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Editorials

Ed Gein Part I: The Ghoul’s Madhouse of Death and Corpses

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Ed Gein, Ed Gein, Ed Gein what a naughty boy you’ve been! 

The crimes of Ed Gein shattered a generation’s predispositions of innocence and morality. I don’t claim to be an expert on the matter but it’s pretty clear that our Eddie boy here gave birth to a whole lot of nightmares.

It was the quiet decade of the 1950s, a time for down to Earth pride and joy. The comatose Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was not only the number one show on TV – and believe you me every happy family sat themselves down to take in that little American dream playing out from the soft crackling glow of the television screen – it was the epitome of what every single goddamn little god-fearing family strove to be like. 

Dad went to work and the loving wife stayed home (and bloody well-liked it) busying her little self by maintaining the image of domestic perfection. The sons played sports and the daughters learned how to grow up and master the kitchen for her own hubby someday. And by the good Lord dad could look forward to a hot meal waiting for his smug ass on the table, a meal made with love and care, just as soon as he got home. Not saying it’s right and not saying it’s what I believe in. It’s just how things were back in those days and you can’t erase history no matter how hard you scrub.

It was the season of mom’s apple pie and everyone wanted a big, juicy slice. Yeah, the 1950s were a good and godly time and everyone just expected things to keep getting better, taking absolutely no heed to the possibilities of monsters lurking among them. Problem is monsters still hide under the bed, even a pristinely made bed, shying not a single wrinkle. Monsters don’t give a fuck how nice the bed is, they’ll still lurk underneath waiting to snatch you no matter what. 

Ed Gein, soft-spoken, slow-witted, book worming little mama’s boy Eddie one morning showed up in the papers and suddenly everyone knew it: monsters could not be swept away, folded up and neatly drawered, or shooed off by church attendance. No amount of morality or self-righteousness can exorcise evil completely from the human condition. Monsters exist and that’s just all there is to it. 

Society Woke Up To A Nightmare 

The revelation of Ed Gein – whose heinous crimes reigned between 1954 and 1957 – shook everyone’s picture-perfect little dream down to its core and revealed the macabre reality rotting underneath. Sure, everyone would have agreed that evil did exist, but hadn’t we kicked all their Nazi asses in WWII? Hitler was the Boogeyman and he was dead. Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast sure scared the living pink fuck outta everybody, made them all think the sky was falling and Martians were on the warpath with us. But that had all been just fantasy. Given the era, people assumed bad guys were either overseas or just made up. 

How could a good American boy – like Eddie here – turn into a monster who ate his Corn Flakes out of a bleached human skull? Perhaps, as is too often the case, dreams, even the best kind, are just one blink away from nightmares. And the reports coming in from Plainfield, Wisconsin were inducing a whole lot of really nasty ones.  

Freshly rifled graves were only something that happened in monster movies when mad scientists hired grave robbers to bring them new parts. Ed Gein proved such things can also happen at your local cemetery and no one’s dearly departed was safe from ghouls like him who had a fetish for wearing human skins. 

It’s now infamous how police, based on a receipt and a hunch, showed up at the old Gein home, a house of pain and sadness where a ruthless matriarch once ruled over the family with a sadist’s touch. Ed’s mom was someone who could train demons on ruthlessness as she poured paranoia and religious venom into the family. And now, though his mom had been dead for a while now, she never had a chance in Hell of resting in peace. Her ghost lingered in Ed’s mind and viciously haunted the fragile psyche of an already deranged individual. Augusta Gein cannot be solely held responsible for her son’s misbehavior, Lord knows she tried to beat into him the straight and narrah, but nobody’s denying the direct influence she held over him even long after she was buried the first time.

