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Ed Gein
(2000)
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Brief synopsis of Ed Gein
Ed Gein, a shy and retiring 1950s Wisconsin farmer, shocked the nation in 1957 when he was discovered to be a deeply deranged serial killer. Gein, a serial killer of nightmarish proportions, became the inspiration for Robert Bloch's novel PSYCHO, adapted for Hitchcock's legendary film, as well as the films THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. ED GEIN recreates the early years of the reclusive man (Steve Railsback) who was raised in relative seclusion by an abusive father and an extremely domineering and puritanical mother (Carrie Snodgress.) As Ed grew to adulthood in the small farming community of Plainfield, Wisconsin he developed an unnatural obsession with his mother and her ultimate approval. After her death, Ed was possessed by her spirit, psychologically unable to give up his lifelong adoration of his deeply devout, brutal, and deranged companion. Driven insane by his own obsessions, Ed became an amateur grave robber in Plainfield and eventually became a solitary practioner of grotesque anatomy experiments and cannibalism. His fetishistic infatuation with the female body and bloodthirsty repressed lust eventually led him to murder the first of his victims, a seductive bartender (Sally Champlin), who Ed believed his mother would disapprove of. Eventually, in 1957, as Ed became more and more consumed by murder, he killed again and was eventually caught at his home--a gruesome and deeply horrific shrine to his bizarre rituals, cannibalism, and necrophelia. This dark and brutally violent film sheds new light on the strange and terrifying man whose deeply disturbing life has haunted the nation's subconscious for decades.
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Critics Reviews
Radio Times
The main problem with this account of Ed Gein's notorious activities is that we've seen it all before. Although it claims to be the definitive true-life story of the Wisconsin farmer-turned-cannibal-killer, the movies inspired by the real-life 1957 case — Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs — are all so graphic in the exploration of their murderers' twisted psyches that they appear to be the reality and Ed Gein just an inferior copy. Director Chuck Parello has gone for simple storytelling rather than grit and gore, but he delivers so many “spooky neighbour” clichés and shows so little of Gein's crimes that he never even scratches the surface of explaining what made the man actually tick. Steve Railsback in the title role has no depth or range and simply comes across as the village idiot, while the sporadic special effects are so poor that they give the whole production a made-for-television ambience.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Fact may be stranger than fiction; here it is less enthralling than what Hitchock and others created. The understated approach to real-life horrors may be laudable, but it fails to grip.
Sight and Sound
"...[Parello is] an honourable devotee of a higher tradition of horror, eschewing shocks and gore for a degree of intellectual distance and placid remove..."
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