Sometimes movies get it right and sometimes they don’t. When it comes to depicting controversial life scenarios such as terrorism, tragedy or mental disturbance, there is an especially fine line between accurate and ridiculous. On this list are much talked-about movies that set the tone for depicting mental disorders. [WARNING: This list contains spoilers]

10 Disturbing Videos Of Violence And Insanity

10 Matchstick Men—2003

Nicolas Cage has some truly terrific films under his belt. One of these is the fantastic black comedy Matchstick Men, in which Cage plays Roy Waller, a con artist suffering from OCD and Tourette syndrome. Roy and his partner Frank swindle people out of their hard-earned cash by selling marked-up water filtration systems. When Roy unexpectedly suffers a severe panic attack, Frank convinces him to go to a psychiatrist.

Roy’s obsessive rituals include compulsive vacuuming and opening and closing a door three times before walking through it. He experiences extreme anxiety when people walk through doors without performing the ritual. Bright sunlight also exacerbates his Tourette’s symptoms. Pile on top of this extreme agoraphobia and you have an unforgettable performance by a theatrical actor. He embodies the personality of someone with extremely conflicted emotions, such as when he stares at his hand after a phone number has been written on it, or when his fourteen-year old daughter opens a beer and slugs it.

Nicolas Cage immerses himself in the role of Roy Waller, complete with facial tics and loud exclamations, virtually radiating anxiety and paranoia.^[1]

9 Betty Blue—1986

Betty Blue begins with an erotic, red-hot love affair between a man in his thirties named Zorg and 19-year-old Betty. Everything is great for a while until the two get into a heated argument and Betty smashes up their love shack.

She eventually burns it down after which the couple move to the outskirts of Paris. Betty’s temper keeps flaring and she even stabs a pizzeria patron with a fork. Meanwhile, Zorg is trying to get published but keeps getting rejected by publishers. He hides the rejection letters from Betty, but she finds one and slashes the face of the publisher.

Betty’s mental health continues to deteriorate throughout the film as she starts hearing voices, hacking off her hair, lures a young boy away from his mother and eventually gouges out her own eye. Then Zorg receives a phone call from a publisher who tells him he loved his manuscript and wants to publish his book. In a very dark twist, Zorg smothers Betty with a pillow, after which he returns home to finish the soon-to-be-published book.^[2]

8 We Need To Talk About Kevin—2011

When We Need To Talk About Kevin was released in 2011, it had the desired effect of getting people to talk about the movie. Based on a novel by Lionel Shriver, the film sets out to highlight the symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder and make people very uncomfortable at the same time.

It is clear right from the get-go that Kevin hates his mother, Eve, and it seems to be a reaction towards her resentment of him. She used to travel for work but now must stay home to be mother to a son that can’t stand her. Kevin continually acts out, notably when he pours drain cleaner onto his sister’s face, causing the six-year-old Celia to lose an eye.

The movie takes a dark turn when Kevin, at the age of fifteen, murders both his sister and father with a crossbow. He then proceeds to lock several students into his high school’s gym and murders them as well. Kevin is locked up in juvenile prison and diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder. Although the movie never explicitly uses the term ‘psychopath’, it is clear that Kevin’s behavior is psychotic with a violent outlet.^[3]

7 Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte—1964

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a psychological thriller that stars Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. Davis plays Charlotte Hollis who plans to marry her already married lover, John Mayhew. John is brutally murdered shortly after a confrontation with her father and Charlotte discovers his body in the summerhouse. Everyone assumes Charlotte is the murderer while she is convinced it was her father.

Skipping to 1964, Charlotte is a wealthy old maid whose mental health is failing her. She displays all the characteristics of a person slowly losing their mind. She drifts between sanity and insanity, including hallucinations, based on her immediate surroundings and it is fascinating to watch.

