First there was 2022’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Then there was 2024’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. Now, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are back with Monster: The Ed Gein Story, a third season of their Monster anthology series that centers on the man who came to be known alternatively as the “Butcher of Plainfield” and the “Plainfield Ghoul.”
Streaming Oct. 3 on Netflix, The Ed Gein Story stars Charlie Hunnam as the titular Gein, a rural Wisconsin farmer who confessed to murdering two women, Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan, and mutilating their corpses—along with other bodies he had stolen from graves. When authorities raided Gein’s isolated Plainview home in 1957, they discovered Worden’s decapitated and disemboweled body in a shed, as well as a gruesome collection of body parts and household items fashioned out of human remains. Gein claimed his crimes were driven by a desire to reconstruct his dead mother, Augusta Gein (played by Laurie Metcalf), and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution.
The viscerally shocking nature of Gein’s case sent shockwaves across America and ultimately led to him serving as the basis for a number of Hollywood’s most infamous on-screen killers. Here are five iconic horror movies inspired by his story.
Read more: The Horrifying True Story Behind Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story
Psycho (1960)
Based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of the same name, Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking psychological thriller drew on Gein’s twisted obsession with his domineering and fanatically religious mother to craft a then-unprecedented on-screen nightmare in the form of Norman Bates, a seemingly mild-mannered man harboring a terrifying monster within. Just as Gein claimed his mother’s death drove him to madness and pushed him to commit horrific crimes to fulfill his longing to quite literally embody her, Norman’s warped devotion to the late Norma is ultimately revealed as the trigger for his descent into psychosis. As he famously opines to the doomed Marion Crane in a chilling double entendre early in the film, “Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother.”
Deranged (1974)
Considered one of the more accurate fictional depictions of Gein’s story despite some sensationalized elements, Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby’s low-budget exploitation flick follows a man named Ezra Cobb, a reclusive farmer who turns into a murderous grave robber following the death of his possessive mother. The movie is presented in the style of a true-crime documentary, with a narrator who occasionally appears on screen to provide commentary on Cobb’s perturbing transgressions.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
In filmmaker Tobe Hooper’s slasher classic, chainsaw-wielding Leatherface’s penchant for cutting off his victims’ faces and wearing them as masks was apparently inspired by Gein’s own macabre habits. Not to mention that when the friends first happen upon the Sawyer family’s house of horrors, Pam’s discovery of mutilated human remains and furniture made out of skin and bones is reminiscent of the shocking scene unearthed at Gein’s home when police searched it. This all makes sense considering Hooper said he grew up hearing about Gein’s grisly exploits from his relatives in Wisconsin.
“They told us the story about this man who lived in the next town from them, about twenty-seven miles or so, who was digging up graves and using the bones and skin in his house,” he told the Flashback Files in 2015. “To me he was like a real boogeyman.”
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Writer Thomas Harris, the author of The Silence of the Lambs novel on which director Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning film is based, reportedly came up with the disturbing character of Buffalo Bill after learning about the M.O.s of three notorious serial killers while sitting in on a criminal psychology class taught by legendary FBI profiler John Douglas—the model for Silence‘s fictional bureau head honcho Jack Crawford. According to Douglas, Buffalo Bill’s desire to kidnap, kill, and skin female victims in order to create a “woman suit” for himself was a product of what Harris knew about Gein.
“[Bill] is a composite of three killers who Harris learned about in a lecture: Ted Bundy. [Ed Gein, a] guy from Plainview, Wis., who killed a couple people. Dug up the graves of a couple more. And he’d skin them. And preserve the flesh in motor oil. Then he would slip them on himself. Face masks. He had half a dozen of them,” Douglas told Salon in a 1999 interview. “And the third one was a guy from Philadelphia, [Gary Heidnik]. He kept women in a pit about five and a half feet deep.”
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Musician-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie’s sensory-assaulting cult classic—itself an ode to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—centers on four college kids who stumble across a deranged backwoods family that delights in torture, cannibalism, and satanic rituals. The Firefly clan is full of violent deviants, but the most menacing member of their ranks is a sadist named Otis B. Driftwood, a a particularly nasty killer who enjoys both wearing the skins of his victims as costumes and creating grotesque keepsakes out of their remains. His inspiration? At this point, we’re sure you’ve already guessed it.
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