In the Light of the Moon

The bizarre story of Ed Gein has inspired many portrayals of screen serial killers, and will no doubt continue to do so. Because in this case the truth really IS stranger than fiction!

The obscure 1970s cult flick 'Deranged' changed the name of Gein to "Ezra Cobb", but stuck pretty much to the facts. 'Ed Gein' fails to surpass that overlooked movie. It has one or two good moments but I couldn't help but be disappointed.

The best thing by far about it is the strong performance of Steve Railsback as Gein. He gives it his best shot, and is almost as good as Roberts Blossom ('Deranged's star), but I don't feel that the movie overall is as effective. Railsback is a talented actor ('Helter Skelter', 'The Stunt Man') who has spent the last twenty years in b-grade hell ('Turkey Shoot', 'Lifeforce', 'Scissors', 'Barb Wire', 'Vanishing Point', 'Disturbing Behavior'). He deserves better, but I don't think this movie is going to help any. Too bad, because as usual he is much better than the material he has to work with. Better luck next time Steve!

Considered as a film about an unhappy and perverted man, the movie is so-so, perhaps a bit more. A boy and his brother grow up on a dismal farm. Their father is brutal, their mother religious and caring but stern too. Always, when they show weakness, there is the shadow of the allegation of femininity hanging in the background. Older boy leaves home as soon as decorum allows.

The father disappears from their lives and the mother, domineering and clinging, takes over Ed Gein's life. She dies painfully. Ed goes mad. Mother appears in hallucinations, telling Ed what to do, scolding him if he hesitates, prompting him to acts most of us might vomit at the mere thought of.

But you know what? This is way, way ahead of the usual sorts of slasher movies, the kind that have turned into self parodies. Railsback was executive producer and cast himself in the principal role, and he's good too, although his mangled Southern mumble is a bit difficult to square with the actual Wisconsin setting of the events. Railsback underplays Gein's psychosis just enough. Gein isn't a loony loner, as he might have been. He's a slow-moving gloomy looking guy who dresses like a sloppy rube (you can almost smell his unwashed overalls) but he's reasonable in public, seems to have his wits about him. He makes the right kinds of comments, more or less, at the times they are called for. Overhearing a conversation between a saleswoman and a customer who has heart disease, he wishes her well on her forthcoming operation, a nice gesture that anyone with claims to normality might make. Railsback makes him quiet, slightly awkward, and gives him a constant shy smile in front of others. It's a fine portrayal of schizophrenia, better than Russel Crowe's in "A Beautiful Mind." Gein is just about perfect, a shambling walk (almost on tip toe), a stare that lasts far too long, the unfunny joke he tells that makes him laugh out loud while others gawk, the half-baked religious ideas, a daily cycle that seems all non sequitur. He gets the necessary chores done, buys antifreeze and goes shopping. Not the way you and I might -- he lives on nothing but canned pork and beans (and some other things) -- but he gets the job done. He hangs out from time to time in a depressingly dark rural saloon, where he sits one or two stools away from the few other customers. The others know him, and some, like the bartender, are kind and sympathetic to him, while some make jokes about him. That's his public face. Rather a dull lonely man, a sad man really who has never recovered from his mother's death, someone who needs looking after and will never get it.

His home, however -- well, that's a different matter entirely. As a police officer once said about Son of Sam's residence, "the inside of his house looks like the inside of his head." It's a remote and non-productive place, falling apart on the outside, the lock missing from the front door, old tires and bedsprings in the yard. That's just the outside. The inside is even worse. Horrible, in fact. About the single most depressing dump I can remember seeing on screen in recent years. Little light seems to enter. And what the light shows us we'd rather not see. The man seems never to have thrown out any piece of junk he's come into possession of. Old newspapers stacked in corners. Dirty dishes. An unmade bed that any prison could improve upon.

Gein was frankly nuts, no question about it. But, as I understand it, he murdered only two people, both of them middle-aged ladies who treated him in a motherly fashion. Of course the house had body parts all over it but these were from dug-up corpses. The man ate out of bowls made from that part of the skull called the calvarium, and so did his few guests. But naturally he had few guests. He made a few dollars babysitting two boys at his place but when one of them wandered into his bedroom -- the bedroom with the shrunken heads on the walls and the rats on the floor -- he ushered the kids to the door and politely and firmly told them not to come back. "I guess a man needs his privacy," he tells them.