After her cousin, Miriam (played by Havilland), moves in with her, Charlotte starts hearing a harpsicord playing a song John wrote for her and is haunted by John’s severed head. When Charlotte discovers Miriam has known all along that John’s wife murdered him and has been blackmailing her for years, she kills her. At the end of the film, when Charlotte is being driven away to an asylum, an envelope is handed to her containing John’s wife’s confession to his murder.^[4]

6 Gaslight—1944

Gaslighting is not a new term in 2020. It was coined when the movie Gaslight first graced the silver screen in 1944. In the movie, a husband cunningly manipulates his wife to the extent that she starts believing she is going insane. After charming her into marrying him, he slowly isolates her from the world, sets up situations where the lighting is unexpectedly dimmed, and objects disappear and reappear. He eventually succeeds in convincing his wife of her own insanity.

The twist to this story is that the wife, Paula, is not the one with the mental disorder. Her husband, Gregory, is and displays many of the characteristics of a psychopath. The movie intensely and accurately depicts the lingering effects of gaslighting when in its final moments Paula still isn’t sure of what is real and what isn’t and suspects that the knife in her hand might just be a figment of her imagination.^[5]

10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Hit Cult Movies

5 Black Swan—2010

Black Swan follows the life of a ballerina named Nina, played by Natalie Portman, who finds herself having to compete for a part in a production of Swan Lake. Her competition comes in the form of Lily, a newcomer played by Mila Kunis.

Nina has a dysfunctional relationship with her narcissistic mother and has psychological problems causing her to self-harm. However, the movie’s portrayal of Nina’s psychotic breakdown makes it difficult to ascertain which of her injuries are real and which are imaginary.

Nina is terrified all the time and as she suffers hallucinations that threaten the line between reality and delusion, it becomes apparent that she also suffers from obsessive compulsive behavior and an eating disorder. Natalie Portman does a fantastic drawing the viewer into her world and keeps them on the edge of their seats as she fights to maintain her sanity. Portman won the Oscar for best actress for her role in this gripping film.^[6]

4 A Beautiful Mind—2001

A Beautiful Mind is based on the life of John Nash, Princeton mathematician and Nobel Laureate, and was inspired by the bestselling novel by Sylvia Nasar.

Nash displayed symptoms of schizophrenia around thirty, suffering from delusions and paranoia. He was in and out of hospital as the years went by and didn’t always stay on his anti-psychotic medication.

In the movie, Nash is brought to life by Russell Crowe who does a great job portraying a character that is not always in control of his own mind and suffers paranoid schizophrenic hallucinations. He stops taking his meds because of the severe side effects and suffers a relapse which causes him to leave his infant son in the bathtub with the water running. His wife, Alicia, gets to the baby in time but realizes Nash has relapsed when he tells her his friend “Charles” was watching their child. Nash realizes at this point that the three people he keeps seeing do not actually exist. Yet he refuses to restart his medication regime and simply ignores the hallucinations. This seems to work and after being allowed to teach again, he finally wins a Nobel Prize in 1994. As he accepts his prize inside a Stockholm auditorium, his hallucinations appear again, and he sees three figures watching him. He refuses to let his illness win and just briefly glances at them before leaving the auditorium.^[7]

3 Psycho—1960

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was one of the most influential directors in film history. He gave the world memorable films such as The Birds, Dial M For Murder, Mr & Mrs Smith and of course Psycho.

While Psycho will always be remembered for the infamous shower scene, it is also considered to be one of the earliest slasher films and one of Hitchcock’s best efforts. Most critics agree that the Norman Bates character, played by Anthony Perkins, accurately and chillingly displays the symptoms of a person diagnosed with Dissociative Personality Disorder (DID).

Bates is unable to deal with his childhood trauma that saw him lose his father and killing his own mother, Norma. He develops DID so that he doesn’t have to deal with his extreme feeling of guilt.

He carries on conversations between his mother’s corpse and himself. His Norma personality is extremely jealous of any woman that Norman feels an attraction to and becomes violent enough to kill. When Norma completely takes over Norman’s mind, he dresses as her and satisfies her blood lust.^[8]

2 Joker—2019

Set in 1981, Joker takes the life of Arthur Fleck and turns it into a spiral of darkness and insanity. Joaquin Phoenix took on the role of Fleck and portrays a character who failed at being a stand-up comedian and eventually becomes a criminal struggling with mental illness.