Augusta Gein

However, years of sexual repression and his mother’s demented opinion of all women (dirty whores of Babylon) certainly left their impression on Ed if the belt made of nipples was any indication. Finding himself on his own for the first time after mommy dearest went on to meet Jesus, Ed learned a quick way around loneliness by visiting graveyards after nightfall and bringing home corpses to keep him company. His disgusting necrophilic habits could not be kept secret for long, and by the time cops showed up Ed’s home-making skills had grown so macabre that police fled from his madhouse of death and corpses to woof up their donuts all over the driveway. 

Now Ed Gein was pretty sneaky and his flair for fashion and home decorating had been going on for years before he was caught. Call it obsession or fetish (and really what’s the real difference between them?) Ed ruled the nether-realm of graveyards, turned it into an art, and Ed’s grotesque gallery was displayed all over his home, his very own museum of the macabre. Chairs were upholstered with human skin, a couch was constructed of human bones, and human faces decorated the walls. And that was just for starters.

Problem is Ed got a taste for death, and sometimes a fresh kill serves better purposes that husks fail to provide. 

1954, local saloonkeeper Mary Hogan, unfortunately, met the business end of Ed’s gun and her disappearance shook the community. Something about the loud-mouthed and (according to locals) vulgar Hogans just rubbed Ed the wrong way. She could cuss like a sailor, that’s what regulars had to say in Hogan’s memory, and she was not shy about coughing out sexual jokes. In many ways, she was the exact opposite of Ed’s mommy dearest. She was in fact the very kind of woman Augusta warned Ed about. Or so he justified his crimes.

Maybe Ed felt it was his duty to punish the woman. Or maybe it was a full moon and the opportunity for murder presented itself and Ed just couldn’t resist. Whatever the reason Hogan wound up as one more decoration in his house of horrors.

For years the town was haunted by her sudden disappearance. Ed, as is the case with other psychos, was mighty proud of himself and would often joke about keeping poor Mary back at home with mother. No one took him seriously and just assumed it was Ed’s sick sense of humor. Ed kept up the joking and the fact that no one laughed made his smile broader. 

1957, Bernice Worden would join Gein’s gathering back home, but Ed got sloppy this time around. Left a bit of blood and a receipt behind at the hardware store Worden owned. With her going missing and him being the last person known to be in her company, all they had to do was put two-and-two together to make a murder. Sure Ed had a taste for death and when needed he fed, but you could say Gein shat a little too close to where he slept and it didn’t take long for the pigs to come sniffing. 

Plainfield’s finest stumbled upon the threshold of a very real Hell built on God’s good Earth. The Gein home would go on to inspire gothic culture and haunted house enthusiasts across the globe. Furniture built out of human body parts, human bones used as display decorations, and human faces made to be lamp shades. Not to mention skulls lined the kitchen counter, skulls used as bowls and cups. These are just a few tangents from Gein’s trollheim, a ghoulish vision of what the human mind can dig up out of a deep and dark place of the soul. Dead bodies were set up like dolls arranged aesthetically for a grotesque tea party. I mean let’s be real since Ed brought mommy dearest home from the grave all those years back it only made sense for her friends to be brought home as well to keep her company. 

Seeing the horrific extent – and number – of cadavers, and in various stages of decay, made it disturbingly clear to anyone who knew the man why Ed took such interest in scouring the obituary section of the papers. His was an open house to the recently deceased. It was also crystal clear that Eddie boy’d been up to his naughty habit for a very, very long time. 

Ed, for all his shortcomings in the brains department, proved to be very skilled and creative. For example, he made himself a fine pair of gloves and a leather dress from his assortment of cadavers and would frolic outside play-pretending to be Augusta herself. Ed also had made for himself, what experts came to call, the mammery suit (given its name you can imagine for yourself why) that he’d wear around the house pretending to be a woman in.

And when Ed wasn’t dressing up in his Sunday’s best he busied himself with reading. I bet he settled down on one of those cadaver couches he built and read a bit of Dickens while sipping coffee out of someone’s head. Best part of waking up if you ask me. 

