Short Essay on Murder Themes

The Arthur of the “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep: A Brief History of Child Murder In Cinema” believes that the movie’s success is related to the subject, types of characters and the presentation of torture and abuse scenes. He believes that the film that has subject of child murder and pedophilia is very hard to get success in the box office because it covers very sensitive issue and even the movie is handled sensitively results of box office is failure. However, some movie gets success in box office which does not include controversy and only mentions the child murder (not including dramatizing scenes and pedophilia).

 The film “In a Glass Cage” is a 1987 Spanish art house horror film directed by Augusti Villaronga in which an abused adolescent boy reveals his own darkest urge by taking place of his abuser. It contains torture, pedophilia and homosexuality.  In this film, the murder is shown in such a torturous way so that the movie was highly controversial and was even banned in Australia. This film relates to “M” film in terms of the similar subject serial killer and pedophiles and both film somehow includes Nazism; in M it shows some of the characters as Nazis and people preferring authoritarian leader as this film was released before the Nazis seizure of power, and “In a Glass Cage” it shows the ex-Nazi German doctor as the child abuser.

The film” Tenderness of the Wolves” is a 1973 German film directed by Ulli Lommel which is based on the crimes of German serial killer. In the movie a gay German informant for the local police who murders 70 adolescent boys. Also this movie does not show much violence but the frank depiction of pedophilia and eating and selling the victims body in the name of pork meat makes it a queasy movie. It is related to “M” movie as it is based on the real serial killer and pedophiles. Also both movie is filmed in German and shows the German social environment and does not present the torture or abusive scenes.