Fleck lives with his mother in Gotham City and suffers from Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA) which causes him to laugh at inappropriate times. He is assaulted by three rich men who work for Wayne Enterprises and shoots them all. When the murders are condemned by mayoral candidate, Thomas Wayne, protests erupt in the city leading to social funding cuts. This causes Fleck to have to make do without his much-needed medication.

After learning that his mother lied about his adoption, he murders her and then proceeds to murder his co-worker, Randall. He also kills a talk show host for mocking his laughing disorder and comedy routine. Towards the end of the film rioters bust Fleck out of the police car he is riding in after being arrested and Fleck dances for the crowds while they cheer him on.

Joker earned itself 11 Oscar nominations and Joaquin Phoenix won the Best Actor award at the 2020 ceremony.^[9]

1 One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest—1962

The late Kirk Douglas turned Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest into a Broadway play. Kirk played the main character, RP McMurphy. His son, Michael Douglas, later produced the film along with Saul Zaentz. The movie was shot in an actual mental hospital in Oregon and Douglas roped in some excellent actors including Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito and Jack Nicholson.

The place is a melting pot of mental disorders, but it soon becomes apparent to the viewer that RP McMurphy is faking his insanity and instigates mayhem in the hospital to avoid being handed a custodial sentence. When he assaults a staff member, however, he receives electroconvulsive therapy as punishment. McMurphy’s arch enemy, Nurse Ratched, is eventually revealed to be conniving and manipulative.

The other ‘inmates’ include ‘Chief’ Bromden who seems to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and believes that Ratched is a machine and Billy Bibbet who has psychological issues stemming from his relationship with his mother and can’t stop stuttering. George Sorenson has an extreme dirt phobia, while Martini sees hallucinations all the time.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress.^[10]

Top 10 Greatest Movies Never Made

The insanity defense might be a popular trope in fiction, but it is actually used in less than one percent of court cases and has only a 25 percent success rate. Some US states don’t even allow it anymore, but despite all that, it has worked on occasion, as you are about to see.

To be clear, we are not saying these people faked their mental illnesses or that they deserved to go to prison. Just that they all avoided prison or even death sentences because they were certified too insane to be responsible for their actions or, in some cases, even to stand trial.

10. Roderick Maclean

Queen Victoria was a real die-hard, in the truest sense of the word, having survived no fewer than eight attempts on her life during her long reign. By far, the most bizarre incident came courtesy of Roderick Maclean, who wanted to kill the queen because she didn’t like his poetry.

On March 2, 1882, the Royal Train arrived at Windsor rail station and Maclean was one of the many spectators waiting to see the queen. But he wanted to do a bit more than to shoot a glance her way. As Victoria was making her way across the platform to a waiting carriage, Maclean pulled out a revolver and fired at her. The first shot missed and two Eton schoolboys tackled the gunman before he was able to fire again.

Maclean stood accused of high treason, the most serious charge in the land which carried with it a death sentence. However, he had already been medically certified insane before the assassination attempt. Therefore, the jury only needed a few minutes of deliberation to find him “not guilty, but insane.”

Roderick Maclean had evaded a date with the hangman’s noose, although he spent the rest of his life at Broadmoor Asylum. A short while later, the Trial of Lunatics Act 1883 was passed by Parliament, which changed the verdict for future similar cases to “guilty, but insane.” 

9. Jeffrey Arenburg

In 1995, Canadian hockey fans were left stunned when they found out that former NHL player Brian Smith had been killed while leaving the CJOH television station in Ottawa where he worked as a sports anchor. The killer was Jeffrey Arenburg, a man with paranoid schizophrenia who believed that broadcast stations were transmitting thoughts into his head. Arenburg had a history of threatening violence against these stations, having previously been convicted for attacking a radio employee.

On August 1, 1995, he went to the CJOH TV station armed with a 22-caliber rifle. He had no grudge against Smith personally, Arenburg later admitted as much, but the sportscaster was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The gunman recognized Smith as he was leaving the building and shot him in the head.

Arenburg was charged with first-degree murder but was found “not criminally responsible” due to his mental state and placed in a mental care facility where he spent the next decade of his life before being released.

