Imagine being eight years old in the 1970s, left to babysit your younger brother (yes, these were different times!). With the TV Guide and remote control firmly in hand, a young Ryan Murphy settled in for a movie night that would forever change his life.
The film? Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic “Psycho.” And as anyone who’s seen it knows, no eight-year-old should ever, *ever* witness that infamous shower scene alone at night.
“I went berserk,” Murphy, now 59, recounted during a recent video call. “I screamed and cried, and had to call my grandmother to rescue me.” Days later, fueled by a morbid curiosity, he ventured to the library. There, an encyclopedia confirmed his chilling discovery: “Psycho,” though fictionalized by Robert Bloch, drew its horror from the very real and gruesome crimes of an infamous Wisconsin man: Ed Gein.
While many of us might try to bury such traumatic childhood memories, some, like Murphy, transform them into a hit limited series. Enter “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” the highly anticipated third chapter in Murphy’s “Monster” anthology, debuting this Friday on Netflix. Co-created and penned by Ian Brennan, this season casts a haunting gaze upon Gein, portrayed by the charismatic English actor Charlie Hunnam, celebrated for his role as the formidable leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang in AMC’s “Sons of Anarchy.”
Even for Hunnam, an actor not easily rattled, the role proved profoundly disturbing. He confessed in the same video call that for a period of weeks, he genuinely questioned his decision, fearing the project might be “too bleak and too difficult” to bear.
Despite his towering infamy, Gein was definitively linked to only two murders (one charge, one confession). However, it was his macabre hobby of exhuming fresh graves and crafting masks, clothing, and even household items from human skin and bones that truly captivated writers and filmmakers, ensuring his dark legend would live on.
Beyond “Psycho,” Gein’s grotesque acts directly inspired Leatherface from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs.” His story has permeated popular culture, appearing in countless documentaries, true crime books, and horror comics.
It feels almost inevitable that high-end television would eventually turn its gaze to Gein. The public’s appetite for both real and fictional tales of extreme human behavior seems boundless, a hunger Ryan Murphy has expertly fed with his “American Horror Story,” “American Crime Story,” and “Monster” franchises. This season’s premiere coincides with a wave of similar true-crime offerings, including Peacock’s “Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy,” Hulu’s “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” (about Alex Murdaugh), and Netflix’s Italian series “The Monster of Florence.”
And that’s just October. The grim list, and the real-life horrors, continue to pile up.
But hasn’t Gein’s story been told countless times? Not quite. This “Monster” series, despite its gruesome subject matter, aims to unearth the human being obscured by the cinematic monsters, to reveal the face hidden beneath the infamous skin masks.
“There are horrific acts here, but they were committed by a man who was, by all accounts, incredibly strange and compelling,” noted Brennan.
Gein stands as a chilling American original, a true homegrown boogeyman. Harold Schechter, author of the graphic novel “Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?” and the exhaustive true-crime book “Deviant,” asserts that Gein was the first genuinely American monster.
“Gein forged a uniquely American brand of horror,” Schechter explained. This wasn’t some shadowy foreign threat; Gein was a Midwestern farmer, a local babysitter, even an accordion player—a seemingly ordinary man.
At the core of every “Monster” season lies the enduring, unanswerable question: are monsters born or created? In Gein’s case, compelling arguments exist for both. He battled schizophrenia and grew up under the oppressive influence of a fanatically religious mother who sought to completely isolate her children. Yet, it’s crucial to remember that most children of abusive parents do not become murderers, and the vast majority of individuals with schizophrenia never commit acts of violence.
Murphy and Brennan offer their own hypotheses for Gein’s gruesome desecration of corpses, partly linking it to his exposure to images of Nazi atrocities from World War II through pulp magazines and adventure comics. Of course, these remain theories. (And they provide a platform for some particularly lurid scenes featuring Vicky Krieps as the war criminal Ilse Koch, infamously accused of ordering household items crafted from prisoners’ skin.)
The series also explores how filmmakers like Hitchcock (portrayed by Tom Hollander, hidden under extensive prosthetics) and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” director Tobe Hooper (Will Brill) interpreted Gein’s narrative, each offering their own psychological theories. In one early episode, Hollander’s Hitchcock posits that sexual repression was a key corrupting force for Gein.
“Polite society burdens us with the fiction that these urges do not exist,” Hollander’s Hitchcock declares in a compelling early scene of “Monster.” “That transforms these urges into secrets we must hide. These secrets make us sick.”
Murphy and Brennan, however, state their focus extends beyond the alleged pathology, delving into Gein’s encounters with the criminal justice and mental healthcare systems.
“To me, what’s interesting is not so much the crimes but everything else that surrounds the crimes,” Murphy reiterated. “If you walk away from Ed Gein and all you want to talk about are the two murders, well, that says a lot about you.”
