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 necrophilia. 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.