Why are we obsessed with serial killers?

Why are we so obsessed with serial killers

Maybe it's because we can't quite imagine what it takes for an ordinary human brain to cross that line

Or maybe it's just the morbid curiosity that so many of us find hard to shake

Ed Gain didn't kill hundreds of people, but his story, one man on a farm and one deranged devotion to his mother

quietly changed horror forever. because from that frozen little town in Wisconsin emerged the DNA for three of the most iconic

killers in film history. Norman Bates, Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill. Let's get into it. Before Psycho

the horror genre focused more commonly around monsters. After Psycho, that monster could be

your neighbor. Alfred Hitchcock's Norman Bates is Ed Gaines' most direct cinematic descendant

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

He tried to dig her up, spoke to her grave, and later filled his home with pieces of women who reminded him of her

Hitchcock broke that psychology down into something disturbingly human. A man so consumed by guilt and isolation that he became his mother in death

See, it's not the stabbing alone in Psycho that unsettles us. It's watching a man lose the battle with his own mind

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

And where Psycho explored the mind, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripped into the flesh

Leatherface is Gain's id. All impulse, no empathy. Like Gain, he lives far from civilization

isolated and unsocialized, and treats people more like livestock than actual human beings

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

His mask made of skin is Gain's woman suit taken to its extreme, humanity worn as clothing

trophies of control. And I think it hits because it feels primitive in a way, like the idea that

civilization is only this thin layer and underneath we're all still animals. And it makes you

question if deep down someone could be like capable of wearing another person to survive

Then there's the Silence of the Lambs, which takes Gane's brutality but gives it a bit more logic

Buffalo Bill combines the helpless loneliness of Norman Bates with the grotesque craft of

Leatherface, but he's smarter. His crimes are more planned out, his victims chosen, less impulsive

Unlike Gane, who killed in isolation, Bill could be your neighbor, the person watering their lawn

while hiding something unthinkable. That sort of familiarity is what I think terrifies people

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

violence, turning a yearning for love into a horrific act of destruction. So why the hell do

we keep watching? Why can't we look away from people like this? Because I think in some dark

corner of our psyches, we recognize the emotions underneath the horror. Loneliness, shame

rejection, the need to be seen. We watch these killers not to admire them, but to remind

ourselves where that line is, and to feel the chill of how thin that line might be

Ed Gein didn't just inspire horror movies, he redefined what horror is. The moment we

realize the monster isn't out there in the dark, but it's somewhere deep inside the human condition

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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

As always, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time on How It Hits