The two murders are horrifying in a non-sensational way. Both women are shot without expecting it to happen. One doesn't die immediately and protests when her punctured body is dragged out to Gein's truck to be taken to his cellar and dressed like a hog. But, although the scenes are graphic and realistic, they are not at all sensationalized. No preliminary threats, no bondage or torture, no screaming, no maniacal whacking with axes or bashing in of heads with maces. It's all the more frightening for its matter-of-fact tone. And there is one scene in which Gein, a raving lunatic, dances out of his front door into the moonlight, dressed in long johns and human skin, a merkin fixed to his groin, banging pots and pans and whooping with God only knows what rotten pot of exaltations. It's far more shocking than anything in "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," although the two have the senselessness of random murders in common.

You want to be scared? This true story, this production, ought to do the job. You'll be locking your doors at night.

Ed Gein - (Special pre-release preview) USA/2001/18. Dir. Chuck Parello.

Hailed as the inspiration for many of Hollywood's greatest murderers, Ed Gein was a real-life serial killer operating in 1950's Wisconsin. We were treated to a special pre-release preview of this forthcoming biopic. Many may have been left with a strange sense of déjà vu.

'Psycho', the novel upon which Hitchcock's classic horror is based was inspired by the activities of the reclusive farmer, with the author Robert Bloch living just fifty miles from the town of Plainfield where Gein lived. The domineering mother character is consequently a big part of both films, as she instructs her wayward son to kill from beyond the grave. The skin wearing antics of 'Buffalo Bill' in Jonathan Demme's `The Silence of the Lambs' (based on the Robert Harris novel) were also a part of the twisted Gein routine as his butchered and ate his way through his victims, spreading fear through small-town America.

`The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and `American Psycho' also owe a debt to this true tale, which demonstrates the full extremes of human depravity. Such was the myth attached to this story that it is surprising that no one has tried to bring it to the big screen before. The character of `Psycho's' Norman Bates is undoubtedly far better known than his real-life inspiration but director Chuck Parello takes a brave step and tackles the monster head on.

Ed Gein's shy existence from abused child to grave robber and murderer are carefully charted, with his obsession for anatomy and his mother always in the background. Whether completely truthful or not, the film portrays Gein as more of a misguided bumpkin than a cold-blooded maniac. The opening shows apparently authentic news footage from the time, with neighbours expressing their shock that such a `nice, quiet young man like Ed' could be involved in such horrific crimes. This adds a touch of realism to the proceedings, but the remainder from childhood through killings to capture is standard fare, with few surprises en route.

I caught this film on cable expecting a real waste of time (hey, I wasn't busy), but was very surprised to see that there was a lot more to this movie than it seems on the surface.

Yes, 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'Psycho', 'Silence of the Lambs', and numerous other films have been "loosely" based on the story of Ed. These are all far better horror movies and, with the exception of 'Psycho', depend very heavily on blood & guts. However, all three of those films were fictional accounts. There's something considerably more horrific about the fact that these events actually happened (although many names were changed to protect the innocent/dead/consumed).

Yet another case of showing what happens when children are raised without a sense of love, compassion or happiness. Jeffery Dahmer's problems had very similar origins, as did several other serial killers (and, I'm sure, many who are still out there). Instead of 'love and affection', Ed and his brother are given large doses of 'fire & brimstone'... Ed accepts this without question, although his brother does not (much to Ed's dismay), and the combination of the twisted religious concepts his mother imposed upon him (to her, there seemed to be no good in the Bible, only 'Revelations' and in particular the 'Whore of Babylon', which all other women seemed to be in her mind... upon which most of his killings are attributed to, granted through his schizophrenic delusions of his mother).

Regardless of what made him what he turned out to be, the sensationalistic qualities of the true events are better left for those who wish to learn more. This film touches on much of the creepiness, but explains little motivation (aside from his religious 'logic')... I believe this is intentional, as the movie is really telling the life story of Ed Gein rather than describing his tabloid exploits.

