Ripped from the Headlines! cover art

Ripped from the Headlines!

The Shocking True Stories Behind the Movies' Most Memorable Crimes

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Ripped from the Headlines!

By: Harold Schechter
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
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About this listen

Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films.

The necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy; Chicago’s Jazz Age crime of passion; the fatal hookup in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; the high school horrors committed by the costumed slasher in Scream. These and other cinematic crimes have become part of pop-culture history. And each found inspiration in true events that provided the raw material for our greatest blockbusters, indie art films, black comedies, Hollywood classics, and grindhouse horrors.

So what’s the reality behind Psycho, Badlands, The Hills Have Eyes, A Place in the Sun, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Dirty Harry? How did such tabloid-ready killers as Bonnie and Clyde, body snatchers Burke and Hare, Texas sniper Charles Whitman Jr., nurse-slayer Richard Speck, and Leopold and Loeb exert their power on the public imagination and become the stuff of movie lore?

In this collection of revelatory essays, true-crime historian Harold Schechter takes a fascinating trip down the crossroads of fact and fiction to reveal the sensational real-life stories that are more shocking, taboo, and fantastic than even the most imaginative screenwriter can dream up.

©2020 Harold Schechter. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Art Crime Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV Murder True Crime Entertainment Classics Film History

Critic Reviews

“The exploits of Depression-era homicidal sweethearts Bonnie and Clyde and the 1960s strangler who inspired the necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy are among the true stories behind many of cinema’s most famous crimes and criminals. Schechter, author of numerous books on serial killers, tracks the path from felony to film.” (Publishers Weekly)

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