Okay so we've all heard of fact based horror movies..but what about the movies that drive people to commit murder??? I recently watched an episode of American Justice where they were listing a number of disturbing (yet interesting) cases where people where driven to kill based on movies. A few of the cases stuck in my mind....


Scream -

A boy and his friend conspired to kill his mother and other family members based on killings in Scream I. The mother was found stabbed to death but the two boys were caught before they could kill again.

A teenage girl was arressted for stabbing and killing a girl during the actually screening of Scream.


Child's Play: Seed of Chucky -

This actually happened in Europe where two teenagers kidnapped a 2 year old and mutilated the child simliar to a killing in the movie.


Aaliyah's Ghost Blamed For Killing Spree-
Oct 10, 2003 - World Entertainment News Network
A man on trial for murder in Britain claims late R+B star Aaliyah's character in vampire movie Queen of the Damned visited him in his dreams and urged him to kill people.

Alan Menzies, who has admitted to watching the movie 100 times, is on trial for murdering his friend Thomas McKendrick.

Menzies, who has an anti-social personality disorder, claims tragic Aaliyah visited him in his bedroom and urged him to go on a killing spree in exchange for immortality.

A jury at the high court in Edinburgh, Scotland Wednesday found him guilty of murder and Menzies was sentenced to life in prison.


Silence of the Lambs.
Brian Allender admitted killing Cheryl Anne Joe in Vancouver in January 1992. He was convicted of first-degree murder after the jury heard he sought out a prostitute after watching the movie Silence of the Lambs, then beat her to death and cut out her sexual organs. (Appeal set in copycat killing, Toronto Sun, October 4, 1996)



Also Natural Born Killers, The Basketball Diaries, and The Matrix have inspired people to commit countless murders. Has anyone else heard of these incidents?

No....never heard of any of these murder cases with their related movies, but I will check into it. I'll see if I can add more to this list, as I'm sure there are tons out there.

What murders were caused by these movies? I've never heard of anything like this, but they're interesting.

These people would have murdered anyway or done something equally horrible. It's not the movies or the games or the media that matters, it's the person.

Yes, but if you watch something over and over and over again, like lets say 'Rambo: First Blood' and lets say you watch it every night for a year. You could quite possibly think to yourself that you have the technique and could believe to yourself that you are an unstoppalbe killing machine.

Now any sane person would stop, go over the logics at hand and know that:

A]. It was just a movie, a good movie....but again....just a movie.

B]. Watching a movie does not make a professional at anything, especially an elite killing machine like Rambo.

With that at hand these people are usually depressed or so over the edge that by the time they do these things, the movie was just basically the advice telling them it was a good idea. I mean any other person who watched Rambo: First Blood for 365 days would just be known as a extreme Rambo fan, the kind of person who knows all of Sylvester Stalone's dialoge.

But there are a few out there, usually people who are messed up mentally to begin with who see it as an answer or a suggestion. Like if Rambo can do it, so can I......

You are right, the person would do this crime regardlessly, but the movie, game or media does help fuel the fire as well....

I hope some of this makes sense....I'm second doubting myself if I should even post it now!!

NATURAL BORN KILLERS

The husband and children of Patsy Byers, shot in 1995 by Sarah Edmondson, will appeal if the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals rejects their case, attorney Joe Simpson said after arguments in the case April 10.

It is expected to be months before the 1st Circuit rules in the lawsuit against director Oliver Stone and others involved in producing the film.

Edmondson, who was 18 at the time, said she and her boyfriend, Benjamin Darras, had watched the movie repeatedly before setting out from Oklahoma.

In Mississippi, Darras shot and killed a businessman. In Louisiana, Edmondson used her father's gun to hold up and shoot Byers, a store clerk who later died of cancer.





Matrix films blamed for series of murders by obsessed fans

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday May 19, 2003
The Guardian


One of the attractions of The Matrix, the film whose sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, opens in Britain next week, was its blending of fantasy and reality. A series of murders in the United States suggests some people have been unable to distinguish between the two.
Josh Cooke, a 19-year-old in Oakton, Virginia, owned a trenchcoat like the one worn by Neo, the character played by Keanu Reeves in the movie, and kept a poster of his hero on his bedroom wall. Then he bought a gun similar to the one used by Neo to fight evil.


Article continues

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In February, he shot his father and mother in the basement of their home and then called the police. His lawyers say he believed that he was living inside the Matrix.
The theme of the films is that computers have taken over the earth, although some humans exist in a computer-simulated world, battling to save humanity. "He's just obsessed with it," Cooke's defence attorney, Rachel Fierro, told the Washington Post.

The local prosecutor, Robert Horan, said: "I don't think the movie causes violence. Millions and millions of people have seen it and not killed anybody." Cooke will now be examined by a psychiatrist.

The Matrix seems to have spawned other imitators. Last week in Ohio, a woman was found not guilty of killing the professor whose house she rented, on the grounds of insanity. Tonda Lynn Ansley, 37, said she had had dreams which turned out not to be dreams. The local prosecutor said that, "in her warped perception", the film played a part in the killing.