Aforementioned cops first stumbled upon what they initially thought to be a gutted deer. I mean the carcass they stumbled upon had all the making of one. Except for the human anatomy stuff. Once their eyes adjusted to the dark it didn’t take long before they realized they were looking into the open cavity of their missing VIP Bernice Worden.

She’d been hollowed out like a wild animal. Rumor has it Ed intended her to be dinner, maybe he’d already had the stove warming too. Cops had other plans for supper though (or whenever they got their appetites back) and made their arrest. Ed never showed the first hint that he suspected what he had been up to was in any way wrong either. 

As more details of the Gein house were released the less safe people across the country felt. People who knew Ed were the most perplexed. This was a man who babysat their children. People said he might have been a little bit of an oddball but no one would have figured him to be a monster.

Ed Gein confessed to his crimes, had been all along if his jokes were to be taken seriously. And the more he talked the more listeners he got. A macabre fascination was building around the meek little ghoul and he liked it.

Ed Gein would spend the rest of his life in a mental institution for the criminally insane. In true ghoul fashion, Eddie would get a little weirder whenever the moon was full, or so the doctors would say. The house of horrors he’d built would not be long for this world though as, due to very mysterious circumstances, just out of the blue the Gein house, all alone by itself on the outside of town, caught fire and burned to the ground. 

Town’s folk chalked it up to one of those acts of God and tried their damnedest to just let things go back to normal. But, as the Joker said in Dark Knight, there’s no going back. Not after this kind of a mess. Remember, you can’t erase history, especially a stain like this one left on time. And you can’t kill a demon like this with fire either. They may have all pretended like nothing ever happened, and burned that fucking house to the ground to make sure no sickos like me would ever drive up and pay it a visit, but the legacy of the Gein Ghoul has endured and has haunted every single generation to come since.

You can’t fuck with nature and disturb the Reaper’s garden as much as Ed did and it not leave a mark on the world. It’s simply not natural.

It wouldn’t take long either before culture tried making sense out of this senseless horror and cinema-goers would bear witness to a whole new breed of monsters and madmen. All thanks to Ed’s creativity.

Gunnar Hansen, also known as Leatherface from “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” makes his first appearance in Connecticut at CT HorrorFest in Danbury.

Stay tuned because in Part II we’ll be talking about the impact our boy Ed here has had on horror as a whole and how one man’s legacy gave birth to generations of monsters

Manic out! 

Editorials

It’s All About Family – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

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Every horror fan seems to stumble upon this little flick, and, out of the vast array of slaughterhouse horror films, is left with an irreplaceable mark that none other can match. The movie’s not backed by a huge budget, its soundtrack is minimal at best, and it doesn’t feature any big names among its cast.

Something entirely against the grain for Hollywood standards. And yet the bloody film captivates, cuts deep, and then cauterizes the mind. It haunts the viewer long after the end credits roll. In short, the movie just works!

When you watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre you are pulled in – whether you want to be or not – and made to endure the menace and the horror awaiting the character therein. It doesn’t feel like you’re watching actors but more like you’re in the thick of it with real-to-life people who are about to meet with an unfortunate end.

That’s just part of what makes this film such an ongoing success. For one thing, it’s not what people expect it to be. And that being some mindless little splatterfest.

Sure there is a lumbering chainsaw swinging murderer-butcher called Leatherface. But it’s not just about him. It’s the maniacal family of fellow ghouls who naturally adds to the macabre that made this movie legendary.

The Hitchhiker (Nubbins Sawyer)

Choosing to open your movie with a lingering shot focused on a nice oozing corpse is one helluva way to slap your audience to attention. Before the viewer even gets a chance to settle the film goes full-on grotesque, a slight sucker punch to the senses informing the viewer as to what kind of movie they’re in for. There’s no turning back now, folks. We’re in for a nasty bit of cinema and all we can do is sit back and enjoy as best we can.

I know you love it.

Turns out a string of grave robberies have been transpiring all over the county. We’re introduced to our heroes who stop by the local graveyard to see if their grandpa’s grave was among those desecrated or not. His was fine.

