Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gein

I’m not a huge fan of slasher films. It’s not that I don’t like seeing people get their faces chopped off by a mute psychopath; it’s just that I never found them scary, funny, or anything but an insult to my intelligence. There are things far scarier to me than a lone lunatic who preys on people. But, then there’s the story of Ed Gein.

Ed Gein is all over the horror genre. For those that don’t know, Gein was a middle-aged Wisconsin man that was discovered in 1957 with the decapitated body of a woman hanging in his shed, gutted and splayed like a side of beef. Authorities conducted a search of his farm that revealed human skulls made into bowls, skulls adorning his bedposts, lampshades made from skin, as well as a vest made from a female torso complete with breasts, with a matching belt made of nipples, and a box of nine vaginas. Additionally, there were blinds, seat covers, shrunken heads, and masks made from women’s faces.

After the inevitable media circus descended on the sleepy town of Plainfield, the first influence Gein had on popular culture was through Robert Bloch, living in Wisconsin at the time, who heard about Gein’s story and would write a little book called Psycho. One of Gein’s identifying characteristics was that his overly-religious mother completely dominated and emasculated him (think Piper Laurie in Carrie). She preached hellfire and damnation and told little Eddie that all women, except her, were evil. She bought a farm on the outside of town specifically so Ed and his brother would not be influenced by the world off the farm. Of course, throw in the violently drunken father, and Ed Gein was given all the ingredients to become the paradigm of horror.

Within five years, Gein lost his father to alcoholism, his brother to a fire (some suggest Ed killed him), and finally his mother died after a series of strokes, leaving Eddie alone with his thoughts. After his mother died, he boarded up the rooms she used most often, preserving them just as she left them (Norman Bates, anyone?). Gein became increasingly fascinated with the dead and soon began exhuming dozens of graves from local graveyards. He would soon turn to killing women that reminded him of his mother, harvesting their parts for his purposes.

Gein’s love of skin can be seen in the exaggerated characters of Leatherface and Buffalo Bill, his unhealthy attachment to his mother in Norman Bates, his zealot, overprotective mother in Carrie, and I’m sure many more films have borrowed elements of his story. Ed was always described as quiet, eccentric, and incapable of hurting anyone. He babysat and felt more at ease with children than adults, never showing any signs of violence. Though he was only convicted of killing two women, his case made Jack the Ripper seem quaint and gave Americans new things to fear. Ed Gein was not evil, which makes the specter of him scariest of all.