Vitals

Casey Affleck as Lou Ford, diabolical deputy sheriff and sadistic sociopath

West Texas, Summer 1952

Film: The Killer Inside Me
Release Date: June 18, 2010
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Costume Designer: Lynette Meyer

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The trouble with growin’ up in a small town is everybody thinks they know who you are…

…begins Casey Affleck’s narration as West Texas deputy sheriff Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me, Michael Winterbottom’s 2010 adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel of the same name. Ford exemplifies a favorite Thompson trope: the amoral Southern lawman who masks his murderous, psychopathic personality behind a dim, folksy exterior; imagine Barney Fife was secretly Ted Bundy, and you’ve got Thompson’s novels like The Killer Inside Me and, my personal favorite, the darkly comic Pop. 1280.

The cinematic possibilties of this rich plot naturally brought Hollywood calling, beginning with 20th Century Fox optioning The Killer Inside Me shortly after its publication with Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe to star. Despite this dream cast, setbacks kept The Killer Inside Me out of production for two decades. It finally arrived on screen in 1976, just six months before Thompson’s death, with Stacy Keach now playing Deputy Ford and the action transferred to 1970s Montana.

But Burt Kennedy’s 1976 adaptation wasn’t enough. Quentin Tarantino and Dominic Sena showed interest in directing, with rumors of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt to star. When a more faithful adaptation of The Killer Inside Me finally premirered at Sundance in January 2010, it starred Casey Affleck—born 51 years ago today on August 12, 1975—as Lou Ford.

Given the mixed reception that followed it from Sundance to its limited theatrical release in June, your mileage may vary on The Killer Inside Me. Some were too understandably disgusted by its gruesomely graphic depiction of violence against women to see any merit, while others praised its style and mise-en-scène that brought post-World War II Texas to dusty life: a world of cowboy hats, heavy steel-bodied cars with bullet-shaped grilles, and a Western-swinging soundtrack featuring Bob Wills, the Farr Brothers, and Spade Cooley. (Cooley’s inclusion is a darkly fitting choice, given how the singer’s brutal 1961 murder of his wife echoed Lou Ford savagely beating Joyce Lakeland.)

Lou meets Joyce (Jessica Alba) at the start of The Killer Inside Me, driving out to her cottage on the outskirts of Washita County to intimidate her into slowing her prostitution business. She physically fights back, instigating a sexual-sadomasochistic relationship that complicates his ongoing romance with local schoolteacher Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson). Their belt-on-bare ass dynamic awakens the sociopathic Lou’s darker side as he begins “needlin’ people”, enveloping himself in a fatal blackmail scheme with local construction magnate Chester Conway (Ned Beatty) and his meathead son Elmer (Jay R. Ferguson), who happens to be one of Joyce’s clients.

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What’d He Wear?

Washita County deputy sheriff Lou Ford doesn’t wear a traditional police uniform, instead maintaining a standard duty look with clean white shirts, skinny ties, and plain slacks with his badge worn on the left side of his belt—always accompanied with the appropriately Texan affectations of his cowboy hat and boots, both of which he also wears off-duty with sports shirts and dark jeans. (One of Affleck’s screen-worn shirt, tie, and trouser combinations was auctioned after the production, though the Movie Prop Warehouse’s listing doesn’t include any detail beyond a few photos.)

Lou often pulls on a charcoal-blue gabardine twill windbreaker in a style that grew increasingly common through the 1940s and ’50s with the rise of golf-informed sportswear. This waist-length blouson has a straight-zip front up to a shirt-style collar, slanted front pockets, and a shirred back collected under a straight yoke. The set-in sleeves close over the cuffs through one of two buttons, and the hem is partially elasticized.

While on the job, Lou exclusively wears a white cotton shirts, tailored with a close fit that feels more contemporary to the late 2000s than the full yet flattering shirts of the early 1950s. The shirt’s styling otherwise echoes contemporary conventions that have changed little over three quarters of a century in menswear design: a spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs.

Lou favors narrow ties with subtle Deco-inspired designs against a solid ground, beginning with a thin swath of light cornflower-blue grenadine silk detailed in the center of the blade with short light-blue and navy-blue sprigs darting up out of a narrow gray line.

His next tie, worn for Joyce’s beating and Elmer’s murder, has a mustard-golden ground and a spaced-out column of four navy-framed beige rectangles up the blade.

As things close in on the devious deputy, he wears a darker olive-brown silk tie with long, narrow beige rectangles spaced out along it.

Lou typically wears plain trousers with a medium-high rise, belt loops, and pockets. He book-ends the movie in a set of dark charcoal-blue worsted flat-front slacks; these are not orphaned from his navy suit, as those trousers are pleated with dropped belt loops. These belt loops are positioned flush against the top of his waistband, where he wears his usual thick brown woven leather western-style belt made by Nocona, an appropriately Texas-based leatherware company that started crafting boots in 1925 before adding belts to their lineup in 1968. The belt has a shining gold-toned single-prong squared buckle.

Like his shirts, the trousers follow styling queues still typical today with their slightly slanted side pockets and jetted back pockets. Only the turn-ups (cuffs) are more specific to the early ’50s, though of course not uncommon today either.

As the investigation continues, Lou briefly goes tie-less when he steps out with county attorney Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker) in an open-necked white shirt tucked into stone-colored flat-front trousers. These have slightly wider belt loops and legs that are straight through the thighs before tapering down to plain-hemmed bottoms that still fit cleanly over his boots. They otherwise follow the usual style beats with slanted side pockets and jetted back pockets, with a button through the back-left pocket.

