Ed Gein became known later to horror movie fans because of his reputation for sponsoring Norman Bates in Pyscho, Leatherface in Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. Gein was an unlikely role model as there’s only positive proof he murdered two people – who reminded him of his mother – and his main characteristic may have been an obsession with mum, dead as well as alive. However, his main hobby was poking about in graveyards to be sure.
In this Netflix version Charlie Hunnam plays Ed Gein as a simpleton who can scare off fellow ice cream eaters in a parlor even before he opens his mouth. “We gotta get out of here,” murmurs one customer. To make matters worse, he asks for two straws to suck up his smoothie. The character even admits, in a late episode, that he doesn’t know who he is or why he behaves as he does. In other words, Gein is a complete bore, a non-character starring in an overlong eight episode biopic.
Ed’s mother Augusta (Laurie Metcalf) warns him against girls and sex whilst she is alive and won’t shut up about these subjects even after death. Gein digs up her coffin after hearing her say from the dark beyond, “You can take me home.” He is also obsessed with a female friend Adeline (Suzanna Son) who shows him pics of nazi atrocities and a comic book about the Bitch of Buchenwald. The writer of the movie Ian Brennan has invented this theme: the view that Gein was unduly influenced by Third Reich stuff is pure speculation.
From the beginning, the movie turns every rumor about Gein into truth fit-for-the-screen. He is shown killing his brother Henry, causing the disappearance of a babysitter and several hunters. These are maybes only. What is true is that he filled his house in Plainfield with bits of corpses and even fashioned a suit of skin that he could wander around in. So if you want to see dead people trussed up like animals in a barn, or you are turned on by the contents of coffins, this movie is worth watching.
To fill in the time, there are screen conversations with serial killers, including Norman Bates and Leatherface, not to mention Alfred Hitchcock. It’s suggested that all these true and imagined men have been warped by childhood violence and mental instability, but what we are supposed to learn from these sequences is not addressed. Norman Bates’ homosexuality is suggested in a segment showing two men kissing whilst still in their underwear. The shower scene in Psycho is recreated with lots of blood splatters.
The real purpose of this movie is to shock: to show as much gore and disemboweling as possible within each episode. If you have ever wondered what a transvestite might look like trying to stimulate himself erotically by auto-strangulation with a rope on the back of a door, this is the movie you have been awaiting. Are you just being shown reality or being provoked into some kind of personal reaction? You won’t find the answer in this pic. Up to you.