Oddly enough, I was not left with a feeling of disgust, repulsion or anger with Ed; Ed was a surprisingly sympathetic character that you feel more pathos for than anything else. Steve Railsback again has done a wonderful job of portraying a historical sicko (after his wild-eyed performance as Charlie Manson in 'Helter Skelter'), and is utterly convincing.

This is a psychological profile rather than a case history. They hint at several motivations in the film (his comment at the bar of "...any of y'all fellas ever considered changing your sex, like they do in Sweden?", his 'skin suit', his 'rituals' where he is attempting to resurrect his dead mother, etc), but ultimately it is simply the delusions of his mother that drive him to action... actions, which in most case, Ed really seems to object to; but being a loyal son, he obeys his mother.

They do not focus on the truly bizarre elements, such as the skull bowls or the skin lampshades, because for the most part this film is told through the mind of Ed... and these things would have been nothing special to Ed, just another hobby like books on Nazi atrocities, cannibalism, shrunken heads, and taxidermy. To him, these artifacts were simple furnishings that he didn't think twice about. I also question that the skull bowls were something that were used a lot; I believe that they were the equivalent of his 'fine china' that he brought out for special occasions (like have his next dinner over for dinner).

My wife felt that Ed should not have been found insane because he knew what he was doing was wrong. I disagree with that. While he may have known that what he was doing could get him in trouble, were he to get caught, he clearly felt that he was doing what mother told him to do, which for him was the 'right' thing to do... never mind the fact that he accepts these instructions from a delusion (compare this to Russell Crowe's character in 'A Beautiful Mind'... he has delusions as well, but he ultimately acknowledges them as delusions and can ignore them... Ed is so focused on bringing his mother back, that he wouldn't ignore his delusion even if he knew she was not real - it might seem strange to compare the two films, but I happened to see them back to back).

In the end, do we learn anything new? Not really. Do we learn anything about ourselves? Not really. Do we learn anything about human nature? Only that we seem to be fascinated with these sort of aberrations. Serial killers and mass murderers have become the 'freak show' of modern times, and it's ok to stare at them... at least, that's the way it seems. The film 'bookends' with actual footage of his neighbors at the beginning of the film talking about what a quiet, normal guy Ed was, and ends with actual footage of the real Ed being hauled away by the police.

To say that the aforementioned films were based on the life of Ed is like saying that a film about chopping down trees is based on the life of George Washington; they only take snippets of his tale. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" takes the 'leatherface' mask, bone sculptures and indirect cannibalism (since they are selling the meat, it is a different type of cannibalism), but Ed certainly had no commercial operation; "Psycho" takes the aspects of his isolation, taxidermic skills, and the delusions of his domineering dead mother; "Silence of the Lambs" takes the cannibalism (true cannibalism, which Ed was a 'fan' of), the sexual identity issues, and the idea of dressing up as a woman (as opposed to dressing up LIKE a woman)... but none of these are as horrible as what really happened. To tell the true story of Ed Gein, in full Technicolor blood & guts, would be far more than what most audiences could stomach...

Not a bad film, not a great film. Great performance by Railsback. Best to see if you know a little bit about Ed to begin with, but not required... the actual atrocities are not as interesting as the man himself and how he came to be what he was.

Ed Gein, appropriately titled, follows the life of murderer and cannibal Ed Gein. And what a lovely story it is. Ed and his dead mother have been the centerpiece for many movies. Of all the films based on Gein (Psycho, TCM, Silence of the Lambs), this may be the most reality based. However, it is also the dullest. I'm not saying it's a boring film. On the contrary it's very interesting. But when compared to those other films, it just seems lacking. There's not much gore and you don't really get to see him kill anyone. So why invest time with the film you ask. Because of Steve Railsback. Railsback performs wonderfully as the demented momma's boy. It's a joy to just sit back and watch him act. His last lines of the film are especially disturbing. This is the best of the current serial killer film craze that I have seen thus far however I do prefer the 70's film Deranged as a much creepier representation of Ed Gein's life.