8. George Roden

Everyone remembers the bloody siege at Waco, Texas, in 1993 when the ATF, FBI, and Texas law enforcement officers surrounded the compound of the Branch Davidians sect led by David Koresh. What many people might not know is that Koresh got the job of cult leader by usurping the previous guy, George Roden.

Roden was the son of the man who founded the Branch Davidians, Benjamin Roden. He lost his position as leader in 1987 following a shootout with Koresh and his followers. He then lost legal ownership of the property due to unpaid taxes which the Branch Davidians paid off themselves, who then named Koresh their new head honcho.

Two years later, Roden murdered his roommate, a man named Wayman Dale Adair, ostensibly because he believed that Adair had been sent there by Koresh to kill him. Roden was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the final years of his life in several mental hospitals. In 1998, Roden escaped from the Big Spring State Hospital in Texas but was found by the side of the road a few days later, likely dead of a heart attack.

7. James Hadfield

Just to preempt a few comments, we are not talking about James Hetfield, lead singer of Metallica, but James Hadfield, the guy who tried to kill King George III in 1800.

A former dragoon in the British Army, Hadfield had sustained multiple head injuries while fighting in the War of the First Coalition against France. After that, he began suffering from various delusions, including that he was the true King George, that he was the biblical character Adam, or that he was even the “Supreme Being.” As to why he wanted the king dead, Hadfield believed that his own death would save the world, but that it could not be done by his own hand. Therefore, killing the king would ensure a swift meeting with the executioner.

His “foolproof” plan failed on two counts. First, he didn’t kill the king. On May 15, 1800, George III attended a show at the Theater Royal. Hadfield shot at him in the royal box but missed and was quickly tackled by the crowd. Second, he was not sentenced to death. Hadfield was defended by one of the best lawyers in all the land, Thomas Erskine, future Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, who successfully used the insanity defense for his client and got him a permanent stay at Bedlam.

6. Izola Curry

Ten years before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray, the civil rights activist survived another attempt on his life at the hands of a woman named Izola Curry. 

And yes, we might as well mention the first thing people notice whenever they hear about her – Izola Curry was Black. Her animosity towards Dr. King and the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had nothing to do with race. Instead, she was a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered delusions that King and other civil rights groups all banded against her to cost her jobs and that they were, in her own words, “mixed up with the Communists.”

On September 20, 1958, the 42-year-old Curry attended a book signing by King at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem and, when she approached him, stabbed the civil rights leader in the chest with a seven-inch letter opener. She also had a gun on her, in case the blade didn’t get it done, but she was tackled to the ground before she could finish the job.

King was rushed to the hospital where doctors saved his life. The tip of the blade was resting on his aorta, and one cough or sneeze could have punctured it and caused him to bleed out. Meanwhile, Izola Curry was found not competent to stand trial and committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

5. Richard Dadd

Most people remember Victorian artist Richard Dadd for his paintings, particularly the ones involving fairies. However, many of those people might not be aware that Dadd did most of his work while incarcerated in two of England’s most notorious mental institutions, Bedlam and Broadmoor.

His problems started in 1842 when the 25-year-old Dadd embarked on a grand tour of Europe and the Middle East. While in Egypt, he suffered a personality change which, at first, was attributed to sunstroke. However, Dadd developed a delusion that he was the son of Osiris and that his actual father must have been some kind of demonic impostor. Back in England, Dadd murdered his father as the two went on a walk together. He tried to flee to France but was arrested in Paris after assaulting another man and sent back to England.

Dadd was certified a “criminal lunatic” and evaded a death sentence. Instead, he was committed to psychiatric hospitals where he spent the next four decades of his life, quietly working on his paintings.

4. Laura Fair

The case of Laura Fair was a highly publicized and controversial one because it had a lot of elements that still shocked 19th-century America whenever they were brought up in public: women’s rights, mental illness, extramarital affairs, and even menstruation. 

On the surface, it looked like a standard tale of revenge from a jilted lover. On November 3, 1870, 33-year-old Laura Fair boarded a San Francisco ferry and shot her married paramour, lawyer Alexander Crittenden, after finding out that he intended to leave town with his family instead of divorcing his wife and marrying her as he promised.

