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You may not know it, but right around the corner is Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (out this Friday, the 28th), and because it looks as promising a good time as watching Race to Witch Mountain on family movie night (draaaaaag!), I figured I’d provide a list that keeps the killer theme but delivers at least a hint of entertainment (and it may or may not, but it won’t cost you $9.25 to find out).

Yet, as is typical, I feel compelled to lay down some ground rules, seeing as how some consider the shark in Jaws to be a serial murderer: Any inclusion on this list has to 1) be—or have been (Freddy, Jason)—a human; and 2) kill to appease his or her psychological need, and not because it is his or her job or he or she benefits financially from it, or because he or she has to do so for survival (i.e. vampires). In case you’ve continued reading this far before scrolling downward, I’ll tell what you already knew: Below is Part I (nos. 36-20) of the 36 Best Serial Killers of Cinema. It does include spoilers, so read at your own risk.

36. Clara Calamai as Marta/Martha in Deep Red (1975)

Italian cult horror director Dario Argento followed his unpopular 1973 film The Five Days with this achingly colorful, often hilarious (but equally startling) thriller, which traces a series of opulent murders the way only Argento could. Though we know very little about the killer once unveiled, we’ve seen enough of her work to know that she’s exceedingly creepy, illogically strong and agile for her age (she’s roughly 60 years old), and definitely one of the best additions to cinema’s ever-expanding pantheon of habitual murderers.

35. Frank Giering and Arno Frisch (’97 Austrian version)/Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt (’08 U.S. remake) as Peter and Paul, respectively, in Funny Games

Whether you’re watching Michael Haneke’s original version or his own frame-for-frame remake, Peter and Paul, two seemingly gentle, soft-spoken friends of George’s family’s neighbor, go from welcomed houseguests to every family’s worst nightmare quicker than Uwe Boll conceives a hopeless thought: They destroy the house and all of the phones in it, then psychologically (and otherwise) torture and victimize their helpless captives.

34. Terry O’Quinn as Gerald “Jerry” Blake in The Stepfather (1987) and The Stepfather II (1989)

Director Joseph Ruben has no intention of hiding his killer behind a cat-and-mouse story. Viewers are given their target of hatred right away, and he’s dispassionately rinsing blood from his hands and face in front of a bathroom mirror in The Stepfather’s opening sequence. As Jerry Blake walks out of the bathroom and through his home’s corridor, Ruben makes sure to capture the bodies of Blake’s former family so as to quill the over-thinkers’ cloying suspicion of a cinematic mirage. As Blake moves out, he moves right back in…with another family, soon to be dead.

33. Sissy Spacek as Holly and Martin Sheen as Kit in Badlands (1973)

The feature-length debut of Terrence Malick, one of my personal all-time favorite filmmakers, is based on the relationship between—and crimes of—real-life spree killers Charles Starkweather and his teenaged girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, depicted in Badlands as Kit and Holly. Spacek narrates via voiceover, explaining both her romance with Kit and his (and their) violent behavior, with disturbing innocence—and it makes for a lingering effect.

32. William McNamara as Peter Foley in Copycat (1995)

There are only so many ways to kill someone, yeah? And murder has been going on for hundreds of years, yeah? So by the time the ’90s rolled around, no murder had a chance at being unique, right? So what’s a killer to do? How about this: Imitate the methods and signatures of the most notorious mass killers in history. Well that’s precisely what Peter Foley does in Copycat—and he executes his crimes with intimate dexterity.

31. Philippe Nahon as “le Tueur” (the Killer) in High Tension (2005)

Until the unfathomable twist, Nahon’s ruthless murderer, dressed as a grease mechanic, kills each member of Alex’s family—using all of the heartiest, classic methods and weapons—and then bounds her and throws her into the back of his tool truck. From that point on, explaining his panache for bloodletting would be unkind for those interested in watching Alexandre Aja’s French slasher, High Tension. I will say this: After displaying admirable resourcefulness during the film’s first three quarters, he gets a bit grittier with his choice of weaponry. And it’s at once impressively graphic and historically memorable.

30. Tony Todd as the Candyman in the Candyman trilogy (1992, 1995, 1999)

Just because he has a swarm of bees in his open chest and can be summoned by a simple ritual (speak his name five times into a mirror) doesn’t mean he’s just a phantom. He was first a normal man. Then he was slaughtered for pursuing a forbidden love affair. Now he’s out to claim as many lives as he can, exploiting the biding curiosity of unfortunate souls. And he ain’t bad at doing so.

29. John Steiner as Christiano Berti in Tenebrae (1982)

As was the case in Deep Red (#36), director Dario Argento dons a smorgasbord of camera gimmicks in order to conceal the identity of his killer until the end of his movie. But the film’s main antagonist is eventually unmasked, by which time his acts have inspired a violent homage from a subsequent killer. Tenebrae is creative in its bloodshed, often entailing gushing throat-cuts and head-through-glass effects, both of which have been trademarks of Argento’s pictures. It was immediately banned in the United Kingdom and its U.S. theatrical version, whose release was delayed two years, was heavily cropped (even the title was changed).

