Half life
Spooky taste in films
Carole Morin
Most of the murderers who used to attend my Fun Film Club in Wormwood Scrubs are due to finish their sentences this year. Statistically, you're more likely to be murdered by someone you know. Of course, none of my murderers have any- thing against me, except they sometimes disliked my taste in films.
`You're sick,' Simon the murderer told me the night we sat in the screening room, within smelling distance of each other, watching an illegal video of Reservoir Dogs. `Can't we have something nice like Batman instead of all this shit about people being bad to each other?' Stupid Simon stabbed a woman he didn't know 36 times, on impulse, because she answered the door of her hotel room wearing a towelling robe; but watching Mr Blond cutting off an actor's ear gave him nightmares.
Elizabeth Hurley says of her celebrity in this month's Vogue, 'I expect the story would end very nicely if I was slashed to death in a motel.' Murder's much sexier as a perverse fantasy or Hollywood film than it is in real life. Actually being murdered wouldn't be as exciting as seeing it on screen — though I'm not volunteering to test my theory.
The muggers I know tend to pick people who look as though they deserve it, while most of the men who watched Mean Streets with me had murdered their wives. Women can be irritating, especially in the summer, but I hope if I ever get on Dangerous Don- ald's nerves he'll refuse to take me to Rio rather than chop me up and pack me in bin bags (like Dave the murderer), or strangle me with his bare hands — the most popu- lar illegal method of disposing of a particu- larly annoying wife.
As I walked through Regent's Park to the softball pitch on Sunday, men who looked like my murderers kept catching my eye. Is that stupid Simon over there by the ice-cream stand — or just someone who looks like him? The man kneeling down to feed the swans, could that be mad Matthew — the man who knows how to cut out a kidney without using anaesthetic? He explained the procedure to me the night the VCR broke down when we were trying to watch Taxi Driver.
Because murder's on my mind, I've been noticing homicide reports all week, the way you keep seeing blue cars when you've just bought one. There's a woman shot in her bath (hah, you're supposed to get knifed in the shower); a row about the copy-cat Brookside stabbing; and a large photo- graph of the Woolworth's killer. His pathetic face — bitter eyes, weak mouth and an awful complexion — is familiar. In the seductive darkness of the cinema, good-looking actors commit violent crimes of passion and profit. In real life, the mun- dane face of murder is sad, sordid and boring.
As I passed the bushes by the Open Air Theatre, it was impossible not to think about the young woman who was raped here last month during rush hour. Murder is final. Rape breaks your heart. Other people's pain hurts you more when you imagine it as your own. The sentimental murderers who used to attend my Fun Film Club will be as revolted as the next violent criminal by this rape. If the two disgusting rapists are caught, it's likely they will be given a morally inspired beating in some prison at some point. Because it's comfort- ing for murderers to know that there are worse things than strangling the wife.
After the softball game, as I lay on my oriental rug hyperventilating, two large sun-dazed beetles crawled out of the fire- place. At my request, Dangerous Donald bashed in their brains with the heel of my DKNY sandal.
The first murder I witnessed was a mouse that had just shared my lunch. 'Who are you talking to?' Maddie asked while she was touching up her lipstick. 'The wee furry-dragon who's helping me eat my sandwich,' I said. 1.111-huh,' she replied, admiring her mouth in the mirror. Sudden- ly she was on the table, screaming. Before you could say 'cheese sandwich', a madman with a hammer had come in and beaten the wee furry-dragon until it was a corpse.
• A little TCP, and the carpet's clean. See, no stain.
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