Stephen King once said of the novelist Jim Thompson: “He was crazy. He went running into the American subconscious with a blowtorch in one hand and a pistol in the other, screaming his goddamn head off. No one else came close.”

The same qualities that made his books so arresting - Thompson’s wildness and originality and dark, violent sexiness - also made him immensely appealing to filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick signed up Thompson in the 1950s, the author’s heyday, and Sam Peckinpah hired him in the ‘70s, near the end of his life.

But Thompson’s vision, though it seems made for Hollywood, is so singular that over the years it has proved remarkably resistant to movie adaptation. The two versions of his novel “The Getaway” - Peckinpah’s in 1972 and Roger Donaldson’s 1994 remake - are notoriously watered down. Burt Kennedy’s 1976 movie of “The Killer Inside Me,” starring a young and hunky Stacy Keach, is a mess.

Oddly, the best movie versions of Thompson so far have been by directors who are European: “The Grifters,” directed in 1990 by Stephen Frears, an Englishman, and the Frenchman Bertrand Tavernier’s 1981 film “Coup de Torchon,” an adaptation of the novel “Pop. 1280,” which many people consider by far the greatest of the Thompson movies.

Now Michael Winterbottom, another Englishman, hopes to join the list with his new version of “The Killer Inside Me,” which stars Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson. It opened in theaters in Great Britain on June 8 with a wider release around the world through October.

Kubrick called “The Killer Inside Me,” which came out in 1952, “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.” The book is arguably Thompson’s best and embodies many of the difficulties entailed in translating his work to the screen.

It’s the story of Lou Ford, a deputy sheriff in a small Texas town, seemingly bland and ineffectual, who turns out to be a compulsive and heartless killer. So, to begin with, there are scenes of creepy violence.

Like many Thompson novels “The Killer Inside Me” is told in the first person, and the narrative voice is as seductive and elusive as the one the killer uses to sweet-talk his victims. How can we believe a word he says? Robert Polito, Thompson’s biographer, explained in an interview: “Thompson isn’t like the writers he’s often compared to. He’s not like Hammett, Chandler, Cain. The books aren’t realistic. They’re much closer to phantasmagoria.”

Unlike Mr. Tavernier or even Mr. Frears, Mr. Winterbottom was at pains to make what he calls a “very literal film.” His rendering of the beating scene is so graphic that at early film festival screenings some viewers walked out. He also dwells on some of the characters’ liking for rough, sadomasochistic sex.

Mr. Winterbottom leaves Lou’s nature ambiguous. He might be a psychopath or he might be someone whom any of the rest of us could turn into given the right (or wrong) circumstances.

“I was wary of making it too explicit,” Mr. Winterbottom said. “These things happen, and how do you understand them? I was interested in what a killer is like, in what people are like.”

Another pitfall of Thompson adaptations is excessive noirishness and Mr. Winterbottom was also at pains to avoid that. His movie, which was shot in Oklahoma, Thompson’s birthplace, is positively cheerful looking, with sun-drenched exteriors and candy-colored ‘50s automobiles.

“I didn’t want to make a pastiche or an hommage to film noir,” he said. “Thompson’s writing is very direct and lean. It’s almost like a text in the theater. I remember thinking: ‘This is Thompson’s vision, not yours. Let’s try to film that.’ ” He paused and added, “Quite a relief, really.”


By CHARLES McGRATH