To be fair, it’s Gein’s macabre “handicrafts” that often steal the spotlight in conversations. Thus, “Monster” faces the delicate challenge of weaving social responsibility with undeniably lurid elements. Murphy maintains that the series is driven by profound themes—racial injustice in the Jeffrey Dahmer season, and carceral justice in the Menendez brothers’ story—but it certainly doesn’t shy away from chilling specifics. This season, for instance, an early episode unsettlingly focuses on a chair fashioned from human nipples.
Perhaps fans of horror and true crime deserve a deeper understanding of the man himself. “Ed has been overshadowed by the sensationalized pop culture narratives,” observed Adam Golub, an American Studies professor specializing in true crime’s cultural impact. While “Monster” takes some dramatic liberties, it largely adheres to documented facts, anchoring fictionalized elements like the “Psycho” shower scene (which never occurred) and the Leatherface masks (which have a real-world, albeit distorted, origin) in Gein’s grim reality.
Golub offered a more cynical perspective on the series’ pivot to Gein: “We’re stuck in an endless loop, rehashing the same few serial killer narratives, and it was simply time to cycle back to Ed.”
This current American era presents a compelling lens through which to re-examine Gein. His heinous acts unfolded in the decade leading up to his 1957 arrest—a post-war period often shrouded in a nostalgic glow, particularly by many conservative voices. Schechter views Gein as embodying the profound psychological dissonance of 1950s America: shimmering post-war prosperity juxtaposed with the lingering trauma of World War II.
“These grotesque activities transpired in Smalltown U.S.A. during the seemingly idyllic and unremarkable Eisenhower era,” Schechter noted, quipping, “I’ve sometimes called him Barney Fife with a chainsaw.”
An additional advantage of focusing on Gein is the passage of time; his crimes, committed 70 years ago, significantly reduce the risk of retraumatizing victims’ families, a sensitive issue that has plagued previous “Monster” seasons. (Indeed, the forthcoming fourth season will delve even further into the past, exploring the story of Lizzie Borden, a woman acquitted of ax murder in the 1890s.)
While envisioning who could embody Gein, Murphy stumbled upon a paparazzi photo of Hunnam and sensed an unlikely connection. Though not immediately apparent, this intuition prompted an invitation for dinner at Los Angeles’s Chateau Marmont. Over their meal, Murphy passionately detailed his vision for the upcoming “Monster” season, and Hunnam was captivated by his intense conviction.
“I just remember thinking, ‘God, I really love this guy; I truly hope I get the chance to work with him someday,’” Hunnam reminisced.
That opportunity arose sooner than expected. By the end of the evening, Murphy directly asked Hunnam if he would consider portraying Gein. Without a moment’s hesitation—a rare occurrence for Hunnam, who admitted to typically overthinking everything and frequently embellishes his speech with Latinate phrases and literary allusions—he accepted. He was convinced that Murphy’s approach prioritized deep psychological exploration over mere sensationalism.
“It felt profoundly human, and I immediately felt a sense of safety within that vision,” Hunnam explained.
His research began, and with it, a wave of panic as he grappled with the enormity of Gein’s atrocities. Yet, upon receiving the scripts, a measure of calm returned, as he saw that this iteration of the story genuinely sought to uncover the killer’s underlying humanity.
While portraying Gein’s humanity proved incredibly challenging, Hunnam embraced the difficulty. “The terror of the inherent darkness was supplanted by the terror of feeling like this role was utterly impossible,” he stated. “And that, ironically, felt like exactly where I needed to be.”
Both Max Winkler, director of six episodes, and Laurie Metcalf, who plays Gein’s mother, commended Hunnam’s respectful methodology. Metcalf noted, “Charlie was fiercely protective of the character, determined to portray him as a human being, not just a monster.”
Hunnam admitted he couldn’t definitively say he fully achieved that goal, but he allowed himself some latitude. “I don’t know if I can wholeheartedly say I ever truly, truly understood Ed,” he confessed. “But what made that acceptable was the realization that Ed himself didn’t truly understand Ed. He was profoundly bewildered by his own actions.”
Hunnam’s struggle is universal. Most individuals will forever grapple with the “why” behind Gein’s deeds, even as true crime aficionados might find a chilling fascination in the “how.” Both in life and in “Monster,” his narrative stands as a stark testament to humanity’s capacity for the most extreme acts.
Yet, Murphy, seemingly recovered from his childhood terror (or perhaps this entire season is a sophisticated coping mechanism), suggests viewers might even find solace in the series.
“I genuinely believe it offers a space to process anxieties in our increasingly dark world,” he concluded, “and perhaps to confront some of the fears within our own lives.”