WARNING: The following contains mild spoilers for “Monster: The Ed Gein Story.”
On November 16, 1957, the world discovered one of the most disturbing stories in the history of American true crime. Shortly following the disappearance of local businesswoman Bernice Worden, Ed Gein was arrested on suspicion of her murder. Authorities searched his remote farmhouse and found a gruesome treasure trove. Worden’s mutilated body had been strung up to bleed in the barn, and his house was filled with scattered appendages and decor made from preserved human remains. Even more shocking, a series of masks had been fashioned from recognizable faces along with clothing sewn from human skin. Gein would eventually confess to two murders and nine counts of grave robbery, accounting for the appalling number of body parts found in his home.
News of this bizarre house of horrors swept the nation, twisting into ever more lascivious forms each time it was passed along. Fictionalized adaptations sought to capitalize on Gein’s notoriety while seeking to understand the repellent nature of his crimes. Some are masterful pieces of genre art, while others have been mostly forgotten. A new season of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Monster takes a deep dive into Gein’s shadowy life and the high profile films he inspired. But have any of these notorious texts captured an authentic depiction of this dangerously unstable man? The Ghoul of Plainfield looms large over the horror genre, but is it possible to accurately capture the strange essence and salacious crimes of this quiet man from rural Wisconsin?
Psycho (1960)
As the world was learning about Gein’s frightening acts, author Robert Bloch was working on a chilling new novel just thirty miles away. Published in 1959, Psycho mentions Gein by name while seeming to remix elements from his troubled life. Famed director Alfred Hitchcock was reportedly so taken by Bloch’s bestseller that he sent an assistant to buy up copies hoping to preserve the twist ending for his own upcoming film. Hitchcock’s Psycho jolted audiences and destabilized the horror genre itself with the brutal—and early—death of its marquee star while introducing new levels of intimate violence never before seen in a mainstream film.
But Hitchcock via Bloch had no intention of telling an accurate story. Psycho is not a True Crime tale, but a fictional exploration of the hidden dangers lurking behind an innocent face. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is a genial hotel clerk and dutiful son, determined to please his overbearing mother. It’s she who murders Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and the private detective who arrives in her wake. While Gein’s motives remain murky to this day, he had a famously abusive relationship with his domineering mother Augusta. Extremely religious, the Gein matriarch viewed all women as “jezebels” and made her sons vow never to “fornicate.” Constant emotional and physical abuse instilled in Gein a deep sense of internalized misogyny and hate-tinged fear of any woman but his mother.
When Augusta died of a stroke in 1945, Ed was left all alone on the rural farm. With no friends or family, the lonely man attempted to bring her back from the dead, but was hindered by a cement vault surrounding her coffin. He settled for robbing nearby graves—always those of women who matched his mother’s size and age. He spent decades conversing with his deceased mother, seemingly unaware that she had passed away. Hitchcock similarly presents Norma Bates (Perkins) as a living presence in the house until revealing her decaying corpse. We learn that Norman has been committing murder while identifying as his elderly mother, punishing women who turn him on while draped in Norma’s self-righteousness.
Deranged (1974)
Seventeen years after Gein’s arrest, a more faithful adaptation was brought to the screen. Subtitled Confessions of a Necrophile, this Canadian gem is directed by Alan Ormsby and Jeff Gillen and stars future Home Alone star Robert Blossom as a terrifying predator. Fictional journalist Tom Sims (Leslie Carlson) introduces us to Ezra Cobb (Blossom), the infamous “Butcher of Plainside.” What follows is a thinly veiled approximation of Gein’s crimes that spirals into sadism as the plot unfolds. We meet the strangely empathetic farmer as he tends to his dying mother, known only as Ma Cobb (Cosette Lee). Unable to accept the fact of her death, Ezra brings her corpse back to the farmhouse and begins robbing graves to repair the flesh that keeps rotting away from her bones. He eventually sits, wearing a skin suit and mask, among a veritable tea party of putrid corpses posed around his mother’s table.
Outside the home, Ezra’s concerned neighbors worry about the lonely bachelor and suggest he find himself a wife. This sparks an unexpected murder spree in which Ezra struggles to reconcile his physical attraction and desire for companionship with the overwhelming resentment of female sexuality learned at his mother’s knee. Each time he sees a beautiful woman, his mind is clouded by visions of Ma screaming about the womanly sins of “gonorrhea, syphilis, and death.” Ormsby and Gillen ratchet up the male gaze with each passing kill, abandoning historical accuracy in favor of a disturbing statement about objectification and dangerous misogyny. Jarring tonal shifts and gruesome special effects create a bizarre retelling of this complex story designed to shock rather than inform.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Released just eight months after Deranged, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre revels in the macabre elements of Gein’s crimes. This disturbing film pulls us immediately into darkness as we join an unseen graverobber plundering the dead followed by an appalling installation of oozing corpses perched on a tombstone in the morning sun. Tobe Hooper’s grimy reimagining follows a group of five young friends on a road trip through rural Texas. We meet Gein’s proxy, Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) when they stumble into his dilapidated home. This butcher does not live in isolation, but among an equally depraved family. The house is filled with sadistic killers who survive the broken U.S. economy by butchering humans and selling their meat. The doomed road trip’s sole survivor, Sally (Marilyn Burns) is forced to attend a repulsive family dinner and served sausages likely made from the flesh of her friends.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre bears little resemblance to Gein’s own life. The film’s titular weapon stems from a frustrating moment Hooper spent in a crowded shopping mall. But the renegade filmmaker does manage to capture the most sensational aspect of the story—masks created from human skin. Police found nine such masks in Gein’s home, including one fashioned from the face of confirmed victim Mary Hogan. Leatherface, like Gein, seems to wear these garish face coverings to embody the persona of someone else. More or less disconnected from the facts of Gein’s life, this iconic film perhaps best captures the grisly state of Gein’s shadowy home and the gruesome feel of his atrocious hobby.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The most celebrated film on this list also has the most troubling legacy. Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs swept the big five Academy Awards, sending shockwaves through the genre world. Based on the novel by Thomas Harris, Demme’s adaptation introduces us to an active serial killer named Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), known by law enforcement as Buffalo Bill, who hunts for a specific purpose. Denied gender affirming care, he preys on women of a particular size intending to flay and dry their flesh. The amateur tailor is constructing a woman suit made entirely of human skin. A similar vest and leggings were found in Gein’s farmhouse and witnesses claimed to see a strangely garish figure dancing in the moon’s eerie light. Demme nods to this disturbing report in the film’s most notorious sequence. Preparing to kill his latest captive, Buffalo Bill dons makeup and a curly blond wig then dances nude to Q Lazzarus’ moody “Goodbye Horses,” his skin suit draped on a dress form nearby.