In San Francisco in 2000, Vadim Mieseges, 27, killed his landlady, Ella Wong, and pleaded not guilty on grounds of insanity. The police who interviewed him said he had made "reference to being sucked into the Matrix".

The young man accused of taking part in last year's sniper attacks in the Washington area has also cited the film.

"Free yourself of the Matrix," wrote Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, one of the two defendants, in his jail cell.


The kid in the DC sniper killings said that he watched the Matrix numerous of times before commiting the muders. I believe the kids that did the Columbine shootings watched The Basketball Diaries a zillion times. I don't want this to turn into a debate on how violence influnces youth. I just wanted to see if there where other cases of copycat murders.

that's true ,
the person has a choice and they decided to murder anyway , l think its lame that they blame media for what they did , like as if the media told them to kill someone

people and their stupid psychological problems. even though we are smart as a species we fall into some of the dumbest problems.

i think on some of these people were just looking for a scapegoat

Funny that Scream is listed on here. Reminds me of that quote (and I am paraphrasing here): "Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative."

Pretty much..
First of all, if you watch Rambo every day for a year that might be a sign of obsessive mental illness from jump street..
Seeing a violent movie might help an insane person to refine a method or plan an modus operendi; but the urge; the drive; and the ability to commit such an act already has to exist; and that runs a lot deeper than anything a movie or television show can inspire on it's own..
Why punish Hollywood for that?
Or do we let ourselves descend into an endless gray entertainment void where everything is banal and pleasant, and nothing ever challenges or pushes the envelope?
People who are disturbed will still commit murders despite that; and the rest of us will be bored to boot..

Movies that have driven ME to kill:

Britney Spear's "Crossroads"

I murdered 7 staff of the video store which rents this movie.


"Battlefield Earth"

I slayed 14 members of a scientology chruch hopng that one of them would be Tom Cruise.


"Titanic"

I killed myself for paying 8 bucks to see it.

Hey! It's my favorite solider! I haven't seen you for a long, long while!

It's not the moves that drive these people to murder, the instinct is in every last person. It doesn't matter if you are a peace lover or a soldier, it's the instinct to kill to stay alive. Most people can control that instinct, but every living thing has that instinct, even plants. Plants will compete for sunlight and vines will strangle trees in order to get it. True the movies can trigger people to go mad and kill, but if they can't control the instinct it's bound to happen at some time.

IMO - Devils Rejects.

Grusome, a twisted movie, i wished i didn't see it.

It seems to premote the idea of killing subliminally, with these crew of cool crazy cerial killers. Doing coke, woman, rockandroll.

IF you watch the movie, it will give you a diff perspective on things.

The Discussion Reminds of this a True Story from Tomslemen.com

You know Tom Slemen don't you??????????A Story Writer and teller from Liverpool, U.K


On his site there was a Story of a Rhyme Composer who after many years wrote a Rhyme ....It was publushed in Leading Newspapers......a Music Composer Composed it into a Musical Notation...Making it a Song.....The Song was Played on BBC Radio and Records where Sold.....But the Worst part was whoever listened to the Song most of them Reluctantly Killed ......Themselves....After many Deaths Reported BBC and Recording Agency Stopped the Transmission.....

The Composer Who wrote Rhyme Words.......His Wife Died because of that......



Please

^Im gonna check out Tomslemen.com,sounds weird.Never heard of him before?

I doubt it drove him to murder but apparantly Jeffrey Dahmer used to "get off" on the movie Exorcist 2,he even bought yellow contact lenses to look the part.

I remember a few kids have accidently hanged themselves whilst recreating a scene from Robin Hood,prince of thieves.
Clockwork Orange has had alot of contraversy with rapes,and murder allegidly recreated from the film.Talk about easily led!

Im sure theres loads more.
The influence that gangster films have on the kids these days make me wanna put a cap in someones ass,do a driveby and pour beer on the curb before I take a swig for my dead homeboys.
Glamourising gun violence etc.Bloody idiots.

I killed my entire family after watching Mariah Carey's Glitter...

Just how many people killed themselves rather than sit through the whole of the English Patient?

I might well consdier gouging anyones heart out with a spoon who insisted i watched a *Merchant Ivory* film..

Well every Uwe Boll film makes me wanna kill him even more, if that counts

So far he has destroyed House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne (no big loses) but if he makes Metal Gear...lock and load Mr. Boll

^^ dang i was gonna say that

people are always gonna blame movies

im sure thatt 50 cents movie is gonna be used as a scapegoat soon

or mabye the magic roundabout lol

I think if you're gonna kill, watching a movie won't change that, although I agree with some posters that some movies are so dire, they make me want to kill the people who made them !

J/k

Some movies I agree show macabre stuff that might push the unstable mind over the edge.

Recently, my cousin, who has Aspergers Syndrome stated he wanted to kill the neighbours dog because it was barking a lot and it was brown with white spots. ( seriously )

The human mind is an intriguing vessel.

