Fictional horror movies scare us until we leave the theater. True crime dramas follow us home because they happened once to someone -- or so they say.

Heists, abuses of power, murders, and multiple murders. Hollywood loves crime and all the ill-gotten bootie it brings. From 1907's The Unwritten Law: A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Case to the upcoming Roofman, films inspired by true crime capture a special kind of imagination. They are cautionary tales with real-life consequences, and dramas too sordid for mixed company. In the Golden Age, stories of gangland thugs came with promises of being "ripped from today's papers." Every robbery is a drama. Each public scandal is a potential movie trailer. Every human tragedy is a closeup. Here are some of the best films that took their plots from schemes attempted in real life.

Directed by David Fincher, Zodiac is as exhilarating as it is frustrating. The Zodiac Killer case, which terrorized late 1960s San Francisco, has never been closed. The elusive serial killer taunted law enforcement, mailed cryptic ciphers to local newspapers, and left bloodstained clothing as belligerent markers. Yet his identity remains an unsolved mystery. The movie captures the feel of a terrified California, never knowing when the next victim would be chosen.

Though they top the credits, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. are supporting actors to the suspense of Zodiac. The slow narrative burn is incremental, calculated, and never plodding. The story is based on Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Hunt for the Nation's Most Elusive Serial Killer, by Robert Graysmith, who worked as a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle during the spree. Fincher, screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and producer Bradley J. Fischer also conducted their own investigation into the murders. The results are admirably close to the exasperating reality of crime procedures. Some suspects get away with inconceivable crimes.