The Art of Crime

3,700 km of coastline, a Fiat 1100, and an old travel diary, those are the ingredients for Pepe Danquart’s documentary. Following the footsteps of the great Italian thinker Pier Paolo Pasolini, the filmmaker gains a deep insight into the social reality of present-day Italy. The country is massively affected by globalization, migration and the phenomenon of mass tourism, which, more than ever, is characterised by the same hedonistic conformity that Pasolini lamented more than fifty years ago. Ahead of me the South is a poetic contemporary document, a kaleidoscopic picture of the Italy of today.

A surgeon discovers that he can restore the beauty to his girlfriend's scarred face by murdering other women and extracting fluids from their pituitary gland. However, the effects only last for a short time, so he has to kill more and more women. It is ultimately a killing spree which ends with considerable death and disaster.

A lady ringmaster milks the publicity from a string of murders.

The lust for gold and the reading of a will brings eleven visitors to a remote island retreat, but an unseen, seemingly unstoppable evil follows to stalk them one by one. The bodies don't stop dropping until the final shattering conclusion. Who - or what - is the intruder? One thing is for certain: it will not stop until it kills them all.

When two young lovers are savagely beaten and tortured on a back country road in Texarkana, local police are baffled and must find "the Phantom Killer" before he can kill again.

In 1957, Dorothy and Edmund Yates were committed to an institution for the criminally insane, she for acts of murder and cannibalism and he for covering up her crimes. Fifteen years later, they are pronounced fit for society and released. However, in Dorothy's case the doctors may have jumped the gun a bit. Edmund and eldest daughter, Jackie, try to discover just how far Mother's bloodlust has taken her. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Debbie begins to explore the crazy roots of her family tree as fully as possible.

A madman is on the loose... killing fashion models that appear on the cover of magazines. The police start a manhunt in an attempt to capture the killer.

After her prostitute mother and her john are beaten to death while they are asleep in bed, teen-aged Ellie Masters is sent to an isolated orphanage run by a mysterious woman and her handyman, both whom she comes to suspect are hiding dark secrets.

A troubled young girl goes to confession at the local church. Unfortunately, the sexually frustrated priest she confesses to becomes obsessed with her. At first, the priest stalks the girl, but later it is revealed that he will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, just to get close to her.

A singer holes up at a sinister estate to write new songs for his act. His ex-wife is brutally murdered, and the killer may be stalking him next.

Trapped in a cave, five men cut the arm off of another companion in order to ward off starvation. After they are saved, their victim seeks revenge on them one by one.

An axe murderer is loose in a small New England town.

The twisted tale of Caleb, and his alter ego Lester. After being pushed around too far, Caleb transforms into Lester and returns to those who have wronged him.

Four girls go on a romping weekend at a lake, and have car problems on the way home. A nice local boy takes them back to his farm, where he lives with his father. Something ghastly happens, but the father helps his son as he has in the past. When the boy meets a girl and begins falling in love, the father worries about a repeat performance.

A disturbed boy kills his father with his farm tractor and his arm is mangled in the process. He's taken to a mental hospital where he's outfitted with a hook to replace his lost hand and, years later, he's eventually released from the asylum. He returns home to find his mother has remarried, which sets him off on a murderous rampage.

Thirteen women who were schoolmates ask a swami to cast their horoscopes. The news they receive is not good for any of them.

An elderly heiress is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field, complicated by some teenagers who decide to camp out in a dilapidated building on the estate.

When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother.

Loner Mark Lewis works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen, the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making.

Nerdy Walter Paisley, a maladroit busboy at a beatnik café who doesn't fit in with the cool scene around him, attempts to woo his beautiful co-worker, Carla, by making a bust of her. When his klutziness results in the death of his landlady's cat, he panics and hides its body under a layer of plaster. But when Carla and her friends enthuse over the resulting artwork, Walter decides to create some bigger and more elaborate pieces using the same artistic process.