5 Horror Films Inspired by Real Life Murderer Ed Gein
By Jeremy Dick
4. Deranged (1974)
Roberts Blossom— who is probably best known as the eccentric car salesman in Christine or as the creepy old man in Home Alone— starred in the 1974 flick Deranged as Ezra Cobb, a disturbed man living on a farm who goes insane following the death of his mother. It’s easy right away to see the correlation between Cobb and Ed Gein.
Unlike Gein, who never actually dug up his mother, Cobb would take his mother’s corpse home following her death, along with some other deceased friends to keep her company. In a bid to add more bodies to his collection of dinner guests for his mama, Cobb would go out on a killing spree, killing whoever he could get away with.
After murdering a young woman, Cobb takes her to his farm where he decapitates her and hangs her upside down, as if she were a hunted deer. This particular horrifying act heavily mirrored how one of Gein’s two murdered victims was found, and the image of it in the movie was pretty disturbing with that fact in mind.
An interesting factoid about the mostly unknown Deranged is that it is the very first movie horror legend Tom Savini worked on.
Next: The Silence of the Lambs