Monster Ed Gein
Discussion
Ed Gein always passed me by and i'm a serial killer obessive, i hated the Dahmer one as i knew too much about him and what he did so spotted the made up stuff to easily.
This one i have enjoyed, and i really liked the tie in with Hitchcock as without Gein there is no 'Psyco', Ed Gein made hitchcock ultimatlery and also the whole genre of horror. Silence of the Lambs is basically Gein.
I've enjoyed it, and few more episodes to go. I dont know what is made up and what was real. I think i must of read about him in my serial killer books, but he just isn't a glamourous killer, pychologically quite dull and its the psychology of serial killers that i'm into.
He was a grim person thats for sure.
This one i have enjoyed, and i really liked the tie in with Hitchcock as without Gein there is no 'Psyco', Ed Gein made hitchcock ultimatlery and also the whole genre of horror. Silence of the Lambs is basically Gein.
I've enjoyed it, and few more episodes to go. I dont know what is made up and what was real. I think i must of read about him in my serial killer books, but he just isn't a glamourous killer, pychologically quite dull and its the psychology of serial killers that i'm into.
He was a grim person thats for sure.
Kamov said:
Ed Gein always passed me by and i'm a serial killer obessive, i hated the Dahmer one as i knew too much about him and what he did so spotted the made up stuff to easily.
This one i have enjoyed, and i really liked the tie in with Hitchcock as without Gein there is no 'Psyco', Ed Gein made hitchcock ultimatlery and also the whole genre of horror. Silence of the Lambs is basically Gein.
I've enjoyed it, and few more episodes to go. I dont know what is made up and what was real. I think i must of read about him in my serial killer books, but he just isn't a glamourous killer, pychologically quite dull and its the psychology of serial killers that i'm into.
He was a grim person thats for sure.
Similar, Will give it a go but the reviews are terrible.. This one i have enjoyed, and i really liked the tie in with Hitchcock as without Gein there is no 'Psyco', Ed Gein made hitchcock ultimatlery and also the whole genre of horror. Silence of the Lambs is basically Gein.
I've enjoyed it, and few more episodes to go. I dont know what is made up and what was real. I think i must of read about him in my serial killer books, but he just isn't a glamourous killer, pychologically quite dull and its the psychology of serial killers that i'm into.
He was a grim person thats for sure.
The real star of any Gein adaptation should be Plainfield. Desolate and left behind by the 20th century. Gein himself is a tricky subject to dramatize
I don’t mind far fetched stories, but taking a situation as fascinating as Geins and adding a load of made up stuff just didn’t work for me. You can’t make it more interesting than the reality. They didn’t do that on the other series. Hunnam was brilliant and it’s a shame the production didn’t live up to his performance.
Hannibal is in another league, one of the finest pieces of TV ever created.
Hannibal is in another league, one of the finest pieces of TV ever created.
This series of Monster was a mixed bag for me. The good bits were very good and the bad bits were really bad and there were some very strange choices in how they did this.
Ed Gein was from that real golden age of serial killers where they really captured the attention of the US and the wider world, he was one of the first big names of that era and he really stood head and shoulders above the others in terms of the level of grotesque hideousness of his crimes. The deplorable things that took place in his house are almost unimaginably grim, making a skin suit and masks from dead women, covering chairs in human furniture, making bowls out of human skulls etc. However, these things took place over some 10 year period and he 'only' killed two women for certain, along with the unusual circumstances around his brother's death and some unverifiable links to other missing women. That's got to be hard to make into a program of a decent length. There just isn't much source material to fill in the blanks.
I enjoyed large parts of the program, even if it was dramatised. The relationship with his girlfriend and later fiance, the relationship with his mother, the way he interacted with the women he'd go on to murder, the stark depiction of his crimes etc. However, so much of it was dramatised, when you cut away those dramatised elements there isn't a whole lot of truth left behind. The timeline of the program also makes very little sense, in particular one character reappearance in the final episode, supposedly some 25-30 years after the crimes and having not aged a day, really made me laugh.
Charlie Hunnam was excellent, in particular in the second last episode, the scene where Ed receives his diagnosis was very powerful, or at least Charlie was able to sell it as such. However, it also left me wondering if we're supposed to feel sorry for Ed Gein; there's at least one other moment in the program where they do make a very blunt and clumsy political point, as if to deflect some anticipated criticism which you can imagine would come at them from some quarters in the year of 2025, it's very 'Netflix' to insert overtly political messages into their stuff. With all of the parts towards the end of the series where they present Gein as a pitiful character, I was wondering, are we supposed to feel sorry for him? To see him as a hapless victim of circumstance, beaten severely as a child and obviously suffering deep mental issues, abused by his mother and cut off from forming relationships like a normal person, with no support or care for his needs?
