Tracing back the ancestry of the manical murderer through horror film and fiction, from the mad axemen of macabre cliche, to the franchise slashers of the video era, and the suave homicidal geniuses found in modern TV box sets, we look at how much such - purportedly realistic - monsters were grounded in reality, and whether the antics of flamboyant fictional mass killers have ever inspired actual atrocities. Finally, exploring the twilight zone between fact and fable, we look at how far horror fiction has influenced how we the general public, law enforcement experts - and even the perpetrators themselves - look at the ultimate crime, from Cain onwards.
