Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 3, 2001, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
What’s the statute of limitations on exploiting a real-life tragedy in a feature film? A movie made today about, say, the Columbine shootings is subject to vilification, but few objections were raised when the sinking of the Titanic, in which hundreds of lives were lost, became the cinematic stage for what is essentially a dreamy romance. And while 1990’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer didn’t stir up any controversy, the residents of Plainfield, Wisconsin reportedly didn’t want a film about their real-life killer Ed Gein made anywhere near their town, even though his crimes took place over 50 years ago. Yet while they undoubtedly still wouldn’t approve of Ed Gein, the film does benefit from largely taking a non-exploitative, matter-of-fact approach to its grisly subject matter.
Gein is probably better-known today for inspiring a string of other screen psychopaths than for the details of his own misdeeds, and director Chuck Parello (working from a script by Stephen Johnston, which he apparently heavily rewrote) structures the movie as a methodical case history. While Gein’s grislier hobbies (graverobbing, using human parts as furniture and clothing) are addressed, Parello doesn’t rub the audience’s face in the gore, and doesn’t dwell on the bloody results of either of Gein’s two murders. Ed Gein is really more of a drama with horrific overtones than a true genre film, with one exception (which partially undermines the movie, and which I’ll get to shortly).
As he did in the unexpectedly satisfying Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Part 2, Parello creates a nice sense of lower-class environment in his new movie, ably recreating rural Wisconsin on California locations. This time he’s working in period too, with modest production design and just-folks performances adding to the verisimilitude. And in the title role, Steve Railsback does an impressive yet mostly understated job. Neither he nor Parello present Gein as a monster, but rather as an addled man who indulges in violence and necromania almost in spite of himself. Railsback’s Gein comes off not as a traditional screen maniac, but as a man whose torture of others is rooted in his tortured soul. Some of his neighbors think he’s off, but no one suspects him of the potential for violence; part of this may be because (though the film doesn’t actually bring this point up) Gein’s crimes were so unique for their time that the townspeople would likely have no basis for such suspicions.
The only story peg that doesn’t work (and unfortunately, it’s a major one) involves Gein being haunted by the spirit of his mother Augusta (Carrie Snodgress). She appears in numerous scenes harping on him and encouraging him toward violence, a too-literal horror trope that doesn’t jibe with the realism of the rest of the film. In addition, both the writing and Snodgress’ performance are overstated to the point of jarring with Parello’s otherwise low-key approach. Railsback does a good enough job of his own of suggesting the demons in Gein’s head that actually showing them this way seems gratuitous.
But that’s the only gratuitous thing about Ed Gein; though not as chilling as the aforementioned Henry, it’s a modestly absorbing psychothriller that, while it could have been better, could much more easily have been a great deal worse.
