All language subtitles for Psycho The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein S01 E04_track3_[eng]

I was doing emergency coverage

at Mendota
Mental Health Institute.

I was on the ward,

and one of the nurses said,
"Have you met Ed Gein?"

I said, "No, I haven't."

She said,
"Well, let me introduce you."

I knew that he had murdered
two people...

...in this tiny town
in the middle of Wisconsin.

Then I learned all the other
things that he had done.

Make lampshades
out of human skin,

take skulls and make soup bowls
out of them,

and had a tremendous number
of things that he did

that were kind of macabre.

He knew
that they had made a movie.

The comparison between the two
of them was so right on

that it was very, very scary.

But I was interested.

I've always been curious.

That's been my downfall.

You know, over the years,

when these movies would come out
about Ed Gein,

I never was really interested
because we lived the fact.

It's a terrible thing
for Ed Gein,

it's a terrible thing
for the people involved,

and it was a terrible thing

for the whole community
of Plainfield.

Why Ed Gein done what he done,
I don't know.

It's just too bad
that the whole thing happened.

Don't know what to call him.

I don't know if he was deranged
or if he was insane.

I'm not proud to connect my dad
with Ed Gein.

But I'm proud of the way
he handled the case

and that things were handled
the way they were handled.

I once made a movie,

rather tongue-in-cheek,
called Psycho.

A lot of people looked at
this thing and said,

"What a dreadful thing to do,"
"How awful," and so forth.

But, of course, to me,

it had great elements
of the cinema in it.

Psycho originally appealed

to one of Hitchcock's
assistants,

who placed the novel
in front of Hitchcock and said,

"Let's do this next, boss."

We all enjoy, shall we say,

putting our toe
in the cold water of fear.

Hitchcock had just
made North by Northwest.

And what came after this was
The Birds.

Psycho is a kind of outlier
for Hitchcock in many ways.

First of all, of course,
it's much more of a horror film

compared to the suspense that
he typically is associated with.

Possibly what drew
Hitchcock to Psycho

was the idea that this was
an American

small-town horror story.

I think he was so attracted

to this material in general

because he was interested
in what makes a character tick

and how we can understand
a character

via that character's psychology.

The name of Ed Gein
means return of memories,

memories that many
have been trying to forget.

Hitchcock attempted
to get financing

through his studio for this,

and the studio pushed it away,
rejected it, and said,

"You can't make this film.
This is not what we want."

And so what Hitchcock did

was enforce the terms
of his contract,

which gave him creative control
over even big questions like,

"Okay.
What film are we doing next?"

You have to remember
that this process of frightening

is done by means
of a given medium,

the medium of pure cinema.

Hitchcock used his TV crew,

not his film crew, to make this.

And that's part of the reason

why the film's
in black and white

when his previous films had been
in color.

He was using the tools
that his TV crew knew best

to make this film.

That's one really interesting
thing about Psycho.

Of course, at that time,
black and white

is still a little bit more
associated with realism

than color film, right?

Because color has
this long history

of being used
as something of fantasy.

Think about The Wizard of Oz.

When Dorothy goes to Oz,

all of a sudden,
everything's in color.

We still kind of have those
associations

with black and white
versus color by 1960.

We don't think of Psycho
as, like, a realism,

realistic kind of movie.

But the use of that particular
kind of film stock

actually places it much more
in the realm of lived experience

and of the world.

The assembly of pieces of film
to create fright

is the essential part
of my job,

just as much
as a painter would,

by putting certain colors
together,

create evil on canvas.

Well, I-I run the office

and, uh, tend the cabins
and grounds and --

and do little, uh, errands
for my mother.

I think the first time I saw
Psycho, I was a teenager.

I think I was about 15.

And it scared
the living daylights out of me.

I was absolutely terrified.

I mean, it was
just absolute terror.

The movie signals something
about this interest in violence,

this interest in the kind
of perversions

underneath the placid surface.

Sometimes when she talks to me
like that,

I feel I'd like to go up there.

This is
a shot that is so famous,

and many people
turn to this shot

when they're talking about
Psycho.

And that's because this is
a really, really great

low angle here
where we see Norman Bates.