A Texan lawman maintaining his good ol’ boy image wouldn’t be worth anything without his boots, so Lou completes the image with ever-present brown leather cowboy boots. Covered by his trouser legs, the calf-high shafts are decoratively stitched with a straight top and pull tabs on each side, while the pointed toes are detailed with the typical bug-and-wrinkle stitching over the instep.

When Lou ends his relationship with Amy, he wears light-gray worsted trousers with a dash of iridescence to the cloth. Rather than a clean flat front or pleats, each side of the front is shaped by a dart, which is “essentially a pleat that is sewn shut” according to Matt Spaiser for Bond Suits. Rigged with his usual belt loops, side pockets, and back pockets, these trousers also have cuffed bottoms with a full break.

Under his clothing, Lou invariably wears the mid-century undershirt of choice—plain white cotton crew-neck short-sleeved T-shirts—and gray multi-toned plaid cotton boxer shorts.

Lou’s silverbelly felt hat follows a low cattleman’s-style profile, simply detailed with a narrow beige grosgrain silk double-band, knotted on the left side of the crown, and a matching grosgrain trim along the brim’s edge.

Lou wears a plain steel mechanical watch of a style very common to the early 1950s. The beige “pie-pan” dial is marked with gold-applied baton-style non-numeric hour indices and matching gold hands, and the bracelet is a steel expansion band.

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The Car

Lou Ford patrols the fictional Washita County in the sheriff department’s cream-colored 1952 Ford Customline Tudor Sedan, marked up with “SHERIFF” decals badged on both doors. ’52 was the first model year for the mid-level Customline, which Ford positioned between the premium Crestline and above the entry-level Mainline. Body styles ranged between two- and four-door sedans, plus a two-door Club Coupe and four-door station wagon.

The base 215 cubic-inch inline-six engine generated 101 horsepower while the 239 cubic-inch “flathead” V8 boosted output to 110 horsepower. Both engines could be mated to either a three- or four-speed manual or Borg Warner’s three-speed Ford-O-Matic automatic transmission.

The Customline remained virtually unchanged from 1952 through 1954, aside from a larger six-cylinder engine and new two-door wagon added for ’54. Like other Fords, it was redesigned for the 1955 model year with a longer, lower, and wider body that split off the wagons into their own series. The model was discontinued after 1956 as Ford consolidated its full-size passenger cars into the Fairlane and Galaxie models.

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The Gun

Lou Ford reinforces his nonviolent image by not carrying a firarm, though Joyce’s nickel-plated “Saturday night special” pistol becomes central to his murder gambit. The white-gripped weapon appears to be a Lorcin L-25, an extremely anachronistic choice as the Lorcin Engineering Company wouldn’t even be established until nearly four decades after the film’s early 1950s setting.

The Lorcin Engineering Company was founded in 1989 by Jim Waldorf, a childhood friend of Raven Arms founder George Jennings’ son Bruce. Lorcin produced small, inexpensive pistols chambered in .22 LR, .25 ACP, .32 ACP, .380 ACP, and 9x19mm Parabellum, made from cheap injection-molded zamak alloy frames. Though it became the top pistol manufacturer in the United States within four years of its founding, Lorcin suffered from quality issues, notoriety through its frequent use among criminals, and a wave of at least forty lawsuits that shut the company down in 1998 after less than a decade in operation.

Joyce’s L-25 is chambered for .25 ACP (6.35x16mmSR), an anemic round that was still popular civilian self-defense ammunition through the early 20th century to the extent that Ian Fleming had armed James Bond with a .25-caliber Beretta in his first few novels before settling on 007’s more familiar—and more powerful—Walther PPK. (Interestingly, a shot of Ford actually firing Joyce’s handgun also seems to swap it out for a nickel-framed PPK.)

The Lorcin’s old-fashioned aesthetics suit the bill for an old-fashioned pocket pistol, though more era-correct choices would have been a Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket, FN “Baby Browning” M1906, or even a Fleming-approved Beretta 418.

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How to Get the Look

As the 1950s small-town Texas answer to Patrick Bateman, Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford has an image to uphold so he can continue his psychopathic proclivities; he appoints the requisite cowboy hat and boots to his daily attire of clean white shirts, narrow ties, and plain slacks held up with a woven western-style belt with his badge affixed to it.

• Charcoal-blue gabardine twill windbreaker with shirt-style collar, straight-zip front, slanted side pockets, adjustable button cuffs, and semi-elasticized waist hem
• White cotton shirt with spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Narrow vintage silk ties with subtle Deco-style designs
• Dark charcoal-blue worsted flat-front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Brown woven leather western-style belt with gold-finished single-prong buckle
  • Nocona
• Brown leather cowboy boots with decoratively stitched calf-high shafts, bug-and-wrinkle instep stitching, side pull tabs, and raised heels
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeved undershirt
• Gray plaid cotton boxer briefs
• Silverbelly felt low cattleman’s-style cowboy hat with narrow beige grosgrain silk band and edges
• Stainless steel mechanical watch with beige pie-pan dial, gold non-numeric hour indices and hands, and steel expansion band

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and Jim Thompson’s source novel.

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The Quote

We’re kind of old-fashioned. Out here, you say “yes ma’am”and “no ma’am” to anything with a skirt on. Out here, if you catch a man with his pants down, you apologize… even if you have to arrest him afterwards. Out here, you’re a man and a gentleman or you aren’t anything at all, and God help you if you’re not.