It really felt like they were leaning in that direction towards the end and despite Hunnam's performance, we must remember that Gein was a morbid ghoul not deserving of any sympathy.
Tonally, I felt like the program was all over the place. The bits in Plainfield are great, the scenes with Hitchcock, Tobe Hooper etc, I felt were poor. I get the meta commentary they were trying to make, Gein was so shocking that he inspired an ever more gruesome style of media, eventually culminating in a Netflix drama about him, coming full circle, but for me those scenes totally killed the pace. Some of the scenes in the final episode were downright bizarre.
Perhaps it's just my dark sense of humour but it almost felt like there was a comic undertone running through the whole thing. The crimes were so awful that they're almost presented in a way that almost borders on the ridiculous. Ed dancing in the skin suit while sweeping the floor and listening to music comes to mind. It certainly didn't have the suffocating, grim tone of the first series with Dahmer. Dahmer was an utterly perverse individual, but Gein was up there - there's not much a person could that is sicker than flaying the dead and making them into a suit to live out some grim transexual fantasy. I felt like this point got lost among the attempts to humanise Gein and make some broader commentary on media and Gein's influence on others.
Ed Gein was from that real golden age of serial killers where they really captured the attention of the US and the wider world, he was one of the first big names of that era and he really stood head and shoulders above the others in terms of the level of grotesque hideousness of his crimes. The deplorable things that took place in his house are almost unimaginably grim, making a skin suit and masks from dead women, covering chairs in human furniture, making bowls out of human skulls etc. However, these things took place over some 10 year period and he 'only' killed two women for certain, along with the unusual circumstances around his brother's death and some unverifiable links to other missing women. That's got to be hard to make into a program of a decent length. There just isn't much source material to fill in the blanks.
I enjoyed large parts of the program, even if it was dramatised. The relationship with his girlfriend and later fiance, the relationship with his mother, the way he interacted with the women he'd go on to murder, the stark depiction of his crimes etc. However, so much of it was dramatised, when you cut away those dramatised elements there isn't a whole lot of truth left behind. The timeline of the program also makes very little sense, in particular one character reappearance in the final episode, supposedly some 25-30 years after the crimes and having not aged a day, really made me laugh.
Charlie Hunnam was excellent, in particular in the second last episode, the scene where Ed receives his diagnosis was very powerful, or at least Charlie was able to sell it as such. However, it also left me wondering if we're supposed to feel sorry for Ed Gein; there's at least one other moment in the program where they do make a very blunt and clumsy political point, as if to deflect some anticipated criticism which you can imagine would come at them from some quarters in the year of 2025, it's very 'Netflix' to insert overtly political messages into their stuff. With all of the parts towards the end of the series where they present Gein as a pitiful character, I was wondering, are we supposed to feel sorry for him? To see him as a hapless victim of circumstance, beaten severely as a child and obviously suffering deep mental issues, abused by his mother and cut off from forming relationships like a normal person, with no support or care for his needs?
It really felt like they were leaning in that direction towards the end and despite Hunnam's performance, we must remember that Gein was a morbid ghoul not deserving of any sympathy.
Tonally, I felt like the program was all over the place. The bits in Plainfield are great, the scenes with Hitchcock, Tobe Hooper etc, I felt were poor. I get the meta commentary they were trying to make, Gein was so shocking that he inspired an ever more gruesome style of media, eventually culminating in a Netflix drama about him, coming full circle, but for me those scenes totally killed the pace. Some of the scenes in the final episode were downright bizarre.
Perhaps it's just my dark sense of humour but it almost felt like there was a comic undertone running through the whole thing. The crimes were so awful that they're almost presented in a way that almost borders on the ridiculous. Ed dancing in the skin suit while sweeping the floor and listening to music comes to mind. It certainly didn't have the suffocating, grim tone of the first series with Dahmer. Dahmer was an utterly perverse individual, but Gein was up there - there's not much a person could that is sicker than flaying the dead and making them into a suit to live out some grim transexual fantasy. I felt like this point got lost among the attempts to humanise Gein and make some broader commentary on media and Gein's influence on others.
Edited by Mastodon2 on Wednesday 15th October 09:21
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