But the jelly-faced ugly we saw at the film’s opening was one of the unfortunate dead dudes dug up and propped up like some maniac Halloween decoration.

It doesn’t take long before we’re introduced to the ghoul responsible for the midnight graveyard monster mashing. He gets picked up on the side of the road by our cast of heroes and we all just know the shit’s about to hit the fan.

The Hitchhiker’s (Edwin Neal) scenes alone could be considered the scariest of the whole film. He’s weird, he has something all over his face, and he has all the manners of an unmedicated schizophrenic. His jittery behavior immediately sets an unsettling mood. This fucker is unstable as all Hell and now our heroes are trapped in the van with this lunatic.

It doesn’t take long before he cuts himself (to everyone’s shock), performs some kind of black magic ritual, then cuts poor Franklin’s (Paul A. Partain) arm. That’s exactly the kind of behavior that’ll get you kicked out of the car, buster! He leaves the vehicle after scaring the bejeezus out of everyone inside, but not before leaving a bloody smear on the side of the van. Why? Just to fuck with them. And it works perfectly.

Fucking fuck’ sake and Hell what was that all about? It’s just the kind of craziness we can expect out of this movie.

The Cook (Drayton Sawyer)

I love this guy! I always thought he was the dad to both Leatherface and the Hitchhiker. It just seemed obvious to me and still does if we’re being honest. But due to the dinner-time scene where the looney bin candidate (Hitchhiker) says, “he’s just the cook!” and getting a violent “QUIET” in rebuttal that causes people to think he’s just that: the cook. But in my defense, the Cook could be dad and cooking is just his thing. He doesn’t enjoy the killin’ part of things and leaves that up to both of his sons.

Makes sense to me.

There’s also the hilarious scene when Cook comes home and sees the mayhem Leatherface has done to the front door. Infuriated he hops out of the truck and indignantly yells, “Look what yur brother’s done to the door!” That sounds just like something a dad would shout. It’s also insight into the character’s psyche. Kind of a practical kind of guy. It’s hilarious how pissed he gets over property damage. It’s subtle but also a glimpse into his unhinged behavior.

Upon introduction, you wouldn’t suspect much from Cook considering he’s presented as the nice gas station owner who calmly advises the heroes not to go poking their noses into places they shouldn’t be. Later, and after one of the most hair-raising chase scenes in any movie ever, Sally (Marilyn Burns) seeks refuge back at the gas station where the kindly owner offers her shelter.

That’s where we’re shown the double-sidedness hiding behind Drayton’s crooked smile. Lo and behold he’s part of the clan and the audience is presented an alarming fact: this atrocity is county-wide. So who can you trust? Poor Sally learns there’s no one out there on her side.

Drayton smacks her around with a broom and ties her head-first into a potato sack. He traps her in his truck but then runs back into the gas station to turn off the lights first before taking off. “The cost of electricity is enough to drive a man outta business,” he reasons with his sobbing captive. Quite practical. He takes off down the road and can’t help himself and starts poking Sally a little bit with a stick. Sadism making him giggle with childish glee drooling off his face.

The role was brought to life by the one and only Jim Siedow who would return to the role in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and plays pretty much the same guy. I love him. The man chews up every scene he’s in.

Grandpa Sawyer

Creepy, creepy, and fucking creepy. This old corpse of a character shouldn’t be alive and defies mortality. He looks like a dry husk. I wasn’t even really sure he was alive – and come on, it’s entirely feasible that this family of lunatics would carry down a corpse to have dinner with them – until he helps himself to some of Sally’s warm blood.

In Conclusion

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is legendary among horror fans. It’s often repeated and, in many cases, remade but there’s something special about the original, something that cannot be repeated or done over. I personally think it has to do with the impression made by the Sawyer family. It’s one of those things that came about by the correct alignment of astral bodies and a little black magic. It’s a dark miracle that the thing exists and made its way to drive-ins and living rooms for generations.