Something's very, very wrong.

Something's wrong
in Norman's psychology.

All is not what it seems.

And this is the scene where
Norman says something equivalent

to, "A boy's best friend
is his mother."

One of the things
that we can see

as Hitchcock's career progresses
is that he really uses

a lot of these kind of
psychoanalytic approaches

and approaches
to character psychology.

And that was part of what
made it such a raging success.

Psycho was released
just over two years

after Ed Gein's crimes
were discovered.

I've suggested
that Psycho be seen

from the beginning.

In fact, this is more
than a suggestion.

It is required.

This was the very first time

that audiences were not allowed
to enter the film

after the movie had started.

So if you wanted to buy a ticket
and go see Psycho,

you had to get there
when it started,

because Hitchcock didn't want
anybody to give away the twist.

No one but no one
will be admitted to the theater

after the start
of each performance of Psycho.

Audiences loved the film.

It was amazingly popular.

But reviewers, less so.

And in many of the reviews,

Hitchcock was getting
a lot of credit for, like...

"And, wow,
Hitchcock had the courage

to kill off the main character
so early."

This film had a
horrible scene at the beginning

of a girl being murdered
in a shower.

Well, I deliberately made that
pretty rough,

but as the film developed,

I put less and less
physical horror into it.

I was transferring it from film
into their minds.

So towards the end,
I had no violence at all.

But the audience, by this time,
was screaming in agony.

Psycho was a lot more raw
than earlier Hitchcock films.

And I don't want to
make it sound

that Hitchcock wasn't interested
in psychology before,

but here in Psycho,
we have it linked up

with it actually being
a real story,

and that makes it really,
really scary.

It's in the title.

It's about somebody being
a psychotic.

And that is really different

from just saying,
"This monster is outlandish.

This monster can never happen."

Here we have a monster
who is defined

by the inner workings
of his brain.

And that's what I think makes it
such a different horror film.

I grew up
in the 1950s, baby boomer,

and going to the movies
all the time.

All the monsters --

All the monsters
in movies back then...

...were alien in some way.

What Hitchcock did with Psycho

was he created the first, like,
all-American cinematic monster.

And it was, of course,
directly inspired by Gein.

I was doing emergency coverage

at Mendota
Mental Health Institute.

I was on the ward,

and one of the nurses said,
"Have you met Ed Gein?"

I said, "No, I haven't."

She said,
"Well, let me introduce you."

I was interested.

I've always been curious.

That's been my downfall.

I saw the movie Psycho
when I was in high school.

And I was terrified by it.

I remember I was with
a girlfriend of mine.

We had gone to see the movie.

When we left the movie,

we walked down the middle
of the street

'cause we weren't going to be
near anybody

who could do anything to us.

When you saw the rocker,
the rocking chair...

and you saw the mother.

...and you saw him,

you could see that Ed Gein was
the prototype for the character.

The first meeting of him,

he was in what we called
the day room.

And I went up to talk to him.

We would talk about the weather.

We would talk about
some of the things he remembered

about his life.

He was aware that he had been
very much written about

and talked about.

Nice man.
Just like anybody else.

Seems to be harmless fella,
you know?

I knew his dad
more than 40 years ago,

when he used to haul potatoes
in town.

He was very soft spoken.

My sister-in-law --
she's in a home now --

She said, "Did you know
Eddie Gein killed Mrs. Worden?"

He knew that they had made
a movie

in which he was the prototype
for the character.

Oh.

We have 12 vacancies --
12 cabins, 12 vacancies.

Ed Gein was Norman Bates,
and Norman Bates was Ed Gein --

mild-mannered, attractive,
nice to people around him.

But very much hidden were all
of the crazy things that he did.

Some people had made movies
or some characters after him,

but that didn't make him
any better.

He was just very bland
about everything.

He never seemed to show
much emotion.

But that's so common
in serial murderers.

But he didn't like to talk
about his crimes.

He didn't want to glorify it.

Psycho was
such a powerful movie.

He had so many people after him.

He was hounded by everybody.

There will be
an auction here Palm Sunday.

But this house and the personal
belongings of Ed Gein

will be conspicuously absent.

Call it an act of God
or whatever you will.

