their life and how horrible they are. Sally manages to loosen herself from the chair and makes a run for it, the family shouts at Leatherface that he needs to go after her. When she is running out of the house, she stumbles upon two corpses that are in wheelchairs symbolizing their liking for disabled people. Sally manages to run out of the house while Leatherface is right behind her with the chainsaw in full gear. She runs out to the street to stop a truck and seek help; the driver stops and tries to help the girl only to see Leatherface coming behind her that is when he starts to run as well. Leatherface trips and cuts his leg with the chainsaw, the driver gets back in the truck and drives away. Sally manages to stop a pickup car and jumps into the back barely escaping Leatherface’s chainsaw teeth. That is when the iconic scene of Leatherface spinning around with the chainsaw comes into play and Sally is finally saved. In the end, when Sally manages to get out, does Leatherface become a sort of whimsical freak? He starts as a monster and then gradually becomes this freak who did not get his way in the end so he “freaks” out spinning around. How Max Horkheimer and Theo Adorno coined the enlightenment logic “the disenchantment of the world” produces teratology, the science of monstrosity that eventually tames and rationalizes the wondrous freak (Rosemaria Garland Thompson, 1996. pp. 4)

Bibliography

1. CHURCH, David Ryan. 2008. Freakery, Cult Films, and the Problem of Ambivalence. San Fransisco State University.
2. THOMPSON, Rosemarie Garland. 1996. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. NYU Press.
3. KIDD, Dustin. 2014. Pop Culture Freaks: Identity, Mass Media, and Society. Westview Press.
4. SUN, Chris. 2018. ED. Source Point Press.
5. ROSE, James. 2013. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Auteur.
6. DAVIES, Helen. 2015. Neo-Victorian Freakery: The Cultural Afterlife of the Victorian Freak Show. Palgrave Macmillan.
7. SEXTON, James and Ernest MATHIJS. 2011. Cult Cinema: and Introduction. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
8. ROSS, Jonathan. 1993. The Incredibly Strange Film Book. Simon & Schuster.

Filmography

1. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (1974). [film] Directed by Tobe Hooper. Bryanston Distributing Company.
2. The Last House on the Left. (1972). [film] Directed by Wes Craven. Crystal Lake Entertainment.
3. Eraserhead. (1977). [film] Directed by David Lynch. American Film Institute.
4. Night of the Living Dead. (1968). [film] Directed by George A. Romero. Universal Studios.
5. Shivers. (1975). [film] Directed by David Cronenberg. Telefilm Canada.