It's funny, but I was always of the opinion that movies, games, television programmes, music etc, were not responsible for inspiring people to commit terrible acts. I always thought like others say, that they would probably have done it anyway.

However, after reading the beginning of this book from the snippet they have on Amazon, I am not so sure now as to how much of a role these things can play.

The book is called 'The Copycat Effect' by Loren Coleman and focusses on research that has been largely ignored in the mainstream. I haven't read the whole book yet as it's not available in the UK. May just get it off Amazon. Read the first few pages here.

Another case - don't know if anyone has heard this one: but in 2004, a 17 year old kid in England killed his 14 year old friend using a hammer, after obsessively playing 'Manhunt'. That is a seriously disturbed game, (I know, I've completed it), and it features these hammer executions.

And how many ppl kiilled someone because they read the Bible or the Koran?? And that includes several serial killers such as Britains *Yorkshire ripper*.. who decides what is and what isnt worthy of banning?

Yeh guys this guys right on childs play, aint you ever heard of jamie bulger search it on google very sad story 2 boys about 12 kidnapped a little boy from a shopping centre in manchester i think, took him to some train tracks and literally beat the crap outta him they saw it has a game of who could hit him harder and with what eg. bricks. Apparently he was so badly beaten he was unrecognisable to his own mother. It was revealed that a few days earlier they had watched childs play.

^^
That story always makes me want to be sick, I cant imagine it

I have heard a few stories about films driving people mad and turning them into murders, but I think that you have to be on the verge of turning mad to actually become mad from a movie

Although, after watching Saw, I did want to try the tripwire-shotgun thing

And here's another one from a different perspective.

Oldham England, several children were removed from their families becasue they were supposed to be suffering from *somekind of ritual abuse*. After several years it was discovered that , in actual fact, a rabid evengelical teacher at the kids school had, wholly fallaciously, decided that the kids were being abused after these particular ones started recounting tales they had seen in some cheap horror movie. Not having seen the movie and totally consumed by their own agenda, they, in conjunction with the local social services, ripped apart these families for no other reason than to *prove* a conspiracy that was wholly within their own sick minds.

I know this as my ex was involved in social work and a close friend of hers has studied the casenotes to this whole episode. They were of course never really published fully publically. They were not the only ones a similar thing happened to families living on the Scottish Islands where a another bunch of evangelical christians subverted the truth to seek to prove their own agenda.

A friend of mine walked straight off a scaffolding and killed himself when drunk *playing* the Three Musketers . I dont remember any of us calling for Dumas book to be recalled and banned from being published. Humans do many things, good and bad ,to suggest they did soley cos they watched some film is simple stupidity with a dressing of laziness. The reasons kids do things is quite obvious.... Kids dont have the same level of concience that adults do. How many people here made some kids life hell simply because they were different when they were at school?? How many kids will kill themselves because the are unmercilessly *bullied* mentally this year worldwide??

Yes kids don't have , by and large , the same inbuilt *stop mechanism* that adults do. So , given that, are you really suggesting that we dumb the whole world down to the level of a kid?? That we allow nothing that might possibly upset some disturbed kid to be released?

Blaming the ills of the world on a movie is a careless and slapdash way of abrogating responsibility for society spotting the signs that certain children are lacking in guidance on certain levels.

You cannot blame the movie for something as strong as killing, the person must be mentally unstable in the first place to let a movie make him wanna kill.

It is different though with the gangster rap stuff because that is the rappers telling kids to take on this lifestyle. I personally don't see how people get pissed off with a bit of blood in a movie, and let criminals rap racists songs on TV teaching kids to be criminals...

Of course some are going to search to blame, society is good at blaming everyone else for the turbulations of itself, to take responsibility would be too demanding.


Marilyn Manson was the supposed cause of how many suicides?
Much easier to blame him than society and peer pressure and then have to do something to fix it.

I'm waiting for the movie that would drive a person to kill Uwe...and then we'll crown the killer to be the new Messiah. And we'll watch "The Bold And The Beautiful"

Sounds like Monty Python's killing joke, remarkably funny!
"My dog hasn't got a nose."
"How does he smell?"
"Awful.."
hahahahaha DIE!

Movies that make you kill is a pethetic excusee that some dumba**es use because thats the only way out of jail for them (Plead insanity) or just make yourself look insane,


For those that belive in this cr*p, maybe you should watch Delta Force by Chuck Noris, and destroy all the terorist, or maybe watch a movie that talks about HELPING OTHERS INSTEAD OF HURTING THEM,

yeah how come we never see anyone on TV saying yeah i watched MR.Deeds so now i am going around giving my millions of dollars to my friends and strangers ????????????

WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THIS WORLD ???

You cannot say the media was directly to blame, they weren't exacly the brady bunch to begin with before witnessing these movies. What i do blame is the mental health services in these areas for not recognising a person who has difficulty with reality and a horror movie and to looking after such individuals. Allowing unstable people like these to watch media such as this is a bit like giving a safety-disabled full-clipped uzi to a cocaine feulled chimpanzee.

lol lol llol lol lol lol lol lol

A.I drove me to kill everyone at that theater, worst move ever