The TCM remake isn’t exactly bad. And they tried to give us a rotten family to put Leatherface in the midst of. But the Hewitts (2003) just don’t live up to the macabre nature of the Sawyers (1974). Albeit the Hewitt family is most certainly sinister but they lack the true unhinged quality the Sawyers have. Seriously the instability of the Sawyers is almost otherworldly. Their victims never know what to expect. They may invite you to a home-cooked meal made out of your best friends or they’ll gut you alive. You never know and that alone keeps you on your toes around them. They are pure psychopaths and take obscene delight in that.

Each of the characters mentioned here – in one way or another – reflects the very ghoul who inspired the lot of them, Ed Gein. Grave robbery, slaughtering pretty people, wearing stitched-together human skins, boiling skulls, and eating human flesh. They’re all ghoulish and reflect the heinous nature of Eddy boy.

I think he’d be damn proud of the lot of them!

That’s something lacking in each movie that followed the original. The family was not all that scary and only served to, well, shit just be there. The focus became more and more reliant upon Leatherface in each proceeding film. And none of them match the claustrophobic terror inspired by Tobe Hooper’s exploitation masterpiece.

I know there’s the upcoming Netflix TCM coming out soon. Looks like there is no family to back Leatherface this time around and so we’ll see how well the creepy and the grotesque work. I might not be impressed by the trailer of Leatherface pooping in the field but I’m still going to watch it. Hope it does well. I want a new good scare from TCM.

Whatever the outcome no one can take away the original film that’s proved the test of time.

Manic Out!

Editorials

‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ – The Movie That Scared Me Before I Ever Watched it!

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It cannot be stressed enough the impact visual images alone can have over an adolescent mind unprepared to fully process the visual overload it is suddenly forced to compute. And it can be anything. Read Marylyn Manson’s autobiography (Long Hard Road Out Of Hell) and you’ll read in grotesque detail what he and his cousin saw out of their grandpa which went on to scar them for life. Hopefully, none of us have to deal with lecherous visions of perverted grandparents like that, but, without a doubt, there could be something that you saw while you were little that left a searing brand smoking on your psyche. 

I sure did and it stayed with me for years! It helped develop my obscene taste for horror-gore and death metal music too. And though there is a macho Manic pride growling inside me to not reveal any hint of fear over anything I cannot deny the one thing that did really, really mess with my head at an early age.

I stumbled upon it while glancing through the magazine rack at a checkout line way back when. Being an avid horror/monster fan from the time I was in diapers I was eagerly skimming through a Gorezone magazine, my own little happy space when I turned the page to see a girl being hoisted up by a maniac to be hung on a rusty meat hook. 

I cannot tell you why but fuck-a-monk that got into my head! Like could it be possible for a movie – even a scary one – to go a little too far? I was only eight at the time so I hadn’t explored the gorier side of horror yet. This single image alone alerted me to a side of horror I was unaware of. Something that felt genuinely dangerous.

I was a stupid kid so cut me a little slack.

I didn’t know a thing about cannibalism at that age so I was unaware she was going to be that evening’s main course. I just knew what followed was going to be terrible for her. I later learned about people eating people being an actual thing and – again – that fucked with my head a little more. I didn’t know people did that. In fact, I wasn’t aware that was even possible! 

But one thing that did cross my mind while staring wide-eyed at that macabre image was how very taboo this was. Like I was going to get into trouble just for looking at it. That girl, someone young, pretty, and very helpless, about to hang in agony on that hook. They can’t put that kind of stuff in movies, could they? I closed the magazine and with some newfound trauma stood silently waiting for my aunt to finish up so we could leave. 

What kept repeating around in my head was, That must be the scariest movie ever.

Years Pass

Long story short my parents decided to become missionaries when I was in 4th grade so I ended up spending the next 15 years in St. Petersburg, Russia. I loved it if we’re being honest. The horror and metal scene are both strong in the city, at least when I lived there. Once a year we would travel over to Helsinki, Finland where I would go to comic shops and books stores and load up on comics, figures, magazines, and books.

