FILM REVIEW - ED GEIN
Gein was a real killer, and many will recognise the name (if not already having seen the film
or seen summaries in the press) he was
the inspiration for Norman Bates in Psycho, and some influence on Texas Chainsaw and Hannibal Lector movies too. Gein's own story, if the film is
to be believed was more straight forward and less epic, but nevertheless extreme and the guy was seriously nuts. The film is very good, but looks
dated, like it was made in the mid 60's rather than a current film about the late 50's. and there are some obvious nods to the film killers he
inspired.
We see Ed, in Henry Portrait Of a Serial Killer style, at first, happily digging up coffins and getting in with the female inhabitants for a
chat, with a few hints of necrophilia, later taking one home to try to resurrect her, he invites local school kids round, but they are spooked by
his bedroom full of shrunken heads and rats, deciding not to visit ever again, he later tries to rent out rooms in the house, but the locked
rooms he guards jealously and the sound of the 'squirrel problem' from upstairs spooks away his would be tenant.
Gein acts weird on people in bars and the local grocery store casually asking rednecks if they ever thought about a sex change like the guy he
has just read about in the papers, and later after a
grisly description of slippage, where the skin of a corpse begins to melt off the bone during a
dinner party, (people take pity and invite him round as he exists exclusively on tinned pork and beans) in one conversation he mumbles,
'everyone needs a hobby'. Gein's includes having books on cannibalism nazi war crimes, a lamp made from a human spine, dressing in female flesh to howl
at the moon and of course the murders themselves, These are not very grisly, much of the horror here is psychological, Ed at times comes over
as charming nice, and naive, I was surprised as it came on to notice its 15 certificate, but it is justified, Ed is driven like Bates by the
spirit of his Mother, a religious bigot who beats him herself in childhood for intervening to stop her husband beating her, and delighting in giving him
the Book Of Revelations as bed time reading, Ed kills his brutal dad, and later his innocent brother for daring to tell him to stop letting their
mother dominate him, but the mother dies naturally, her spirit which first appears on screen in a very badly filmed burning bush image, for
Ed, tells him to bring her back by killing local harpies and jezebels. Ed starts with the owner of the bar, a lady who flirts outrageously with her
regular male clientele, Ed shoots her after closing and takes her, alive butt bleeding badly, back home, tying her to his bed, and just leaves
her there slowly dying, convincing the local sheriff he knows nothing of her disappearance. Later he takes out the lady who runs the local shop he
regularly buys anti-freeze from, in the same way goaded by his Mum's spirit, but is tracked by her son, who turns vigilante and almost shoots
Ed before the sheriff intervenes and takes him away, for a few Bates style asylum speeches before the end credits. Good, but unsure if it's
documentary or homage to its later inspirations, it could have been great as either, but still worth seeing just for being what it is.
Arthur Chappell