The final twist in my recent flirtation with James Dean revolves around a grim episode in American history. It serves as a potent counterpart to our fascination with juvenile delinquents, which Dean epitomized. His allure lies also in the flip side of fame. His rebel without a cause was a two-edged sword. On one hand, he represented to us freedom. On the other, chaos and anarchy. His pain was our pain; we felt it. All of us. Whether we were good or bad, solid citizen or reprobate. He represented the misfit in us all.

While searching for images of James Dean for my earlier post (October 5th), I stumbled across pictures of Martin Sheen from the film Badlands. The movie was known to me, of course, but for some reason I had never seen it. I ordered it from Netflix. Badlands, directed by Terrence Malick, tells the tale of a handsome young garbage man, Kit, who suddenly goes on a killing rampage, taking with him his young teenage girlfriend, Holly, played with frightening froideur by Sissy Spacek.

Sheen’s character sees himself as a James Dean clone; even his girlfriend comments on his resemblance to the movie star on several occasions. Malick, (with Sheen, above) in directing the flick, underscores the comparison by having Sheen pose in certain stances reminiscent of Dean’s work in Rebel, Giant and East of Eden. The cinematography in Badlands is simply breathtaking, and the new restored DVD version shows it off in wrenchingly beautiful, vivid colors.

Even without the Dean likeness, Sheen’s performance in Badlands is mesmerizing. I only knew bits and pieces of Martin Sheen’s career, mostly from his work in Apocalypse Now (1979) and in an earlier, terrifying Outer Limits episode “Nightmare” (below) in which he plays a soldier sent to another planet, where he is brutally interrogated by sadistic aliens.

And of course I adored him in the ground-breaking 1972 TV movie That Certain Summer (which you can now enjoy in full on YouTube). Sheen also shone in a very early role in the 1967 cult classic The Incident, in which he played another Deanesque bad boy who terrorizes strap-hangers on a subway car. To see Sheen in Badlands is to glimpse what might have been if Dean had lived. But it was not to be. Even then, in the 70s, Sheen was already in his thirties, which might explain why he soon abandoned such roles. It was left to his two boys, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, to try and recapture that swagger and élan (to less than stellar effect).

Badlands, as any film or crime aficionado knows, was based on the true story of the first “spree killer,” Charlie Starkweather, who rampaged through Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958, killing eleven people for no better reason than he seemed to enjoy it. He started out by brutally killing his girlfriend’s mother and father and her two-year-old sister. The sadistic nature of how he killed them has haunted authors, law enforcement officers, and psychiatrists for years. Starkweather, whose grim name summed up his dark appeal, represented a new breed of slayer at the height of the juvie craze. He was ruthless, rapacious and totally callous. His blood lust is only hinted at in Badlands. (There’s a scene in the film in which Sheen lets two victims go free. In real life, Starkweather slaughtered them.)

Starkweather inflicted gruesome injuries on some of his victims after they were dead, sodomizing one victim with a knife. His 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, always claimed she was held hostage and had no part in the killings, although Starkweather later implicated her, calling her “trigger happy.” She was given a life sentence and was paroled in 1976. Starkweather, in a true example of swift justice, was electrocuted a year after his arrest. (From LIFE, below.)

Since his death, there has been a rash of books and films based on his life and his legendary rampage. I was surprised in researching him, just how well-known he really is. For some reason, his saga had slipped through the cracks of my consciousness. That might be because he was classified as a “spree killer,” rather than as a serial killer. But judging by the extent and cruelty of his crimes, the semantics seems rather pointless.

Some books claim that he was a social outcast who sought revenge against the world for having mocked him as a child. He had struggled with a birth defect that left him a cripple and he suffered from a severe speech impediment. Kids in school teased him mercilessly. Others looked at his stern upbringing or his job as a garbage collector for some understanding of why he went off. But despite dozens of doctors and experts analyzing the case, there has never been a satisfactory explanation. His case, like that of the two boys in Capote’s In Cold Blood, famous for the Clutter killings, can never be easily categorized. Such acts of violence and mayhem are beyond comprehension.

But the story lives on. Charles Starkweather, who fancied himself as James Dean, mimicking his pompadour, jeans, and leather jacket, and who was obsessed with the young star’s films, has become a cult figure himself, an icon of shame and horror. The first film to depict his story was The Sadist, a 1963 low-budget thriller starring Arch Hall, Jr. and a bevy of B-movie actors.

Hall, who was known for drive-in-style movies (most of which were directed by his father) gives a warped, ferociously over-the-top performance as Starkweather. It’s like watching a polished Twilight Zone episode in which one of Ed Wood’s stars suddenly appears, having stumbled in from the set of Jailbait. Yet, despite the hilarity of his bad acting and relentless grimacing, Hall’s sadistic menace works on many levels. It is a harrowing film, one of the first played out over real time, and made even more memorable by its very fine cinematography. It was Vilmos Zsgimond’s first feature.

Badlands followed in 1973. The obscure film Stark Raving Mad from 1983 was based on the case. Television did a version in 1993 called Murder in the Heartland with Tim Roth. Then in 1994 Oliver Stone took a stab at the story in Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson, below. Stone opened it up and gave it a madcap, nihilistic edge. Most people I know prefer Badlands. In 2004, a cheap indie appeared called Starkweather, that, judging by comments on IMDB’s forums, is one of the worst movies ever made.

What is my interest in all this? That’s a good question and I’m not sure I know the answer myself. It has something to do with why we like James Dean. Part of America has always been drawn to anti-heroes, to rebels without a cause. We may celebrate true heroes such as Daniel Boone, John Brown, or Audie Murphy in books, plays and film. But we fall in lust with our anti-heroes in a way that strikes me as uniquely American. Whether it’s John Dillinger, Scarface Capone, Freddie Krueger, the Sopranos or the Zodiac Killer, we flock to these evil-doers. It’s part of what makes us the greatest superpower on the planet, but also the place with the most serial killers and spree killers in the world.

The American Dream is also a nightmare. And while we may turn away in disgust from the actions of these so-called monsters, the crazies, we also turn back to get a closer look. James Dean, in his own peculiar, tortured way, reflected this duality. He inspired us, both the good and the bad — the Martin Sheens who strive to help save this planet and the Charles Starkweathers who yearn to bring it down.