Fans Just Now Realizing These 3 Horror Films Based on the Same Serial Killer

Summary

• Ed Gein is one of America's most famous and disturbing serial killers.
• His crimes inspired many films, including three of the most revered horror movies of all time.

There has been lots of commentary about the piles of true crime content that came along over the last ten years. That includes podcasts like Criminal and My Favorite Murder, documentaries like The Staircase, I Just Killed My Dad, and American Nightmare, and series inspired by real life, like Des, or The Staircase again.

What's with this sudden obsession with true crime, you might wonder?

Well, the answer is that the obsession has always been there. As long as there have been criminals and crime, there have been people fascinated by it. That goes for witch burnings in the 1500s, public hangings in the 1700s, and serial killers in the… well, any time really.

America's Most Horrifying Discovery

In 1957, police arrested Wisconsin resident Ed Gein for the murder of a local hardware store owner. When they searched his house, they found disturbing evidence of Gein's crimes – including his obsession with digging up graves and bringing home body parts.

We won't go into details, but cannibalism wasn't the worst of it.

Gein later confessed to the murder of two people, though he is suspected to have killed as many as seven more. The term 'serial killer' wasn't popularized until the seventies, but now Ed Gein is considered to be one of America's most infamous.

Movies Based on Gein

Ed Gein was so horrifyingly unique that he inspired several movies, including three of Hollywood's best horror films.

1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Don't let this fact ruin one of the greatest horror movies of all time… but many aspects of Buffalo Bill's crimes were inspired by Gein, in particular the character's wish to make a suit out of human skin.

It's not all Gein in there, though – author Thomas Harris reportedly used a variety of killers for inspiration, including Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy.

The Silence of the Lambs follows new FBI recruit Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) as she gets an unusual assignment. In order to find serial killer Buffalo Bill, she is tasked with interviewing a man who can think like him: imprisoned murderer and cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins in his Academy Award-winning role).

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Director Tobe Hooper had relatives who lived not far from where Gein was arrested, and as a teenager he heard endless campfire horror stories about the local murderer. In a 1997 series A-Z of Horror, Hooper revealed:

'I didn't really know the man's name… I just knew about something that happened that was really horrendous. But that image really stuck, and I grew up with that kind of burning in my mind.'

There's a lot in Texas Chainsaw Massacre that comes from Gein – including the cannibalism, the home decor made out of body parts, and the masks made out of skin.

3. Psycho (1960)

Two years after Gein's arrest, author Robert Bloch wrote Psycho… which of course went on to be adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into one of the most iconic horror movies of all time.

Bloch lived close to Gein's home in Plainfield, and based his novel partly on the killer. Like Ed Gein, the fictional character of Norman Bates is driven to kill by an unbalanced psyche and an unnatural devotion to his deceased mother.

Sources: WhatCulture.