While skimming the magazines I got hold of a horror mag and, well wouldn’t you know, there was a huge piece on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Bear in mind I was about seventeen at this time and was still trepid over the fucking movie without ever even seeing it.

Out of obsidian curiosity, I poured over the lengthy article, soaking in each and every grizzly detail, and learned about the puking hot despicable conditions the actors put themselves through.

How Gunner Hanson stank to high heaven and made people sick due to the odor when he was around. Because no one would wash the costumes! And filming under the glaring heat of a Texan sun inside a humid shack lacking any AC was entirely unbearable. 

Sally’s finger really did get cut open to feed Grandpa because actor Gunner Hanson just had enough. And, shit, I can’t blame him. Conditions were disgusting, hot, uncomfortable, and it played through on film fantastically. 

Considering how I hadn’t seen the movie yet I was bewitched by all the details. And then I read it was based on a true story – and not knowing much about Ed Gein at the time – I closed the magazine and let that bit of obscene info sink in. My teenage brain really thought this shit happened! Whatever dread I may have already established in my mind over this little film increased tenfold! 

Oh but that’s not all. For whatever reason when I was seventeen it was totally all about TCM! Day after reading that magazine article I was out and about looking around the Helsinki flea market where I saw a clamshell copy of – yeah you already know – TCM. I was also too chicken shit to buy it. You may all laugh at me. I was seventeen and stupid. Something I rapidly got over while pouring through all the Video Nasties I could later find.

However, I did return back to Russia entirely pissed with myself for not buying the fucking movie. And for some reason it was not at all easy to find a copy of some movies – Last House On The Left, I Spit On Your Grave, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were almost all impossible to find. And there were no streaming services like Shudder or eBay to order hard-to-find movies. And that’s what made me kick myself over not getting the film. 

A whole year passed before I found myself in Helsinki again and back at the flea market. It was there, the clamshell video of TCM. I swear it was waiting on me like some malevolently patient stalker. My celluloid devil at the crossroads. I had to buy it this time and took the movie back home and watched it that very night. Lights were off and I was in bed watching truly the scariest movie I had ever seen up till that point. 

I don’t need to tell you how great the movie is or the merits of its scares. It works. Still to this day it works. It plays out like a demented dream and allows ghastly visuals to tell a simple story.

One thing the remakes and succeeding movies never quite manage to capture is the hellish simplicity of just letting scary images progress a story. It’s so simple but chillingly effective. The movie starts off with a corpse and it concludes with the ravings of a blood-drenched lunatic.

Added to the macabre images is a soundtrack of grating metal objects, static akin to a geiger counter, and shrill moans. It’s not at all traditional and fits perfectly into the strange and demented story of Leatherface and his family. It’s been said before but it really does feel like you’re watching a grotesque documentary.

Even though I had this film hyped up in my head I was not at all disappointed when I finally watched it. It did give me chills, like what the fuck is with the chicken in the parakeet cage? Weird shit like that just weirded me out and made me love the movie more and more. 

Joe Bob Briggs calls it the best movie ever made and he might be right. It’s certainly one that scared me years before I ever even watched it. It’s a dirty little product of its time and was influential in establishing the slasher genre. 

Future Past of Chainsaw

Gun Media, the guys behind that little Jason game I’m always yammering on about (check here), have gone and done it again by bringing fans TCM to play. The game is one of the most highly anticipated games among horror fans today as we wait for the chance to traverse the dangerous backwoods of Texas and, oh please let it be, become Leatherface and chase down stupid little fucks with a roaring chainsaw. 

So the legacy of Leatherface isn’t slowing down. And sure the franchise as a whole isn’t all that amazing but the first film alone is more than enough to keep fans screaming and scared. If you’ve never seen that original film it’s high time we fixed that. Grab a beer and turn the lights off as you cozy in for some Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And if you scream a little well that’s ok. 

Manic out!