10 Horror Movies With Nazi Villains

The premise quickly becomes untenable and the drama overheated, but this Stephen King adaptation has one thing going for it: it was the first collaboration between actors Ian McKellen and Bruce Davison and director Bryan Singer, who later made X-Men together.

Taken from a novella in King’s 1982 collection Different Seasons, Apt Pupil is powered by a simple idea: what if your neighbour was a Nazi war criminal? Brad Renfro plays the all-American teenager who uncovers the truth about “Arthur Denker” (McKellan), but instead of sharing the information he demands to be told stories about extermination camps and what it felt like to participate in genocide.

Sharing the stories has an effect on the old man: after trying (and failing) to kill a cat in his gas oven, Denker kills a homeless man who’d seen him posing in his Nazi uniform. He subsequently suffers a heart attack and calls Renfro who cleans up the scene and calls an ambulance, showing that a bond has formed between them.