How Ed Gein’s Story Shaped Modern Horror Films
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Why are we so obsessed with serial killers
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Maybe it's because we can't quite imagine what it takes for an ordinary human brain to cross that line
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Or maybe it's just the morbid curiosity that so many of us find hard to shake
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Ed Gain didn't kill hundreds of people, but his story, one man on a farm and one deranged devotion to his mother
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quietly changed horror forever. because from that frozen little town in Wisconsin emerged the DNA for three of the most iconic
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killers in film history. Norman Bates, Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill. Let's get into it. Before Psycho
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the horror genre focused more commonly around monsters. After Psycho, that monster could be
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your neighbor. Alfred Hitchcock's Norman Bates is Ed Gaines' most direct cinematic descendant
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Both were lonely men trapped in houses ruled by domineering mothers Only a mother could love you When Augusta Gane died in 1945 Ed couldn let her go
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He tried to dig her up, spoke to her grave, and later filled his home with pieces of women who reminded him of her
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Hitchcock broke that psychology down into something disturbingly human. A man so consumed by guilt and isolation that he became his mother in death
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See, it's not the stabbing alone in Psycho that unsettles us. It's watching a man lose the battle with his own mind
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Norman Bates kills not out of pleasure, but because the part of him that's still his mother won't let him live any other way
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And where Psycho explored the mind, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripped into the flesh
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Leatherface is Gain's id. All impulse, no empathy. Like Gain, he lives far from civilization
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isolated and unsocialized, and treats people more like livestock than actual human beings
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Ed butchered bodies the way a farmer butchers pigs making bulls from skulls and belts from skin Leatherface takes that same grotesque practicality and turns it into a routine that can feel more like a slaughter line than a crime
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His mask made of skin is Gain's woman suit taken to its extreme, humanity worn as clothing
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trophies of control. And I think it hits because it feels primitive in a way, like the idea that
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civilization is only this thin layer and underneath we're all still animals. And it makes you
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question if deep down someone could be like capable of wearing another person to survive
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Then there's the Silence of the Lambs, which takes Gane's brutality but gives it a bit more logic
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Buffalo Bill combines the helpless loneliness of Norman Bates with the grotesque craft of
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Leatherface, but he's smarter. His crimes are more planned out, his victims chosen, less impulsive
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Unlike Gane, who killed in isolation, Bill could be your neighbor, the person watering their lawn
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while hiding something unthinkable. That sort of familiarity is what I think terrifies people
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Like Gain, he's obsessed with transformation. Gain wanted to become his mother Bill wants to become a woman Both saw identity as something you could sew together from the outside in And the tragedy is that their search for transformation ends in
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violence, turning a yearning for love into a horrific act of destruction. So why the hell do
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we keep watching? Why can't we look away from people like this? Because I think in some dark
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corner of our psyches, we recognize the emotions underneath the horror. Loneliness, shame
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rejection, the need to be seen. We watch these killers not to admire them, but to remind
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ourselves where that line is, and to feel the chill of how thin that line might be
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Ed Gein didn't just inspire horror movies, he redefined what horror is. The moment we
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realize the monster isn't out there in the dark, but it's somewhere deep inside the human condition
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Hey, if you found this breakdown interesting, be sure to give us a like and subscribe, it
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really helps us out. And let us know in the comments which of these films got under your skin the most
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As always, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time on How It Hits
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