10 True Stories Behind Famous Horror Movies
2. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Psycho & Silence Of The Lambs
Three seemingly different movies, all made at different times. Yet, each of these movies took inspiration from one very real, very sick and very haunting real world crime.
Ed Gein was a simple man living in Plainfield, Wisconsin. Ed’s life was totally controlled by his domineering, highly religious mother. She ran Ed’s life, constantly criticising any friends he tried to make or girls he might try to date. Augusta Gein ensured she was the most important person in Ed’s life and it worked incredibly well. Augusta was unquestionable in Ed’s life, essentially a god to him. When she died, Ed couldn’t handle it. He began to rob the graves of women who bore a resemblance to his mother and would butcher their carcasses to retrieve different parts.
Without going into all of the nasty details here, Ed Gein eventually murdered two women and desecrated countless graves. When the police entered Ed’s home, they found furniture made from human bone and chairs upholstered in human skin. Ed had stitched together skin to make a “woman suit” for himself that he would wear. They found human skulls turned into soup bowls, a belt made of human nipples and even the removed private parts of several females.
Different elements would be taken from this depraved case to serve as inspiration in several legendary movie monsters - Norman Bates of Psycho, Buffalo Bill of The Silence of the Lambs, and Leatherface of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre - yet none of them can live up to the unmatched affinity for the macabre displayed by Ed Gein.