JIM THOMPSON'S 'THE KILLER INSIDE ME' COMING SOON

If you dug film version of Jim Thompson's "The Grifters," "The Getaway" and "After Dark, My Sweet" get ready because the tough guy scribe's 1952 pulpy novel "The Killer Inside Me" is heading towards movie screens in a 2010 film starring Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson and directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Affleck stars as a seemingly vapid small-town sheriff deputy Lou Ford with Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson as the women in his life. Also popping up in the film is Ned Beatty, Bill Pullman and Elias Koteas.

Here's the plot via Wikipedia:

"The story is told through the eyes of its protagonist, Lou Ford, a 29-year-old deputy sheriff in a small Texas town. Ford seems to be a regular, small-town cop leading an unremarkable existence. Beneath this facade, however, he is a cunning, intelligent and depraved sociopath. Ford's main coping mechanism for his dark urges, however, is the relatively benign habit of deliberately needling people with cliches and platitudes despite their obvious boredom: "If there's anything worse than a bore," says Lou, "it's a corny bore.

Despite having a steady girlfriend, Ford falls into a sadomasochistic relationship with a prostitute named Joyce Lakeland. Ford describes their affair as unlocking "the sickness" that plagued him during his teen years: he'd sexually abused a young girl, a crime for which his elder brother Mike took the blame to spare Lou from prison. After serving a jail term, Mike died on a construction site. Lou blamed a local construction magnate for the death, suspecting Mike was murdered.

To exact revenge, Lou and Joyce blackmail the construction magnate to avoid exposing his son's affair with Joyce. However, Lou double crosses Joyce: he ferociously batters her, and shoots the construction magnate's son, hoping to make the crimes appear to be a lovers' spat gone wrong. Despite the savage beating, it's revealed that Joyce survives -- in a coma.

Ford builds a solid alibi and frames other people for the double homicide. However, to successfully frame others when the evidence starts to go against him, he has to commit additional murders or induce further deaths. But these only increase suspicion until the local authorities begin stripping away his mask of sanity. Then he reveals to the reader the full nature of the inner demons that drive his criminal behavior.

Trivia: In 1976, the novel was adapted into a film of the same title, with Stacy Keach as Lou Ford directed by Burt Kennedy.

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