Her trial became somewhat of a media sensation. Her defense team claimed that the shooting was the result of temporary insanity caused by a severely painful menstrual cycle. They even brought in medical experts to testify, but the jury was more swayed by the prosecution who portrayed Fair as an immoral woman and a homewrecker. They found her guilty and sentenced to hang.

However, with the help of several prominent suffragettes who took up Laura Fair’s cause, her lawyers successfully appealed and got the first trial thrown out on the grounds that the way the prosecution portrayed their client prejudiced the jury. The second trial went in her favor as the jury found her innocent and Laura Fair became a free woman, one of the few people on this list who did not end up in a mental institution.

3. Daniel Sickles

Daniel Sickles was a Major General in the Civil War, later serving as a member of Congress and an ambassador to Spain. But before all of that, Sickles was also the first American to successfully use the “temporary insanity” defense after he killed his wife’s lover in broad daylight, right across from the White House.

Sickles’ wife Teresa was having an affair with lawyer Philip Barton Key II, the son of Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Then, on February 27, 1859, Sickles approached Key in Lafayette Square and shot him three times. Key died a short while later while Sickles surrendered peacefully.

The case seemed like a slam dunk. After all, Sickles confessed to the deed and plenty of people saw him do it. However, his top-notch defense team had other ideas. They not only argued that Sickles went temporarily mad upon discovering the affair, but that he acted justified to protect his wife’s honor. As his lawyer put it, “the death of Key was a cheap sacrifice to save one mother from the horrible fate.”

As it turned out, the jury agreed. They returned a verdict of “not guilty” after an hour of deliberation to the raucous cheers of the courtroom, who were now firmly on Sickles’ side. 

2. John Hinckley Jr.

John Hinckley Jr. earned worldwide notoriety on March 30, 1981, when he tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. He ended up wounding Reagan and three other men before being restrained and then attacked by onlookers.

The reason for his actions seemed to be an obsession with the movie Taxi Driver, specifically its young star, Jodie Foster. Hinckley started acting like protagonist Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro – talking like him, dressing like him, writing a diary like him, and developing a fascination with guns. He also began stalking Jodie Foster, even moving to New Haven, Connecticut while she was attending Yale. Although he never approached her, Hinckley wrote numerous letters and poems to Foster, but when these failed to make an impression, he decided he needed to do something more drastic – assassinate the president.

During his trial, Hinckley’s only chance was the insanity defense. Both sides argued in their favor. The defense diagnosed him with schizophrenia. The prosecution argued that his actions were clearly premeditated and came from a sound mind.

After much back and forth, the jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. He was institutionalized for almost 35 years before being released in 2016. His verdict caused a huge uproar in America and brought on the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 which made it much harder for this defense to be used during trials, while some states abolished it altogether.

1. Daniel M’Naghten

We finally arrive at the guy who started it all… at least in modern times – Daniel M’Naghten, a Scottish woodworker who tried to assassinate British Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1843 and ended up killing Peel’s personal secretary, Edward Drummond.

M’Naghten had developed paranoid delusions that he was being persecuted by the Tory Party because he voted for the opposition. His police statement after shooting Drummond said this:

“The Tories in my native city have compelled me to do this. They follow and persecute me wherever I go and have entirely destroyed my peace of mind. They followed me to France, into Scotland, and all over England; in fact, they follow me wherever I go. I cannot sleep nor get no rest from them…. I believe they have driven me into consumption. I am sure I shall never be the man I was. I used to have good health and strength, but I have not now. They have accused me of crimes of which I am not guilty; in fact, they wish to murder me. It can be proved by evidence. That’s all I have to say.”

M’Naghten’s legal team argued that their client had a case of monomania – an insane fixation on a certain issue or person – and that it was so severe that it eradicated his ability to tell right from wrong. The prosecution brought in two doctors of their own, but they also concluded that M’Naghten was insane, and therefore the jury found him to be not guilty by reason of insanity.

This set a legal precedent in British law history and the appearance of the M’Naghten Rule, which stated that, in order for a defendant to use the insanity defense, it must be proved that they were acting under a defect of reason caused by a “disease of the mind” which made them not understand the nature of their actions or that they were wrong.