The depths of his insanity would become known
to the world after he was arrested in 1957, following the November 17 disappearance of local hardware store owner Bernice Worden. Police, suspecting Gein after discovering that the last receipt the woman had made out was to him (for antifreeze), searched his farm and found her decapitated body in a shed, strung up upside down and gutted. She’d been killed with a .22-calibre rifle and then dressed like a deer. A search of Gein’s house revealed, among other hor- rors, chairs upholstered in human skin, bowls made from the tops of skulls, masks of human faces stuffed with paper and mounted on his wall, nipples strung together for a belt, a shade pull made from a pair of women’s lips, skulls mounted on his bedposts and a shoebox containing nine vulvae. Most of the items were the result of years of grave-robbing, but they also found the head of Mary Hogan, a bar owner who had gone missing three years earlier. Gein also admitted that upon his mother’s death, he had de- cided that he wanted a sex change and had taken to wearing a suit made of tanned female skin. He confessed to killing Worden and Hogan, how-
n O OTHER REAL-LIFE KILLER HAS HELPED SHAPE THE MODERN HORROR FILM AS MUCH AS ED GEIN,
WHICH IS QUITE THE COUP CONSIDERING HE ONLY HAD TWO CONFIRMED MURDERS TO HIS NAME. Rather, it was what he did to, and with, the bodies once they were dead that has captured our
morbid imaginations. Modern horror movie staples such as homicidal mommy issues, confused sexual iden- tity, grave-robbing for souvenirs, butchering people like animals, wearing human skin and even themes of cannibalism and necrophilia (inextricably yet erroneously linked to Gein) all began with the Plainfield, Wis- consin farmer. Born Edward Theodore Gein, on August 27, 1906, he was the second son of Augusta and George Gein.
Despite the fact that Augusta apparently hated her husband, the couple stayed together for religious reasons and she moved the family to a farm on the outskirts of Plainfield, where she could segregate her children from the outside world. A devout Lutheran, she preached the Old Testament to Ed and his older brother Henry, and told them that all women, aside from her, were evil. It’s no surprise that they were socially awkward, but Ed was also shy and rather effeminate, making him a target for bullies. Making matters worse, his mother forbade him to have friends. Despite this parenting, the boys would find work as handymen, and Ed would make additional money as a babysitter. After George died of a heart attack in 1940, Henry began to rebel against his mother. In 1944, he was
FEATURES
found dead in the woods on the Gein property, of apparent asphyxiation. Ed was a suspect but was never charged in the case. Augusta died the next year following a series of strokes, leaving Ed alone in the house. Devastated, he boarded up several of the upstairs rooms, including his mother’s bedroom, and lived in a small room attached to the kitchen. Gein had been isolated, abused, emasculated and demeaned by his mother, yet with her passing, he lost the person who was, in his microcosm of a world, his best friend and only love, which pushed him over the edge.
NINTH CIRCLE DREADLINES PSYCHO – PSYCHO IV
(1960 – 1990) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Franklin, Anthony Perkins and Mick Garris As the first cinematic
exploration of Gein, by the Master of Suspense him- self, Psycho set a high bar
for the modern movie monster. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates is absolutely amazing and chill-
RM24
ing in his performance as a shy mama’s boy with an affinity for taxidermy and having his dead mother as a roommate. The film shies away from presenting Gein’s really gruesome tendencies, though, instead focusing on the character’s insan- ity stemming from his mommy issues. At the time it was an eyes-wide-shut acknowl-
edgement of gender issues with a “psycho” who’s more than just a fiend but someone very real. Its subtle tells make Norman so believable. When Marion (Janet Leigh) casually suggests, over sandwiches, that the main issue behind his
ever, he was found mentally unfit to stand trial for his crimes and institutionalized until 1968, when he was then deemed competent enough to stand trial. Gein was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of Worden and was given a life sentence that he served out in a mental institution. Gein’s property and its belongings were scheduled to be auctioned off in 1958, but three days before that was to hap- pen, the house burned to the ground; arson was suspected but never confirmed. Gein was never re- leased from incarceration, and died of respiratory failure on July 26, 1984. He was 77 years old. Labelled “The Mad Butcher” and “The Plainfield
Ghoul,” Gein’s crimes would lead him to become, through various interpretations, cinema’s first “real” monster – more relevant and terrifying than any gothic, atomic or otherwise supernatural threats that preceded him. The Gein-ification of horror began in 1960 with Alfred Hitchcock’s hugely popular mas- terwork Psycho (based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel) and has continued through the rough, grind- house bleakness of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the Oscar-nominated The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and more, including this month’s Texas Chainsaw 3D. Rue Morgue takes a look at the films either di-
rectly influenced by, or based upon, horror cinema’s most famously inspirational human monster, to re- veal the many movie faces of Ed Gein.
WRITEUPS BYde r e k ni e t o AND t h e g o r e -m e t
malaise in life may be his mother, we see a small crack in his affable veneer. Norman continued to grapple with his demons
throughout three madness and murder-filled se- quels (he would be released from incarceration, only to kill again), a failed TV pilot and a shot-for- shot remake in 1998 – all of which present a very sympathetic character. A new TV series premier- ing on A&E this year, called Bates Motel, will delve into Norman’s formative years as a boy and teenager. The fascination with that Gein archetype continues... dn
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