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, including Donald Westlake (who wrote the screenplay for “The Grifters”), 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 and opens in theaters on June 18, as well as on video on demand.

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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, including a famous passage, describing the murder of a prostitute, that begins: “I backed her against the wall, slugging, and it was like pounding a pumpkin. Hard, then everything giving away at once.”

Like many Thompson novels “The Killer Inside Me” is told in the first person, and the reader eventually discovers that Lou is himself dead: he’s speaking to the reader from beyond the grave, as it were, and his narrative voice is as seductive and elusive as the one he 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.”

Mr. Tavernier suggested recently that one reason Europeans make better Thompson movies is that they regard him as a serious, literary author, not just a pulp writer. Speaking from Cannes, where he was promoting his new film, “La Princesse de Montpensier,” he said: “There’s a metaphysical element in Thompson, and Americans always leave that out. They take out everything that makes the books great: the dialogue, the great humor. I see him more as a writer like Alfred Jarry, Henry Miller, Celine.”