“We were interested in what made the monster. Who is complicit in creating the monster? There were a lot of different things involved in that, and it was always going to be a very complicated human story,” showrunner Ryan Murphy said at the time of the release of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, in 2022.

The prolific and award-winning producer is at the forefront of comedies, musicals, fantasy, and true crime, always surprising us. Today, just a few days before the second season of the Monster franchise, which will retell the crime of the Menendez Brothers, Netflix has already announced who will be the next to be biographed: Ed Gein. The actor who will play him is the great Charlie Hunnam. Filming begins in October 2024. And why Ed Gein? Because he is the inspiration for some of the most terrifying criminals in cinema.

Ed Gein was an American criminal whose horrific crimes inspired several fictional works that made it to the big screen, including characters such as Norman Bates in Robert Bloch‘s Psycho (adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock), Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris‘s The Silence of the Lambs.

Born in 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Gein grew up in an extremely isolated and abusive environment. His mother, Augusta, was a religious fanatic who taught him and his brother that all women (except her) were instruments of the devil. After his mother died in 1945, Gein was left alone on the family farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin. It was not until 1957 that police discovered Gein’s crimes. Investigating the disappearance of a local shop owner, Bernice Worden, they found her mutilated body on Gein’s farm, along with many macabre artifacts made from human remains, including human skin masks, skulls used as bowls, and furniture upholstered with human skin.

While the details of the artifacts made from human bones and skin would be used in Harris’s books and horror films, it was writer Robert Bloch who deliberately wanted to explore Ed Gein‘s life for his story. In this way, the parallels between Gein and Bates are undeniable, especially with the combination of his unhealthy relationship with his mother, his social isolation, and his macabre behavior, all of which contribute to the psychological complexity of both men, both in real life and in fiction.

Gein was initially found mentally incompetent to stand trial and was sent to a mental institution. In 1968, he was found fit to stand trial, found guilty of murder, and committed to a mental hospital, where he remained until he died in 1984.

Ed Gein’s crimes not only shocked the nation but also had a lasting impact on popular culture. He looks set to gain renewed “popularity” in 2025.

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