By now you've probably binged all of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, which dropped on the streaming site on Friday 3rd October, and like us, you probably have a lot of questions—one of those being: Was film director Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho actually influenced by Ed Gein? And another being: How real to life were those scenes?
Gein—who murdered two women in the 1950s and exhumed several corpses using their skin and bones for keepsakes—is thought to have inspired several horror films, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. The story also allegedly served as the basis for Robert Bloch's 1959 novel Psycho, which was later adapted into a film, directed by Hitchcock.
In the Netflix series, we see Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) and Bloch (Ethan Sandler) as characters, casually dissecting Ed Gein’s crimes as though they were scenes from the film. In one moment, Hitchcock is seen showing actor Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari), who portrayed Norman Bates, around the Pyshco film set.
But, how real to life are these scenes? And did Ed Gein actually inspire Alfred Hitchcock's Pscyho?
Here, we break down the Netflix scenes and what actually happened.
The real Psycho film isn't set in a farmhouse
In the Netflix series we see Hitchcock escorting Perkins around the Psycho film set, which is an exact replica of Ed Gein's farmhouse.
The 1960 classic, however, is actually set in a motel. It tells the story of a secretary who goes on the run after embezzling a significant amount of money from her boss, and eventually stops for the night at the eerie Bates Motel, where she meets the owner, Norman Bates (played by Perkins).
Since Psycho actually takes place in a motel, this Netflix scene feels oddly inaccurate.
Alfred Hitchock's Pyscho isn't as graphic as Monster's reimagining
The actual Psycho film isn't quite as gruesome as it's depicted in Monster either. The Netflix series reimagines Psycho’s iconic shower scene with far more gore than the 60s classic, where we never even see the knife come into contact with skin. The horror in Hitchcock’s version is more suggestive.
Bloch denied being influenced by Ed Gein
While we see Bloch and Hitchcock discussing Ed Gein's crimes in Monster, the real Bloch previously denied being influenced by Gein.
Speaking at the World Horror Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1991, Bloch said: “I didn't know anything about those aspects (Gein's case) when I wrote Psycho. I did not use Ed Gein as a basis for Norman Bates at all; I used the circumstances, which were: somebody could live in a small town, where everybody knows everybody else's business, and conduct a series of murders without anyone suspecting.”
He added: “When you get right down to it, Ed Gein did not run a motel. He killed nobody in the shower. He did not preserve the body of his mother. None of those things were part of Mr. Gein's background.”
Hitchcock's wife was instrumental in the making of Psycho
In Monster, Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville is shown to be disturbed by his fixation on Ed Gein. But in reality, she actually played a key role in making Psycho, spending time on set and assisting with the editing. It's even been reported that Alma may have “saved” Psycho from being sent to distributors with a critical mistake, after spotting a continuity error with one of the characters.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is available to stream on Netflix.