Gumb’s MO may nod to Gein’s own nighttime revelry, but this is a distortion of actual fact. While Gein was fascinated by the story of Christine Jorgensen, one of the first Americans to undergo successful gender reassignment surgery, he would not have had the language to identify as transgender and there’s evidence to suggest he was a straight cis male. Gein’s habit of wearing women’s skin was likely a way to cope with the disturbing symptoms of untreated schizophrenia and a misguided attempt to connect with his mother rather than a desire to transition. His crimes also point to a deep need to punish women, likely stemming from Augusta’s cruel beliefs. Gumb’s outrageous characterization led the mostly uninformed audience to conflate transgender with villainy and view trans people as dangerous deviants. Along with Psycho, Demme’s undeniably masterful film has caused incalculable harm to the queer community that can still be felt to this day.
In the Light of the Moon (2000)
The next film to tackle this troubling crime would fully lean into accuracy. Also known simply as Ed Gein, Chuck Parello‘s understated adaptation begins with young lovers disturbed by a moonlit graverobber. What follows is a more or less accurate recreation of the notorious killer’s tragic life and his abusive relationship with mother Augusta (Carrie Snodgress). In adulthood, Ed quarrels with his brother Henry (Brian Evers) over Mother’s cruel limitations, leading to a violent death. Official records note that Henry died of asphyxiation while trying to extinguish a brush fire, but suspicious bruising was found on his corpse. Though Ed was never formally charged, many believe Henry to be his first victim, a crime of passion that opened the doors to years of violence and depravity.
Parello’s film is the first cinematic adaptation to attempt authenticity regarding Ed’s confirmed victims. We see the bawdry Mary Hogan (Sally Champlin) delighting male customers with scandalous talk at her neighborhood bar. Hogan likely scandalized Gein with her barroom language and audacious demeanor, triggering memories of Augusta’s disdain. Parello’s Collette Marshall (Carol Mansell)—a proxy for Bernice Worden—is a matronly widow dutifully managing the family hardware store. It’s her death that leads to Ed’s capture and conviction, a process we see play out on screen. Parello’s admittedly slower-paced film is a character-driven family drama with occasional dips into terror and gore.
Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007)
With a story as macabre as that of Ed Gein, a low-budget exploitation film seemed like an inevitability. Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield is a straight-to-video adaptation from Michael Feifer starring Kane Hodder as the titular criminal. If you’re thinking the man who played Jason Voorhees and Victor Crowley has no business embodying the shy and diminutive Wisconsonite, you’d be correct. Despite his many talents, Hodder has nothing in common with Gein and delivers a performance more indebted to Gunnar Hansens’ Leatherface. In fact, Feifer’s story is drawn just as much from historical fact as from Hooper’s viscous film, including but not limited to an opening sequence in which an attractive young woman dangles, screaming from bloody meat hooks.
We follow the story through the eyes of fictitious deputy Bobby Mason (Shawn Hoffman) whose mother and girlfriend have disappeared. Feifer indulges gory reimaginings of Gein’s crimes while leaning into the sinister side of rural life. Rusty blades litter the property as close shots of post-mortem mutilation expose the depravity of Gein’s documented crimes. In addition to a gore-streaked apron, Hodder’s Gein wears an elaborate suit of skin perpetually dripping with viscera, reminiscent of those seen in Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The most outlandish version to date, Feifer tells a heightened version of this salacious story steeped in the trappings of genre tradition.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025)
Ryan Murphy’s constant collaborators Ian Brennan and Max Winkler take a fantastical approach to this troubling story with meandering trips to Hollywood. The season begins with Gein (Charlie Hunnam) and provable facts about his life: a tumultuous relationship with the overbearing Augusta (Laurie Metcalf) and the disturbing circumstances surrounding her death. But Winkler and Brennan veer into fantasy with a number of outlandish claims. This version of Gein speaks to his nazi hero Ilse Koch (Vicky Krieps) while fetishizing women’s lingerie. Plainfield resident Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son) identified herself as Ed’s fiancee though she would give conflicting statements about the depth of their relationship. Brennan wildly expands her involvement in Gein’s story, positioning her as a co-conspirator fully aware of his darker deeds.
Brennan and Winkler also present as fact Gein’s suspected necrophilia and cannibalism, despite the man’s recorded denials. Hunnam brings humanity to this mystifying killer while simultaneously embodying the cinematic boogeymen his life inspired. Norman Bates (Joey Pollari), Buffalo Bill (Golden Garnick), and Leatherface (Brock Powell) converge to paint a jumbled portrait of a life we will likely never understand.
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