5 Horror Movies and Shows Inspired by Ed Gein

If “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” is anything like previous entries in the franchise, it will likely stir up new interest in the subject matter.

Gein has been a major inspiration for a number of major films and TV shows. The infamous killer was known for graverobbing from cemeteries and using the skin from the bodies to make suits, masks, lampshades and more. Those horrific acts were bound to draw Hollywood’s eye eventually.

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Below are 5 horror films and TV shows that were inspired by Gein and his dark deeds.

Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs” (Orion Pictures)

The Silence of the Lambs

Ed Gein served as the primary inspiration for Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Buffalo Bill is as close to a one-to-one comp that you could get without just making the character the real person. From the skin lamps to the flesh suits, Gein’s inspiration is all over the film, which helped ignite new interest in the real killer.

“Psycho” (Paramount Pictures)

Psycho

Ed Gein and his mother had a problematic relationship that was famously reflected in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” Gein both feared and loved his mom, and it was after her death that he began to fashion his “mother suit” from the bodies he exhumed from graveyards. Norman Bates also struggled with his feelings toward his mother, which led to his own killings in the film.

Likewise, both Gein’s home and the infamous Bates Motel became horror houses of sorts for how the real and fictional men stored and hid their crimes.

Vortex

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” director Tobe Hooper was directly inspired by Ed Gein and his crimes. With a villain called Leatherface, some of that inspiration is pretty obvious. Gein made skin suits and masks from the bodies he exhumed from graveyards and Leatherface also wears the skin of his victims as masks.

Gein might not have used a chainsaw on those he killed, but he did hang bodies he acquired on hooks, much like Leatherface does in the various “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” films.

American International Pictures

Deranged

“Deranged” has all the usual inspirations for a film loosely based on Ed Gein – a man overly obsessed with his mother who falls to killing and grave robbing in the wake of her death. The skin suits follow, the lamp shades and jars of nipples are there. But what “Deranged” gets better than many others is the sense of place.

Gein killed in Wisconsin and lived in a rural, out-of-the-way home that added to the creepy appeal of a home full of skin suits. “Deranged” nails that unsettling feeling.

“American Horror Story: Asylum” (Credit: FX)

American Horror Story: Asylum

There could have been lots of ways “American Horror Story” could have adapted an Ed Gein storyline into the series. The opportunity presented itself in “American Horror Story: Asylum” through Zachary Quinto’s character Dr. Oliver Thredson.

Thredson blends two ends of “The Silence of the Lambs” in both Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill – and by proxy Ed Gein. The doctor is a psychiatrist like Lecter was in the books and films, but moonlights as a sadistic monster who makes skin suits, masks and objects like Gein/Buffalo Bill.

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