Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield

This movie was really bad. First they didn't even follow the facts for it. Half of the movie was made up and it was more about the deputy whose mother was one of Ed Gein's victims. The acting was horrible, except for the guy playing Ed Gein, but its not hard to mess up playing a weird guy. though i think it was horrible i gave it a three because they started it off with actual crime photos. that was the best part of the movie. As soon as the introduction of the movie was finished the movie went downhill. The writer of this movie tried to spice it up, but it didn't need to be. The story of Ed Gein is interesting enough without falsifying information.

I agree with the first reviewer. The real Ed Gein was nothing like the one depicted in this movie. In the first place, the real Ed Gein was NOT aggressive. He was a shy, quiet man. The guy in this movie got mad real easy and when he got mad, he LUNGED at people. There was a scene where he went to the graveyard to dig up a body and the night watchman was there. All it took was a couple of lines and Ed got mad and killed him. That did NOT happen in real life. There are a lot of serial killer movies being made these days and quite frankly, NONE of them are accurate. Either the makers of the movie are lazy and don't research the real story enough, or they are calling themselves "spicing up" the movie for interest purposes. Whatever the reason, they just kill the story by adding a bunch of made up stuff. I think the worst one i've seen to date was the BTK Killer by Uli Lommel. Man talk about a waste of celluloid. That movie was so bad i will deliberately AVOID any Uli Lommel movies in the future.

I was interested in seeing this film, because I was hoping to see a reenactment of the actual story that inspired so many of the all time classic horror movies, but what we got was a low budget spin on the acts of Ed Gein, not the story of Ed Gein. Kane is a large presence, but Ed wasn't. He flew bellow the radar because he was quiet, slow, and unnoticed, yet this movie shows him as a bully? I also wanted to know why they stuck Michael Berryman's character in the movie? Ed Gein didn't have help digging up body's, and the truth would have been much more twisted then the fictional situation. It may be a silly observation, but we know that the Gein house was basically a rats nest, and only the room his mother lived in was clean, yet there's an early scene where Ed's in the hall, and the carpet looked like it had never been left longer then an hour, without cleaning. I didn't hate the movie, but it was just another spin on a true serial killer, yet somehow they decided the truth wasn't as good as the fiction? It's worth a watch, but not if you want a true account of the gruesome truth of Ed Geins rampage.

What a waste of time to watch this movie. Poor picture quality, poor sound, poor acting and definitely not based on actual facts. The deputy's "girlfriend" did so much overacting, as did the sheriff, that it was more comedy than horror. The deputy tries to make an emergency phone call by dialing 911...PROBLEM...in 1957 that emergency number was not in existence. That is just one example of glaring inconsistencies.

The "scary" aspect was way underdone. Just did not come across as horrific.

I did think that the actor playing Gein did the most admirable acting job in the whole movie. I could well see mental disturbances in his character portrayal.

Sorry...this one just does NOT get it!!

I stopped watching this film half way through. It was just terrible! Boring, contrived subplots. A complete lack of the pathos seen in Norman Bates, Buffalo Bill, or Steve Railsback's portrayal of Ed Gein. A movie doesn't have to be historically accurate, but the true story of Ed Gein is so much more interesting than this third-rate melodrama that was completely made up for no good reason! Ed Gein as portrayed by Kane Hodder is a cartoon sadist. The attempts to show the trauma inflicted on him by his mother are just weak exercises in recycled style. And this movie wanted to be stylish, but it even screwed that up. Fortunately, there is a better film of this story. 2001's Ed Gein told the story efficiently, and offered a few real chills as we watched a sick man not in control of himself. Steve Railsback, who played Ed Gein that time, was already famous for memorably portraying another famous serial killer: Charles Manson. His Ed had pathos. His film is the one to see. Avoid this mess.