28. Gunnar Hanson (’74 version)/Andrew Byrniarski (’03 remake) as Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Inspired by some of the details in the Ed Gein serial murder case (which was in Wisconsin, not Texas), both Tobe Hooper’s eerily organic groundbreaker The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Marcus Nispel’s less-effective modernization of the same name feature great physical performances by Hanson and Byrniarski as Leatherface, one of both independent cinema’s and the horror genre’s most iconic figures. Leatherface, who received a name (Thomas Hewitt) in the modern retelling, is the hulky killer of a conniving cannibalistic family.

27. Corbin Bernsen as Dr. Alan Feinstone in The Dentist (1996) and The Dentist 2: Brace Yourself (1998)

If you were to poll the percentage of people who feel uncomfortable at a dentist’s office, I’m sure it would be alarmingly high. But most dentists aren’t killers (I think…). Alan Feinstone is, however, and he hates everyone. After catching his wife in an affair, he seeks revenge. And that act of revenge eventually becomes a habit. Uh-oh. Brace yourself! (P.S. The sequel may not be worth your time, but its title is undeniably clever. For four-year-olds, yes, but clever no less.)

26. Ian Holm as Sir William Withey Gull in From Hell (2001)

The Hughes brothers’ assumptive take on the historical mystery of Jack the Ripper is a highly underrated excess of intellect and magnificent gore. And as the legendary serial killer, perhaps the world’s most infamous, Ian Holm is tremendous—at first inviting the trust of both his co-characters and the audience, then shocking the lot with his true nature, meticulous and overtly gruesome.

25. Betsy Palmer as Pamela Vorhees and various actors as her son, Jason, in Friday the 13th series (1980-)

At least one of these two have hunted and dispatched “bystanders” in a horror series that has spanned an unprecedented twelve films. Whether it’s Mrs. Vorhees punishing all the visitors at Camp Crystal Lake, where her son drowned, or it’s Jason himself, pulling girls from canoes or slaughtering scientists in space, the Vorhees family has accrued incredible distinction as one of the most murderous in all of world film. Then again, when a franchise’s antagonist is immortal, genre recognition and a massive cult following is to be expected.

24. Angela Bettis as May Dove Kennedy in May (2002)

May has been a socially repressed outcast her entire life, and has only ever found companionship in a doll her mother gave to her as a birthday gift. Now in the early years of adulthood, May lives by one axiom: “If you can’t find a friend, make one.” May takes this bit of advice, also a gift from her mother, slightly out of context, kills a slew of people she felt wronged by, and uses various parts of their corpses to “make” the “perfect” friend. Yuck!

23. Tobin Bell as John “Jigsaw” Kramer in the Saw I-III (2004-2006)

A cancer victim himself, John Kramer became the Jigsaw killer to “help” his victims appreciate their lives and rid themselves of harmful habits. But let’s not kid ourselves; Jigsaw had fun torturing his victims, despite doing so impersonally, and that’s why he did it. And audiences have had fun watching him teach life lessons, too. I remember I did. Once. But let’s not let the downward continuum of the perennial franchise take away from this snarky, manipulative mastermind—even if he embarrassingly tries to justify his doings.

22. Vincent D’Onofrio as Carl Stargher in The Cell (2000)

It’s not often that you get to literally enter the thoughts of a serial murderer. It’s even less often that the inner-mind of the killer you’re studying was conceived and designed by director Tarsem Singh. In The Cell, Carl Stargher’s murder-obsessed mentality is dressed up in excessive visual surrealism and drenched in unflinching intensity as well as obscurity. The product provides an even more disturbing understanding of D’Onofrio’s character, and the result of such proves him to be one of the most unique cinematic slayers in recent and distant memory.

21. Alan Arkin as Roat in Wait Until Dark (1967)

When moviegoers consider the depth of a killer’s evil, that evil is typically measured not by who is being hunted, but by how heinous the crimes of the predators are. A gang of criminals who prey on a blind woman would likely rank as “severe” on an evil-meter. In Wait Until Dark, Terence Young’s brilliant 1967 adaptation of the ’66 play, the evil of psychopath Roat qualifies for the aforementioned rank, as he leads a violent band of accomplices after a blind woman whom they suppose has in her home a valuable doll.

20. Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis and Matthew Lillard as Stu Macher in Scream (1996)

When director Wes Craven made Scream, his intentions were to utilize the genre’s most aggravating clichés for satire. And he accomplished that goal very smoothly. But, as he’s mentioned himself, he only began realizing that the film could be as scary as it was once his team finalized the Ghostface mask, which characters Billy and Stu shared between them at convenient times in order to rule themselves out of suspicion for a series of graphic murders haunting a small town on the ten-year anniversary of the Prescott murder—a case whose culprit was never identified. This kind of efficiency, when accessorized with that time-standing Halloween costume that defined ’90s’ horror, makes Billy and Stu two of the best serial killers in movie history.

Continue on to part two.  Before you go tell me why you agree or disagree with a killer’s spot on this list.