The main attraction
will be missing,

reduced to a mass of rubble
by a mysterious fire.

All we knew is that one morning
we got up

and Eddie Gein's house
had burnt down.

The farm where at Gein lived

and where much of the grisly
evidence has been found

has been leveled.

It burned down one night.
No one knows why.

But since then, the ground
has been bulldozed over

and trees planted there,
trying, apparently,

to wipe out every vestige
of the grisly tragedy.

We had heard
that it took a long time

for the fire department
to get there.

I'm sure it was arson, and I
think there was proof of that,

but everybody was glad.

We'd heard they were
gonna make a museum out of it,

and that would be the last thing
that the community needed.

After it burnt, everybody
was glad that it had burnt

rather than having a museum
of a sick man's home.

The people of Plainfield and
the area hope that 10 years --

Oh, stop. There's...
Stop a minute.

But a period of 10 years isn't
enough for people to forget.

The farmers
and people of Plainfield

hope they won't have to return
to the agony,

the notoriety that accompanied
the Ed Gein case

just 10 years ago.

He was found
incompetent for many years.

And I think the reason
was because what he did

was just so outrageous.

It was so bizarre that the
psychiatrists that evaluated him

as well as the judge, probably,
said, "I just don't know.

Let's just wait
and see what we have."

Eventually, he was found
competent to proceed

because he always was competent.

Oh, he looks somewhat healthier.

He seemed a rather dark and
gaunt personage 10 years ago.

He seems more like a middle-aged
businessman at this time.

Ed Gein,
he had all kinds of fantasies

about traveling to Europe.

This is the courtroom
where Ed Gein was.

- Hey, Scott.
- Hey, Wes.

Nice to see you.

This would have been
whereabouts Ed Gein stood

when he was on trial.

I pretty much think
it's identical

to what it was back then,
from the photos I've seen.

Judge Robert Gollmar
presided over Gein's 1968 trial.

Gein was found insane.

When he first appeared
before me,

I got the impression somewhat
of a puppy.

He was a small,
neat-looking man,

and he stood there

with a kind of ingratiating
little smile on his face.

It was obvious he wanted to make
a good impression on the judge,

and if he'd had a tail
to wiggle,

I'm sure the puppy description
would apply to him.

I had contacted
Judge Robert Gollmar

and was invited to his home.

He did have this kind of
Colonel Sanders aura about him.

He'd kind of basked, I think,
a little

in his connection
to the Gein case...

...because it was obviously
kind of the highlight

of his judicial career,

and he had taken advantage
of his position in the case

to write a book about Gein.

One thing he did do in the book

was reproduce
crime-scene photographs

of Bernice Worden's violated
corpse hanging from the rafters,

disemboweled --
very shocking photographs...

...which had incurred the anger

and the resentment
of the people of Plainfield,

because they felt
those photographs

should never have been
publicized.

He took parts
of the people home with him.

He took the skin of women
particularly.

He decorated furniture with it.

He made many other items
out of it.

At that time --

I don't know
if it still holds --

but Wisconsin had what they call
these bifurcated,

or split trials.

First, Gein would be tried for
the murder of Bernice Worden.

Then he would immediately
have another trial

in which his mental competence
would be determined.

My folks never talked
about a trial.

I don't think that they thought
we needed to know

these horrific details
of the crime.

We knew that my dad
was having --

We thought that my dad
was having heart problems.

My dad would get such bad pains,
and I hated to see that.

I'd say,
"Dad, what's the matter?

What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing.

I just got indigestion,"
he'd say.

But then one night, it was just
a massive heart attack,

and that was it.

He had just turned 43 years old.

One of his relatives said

that the sheriff was actually
the last victim of Ed Gein

because he was so disturbed
by what he'd seen

and so disturbed
at what Ed Gein's actions

did to him personally,

Ed Gein may as well
have killed him.

Gein was found guilty

of the first-degree murder
of Bernice Worden.

Immediately, there was
a second part of the trial,

and he was declared
mentally incompetent

and returned
to the mental institution.

So, in effect,

Gein was convicted and acquitted
at the same time.

The issue is his mental state

at the time of the crime.

In this case, you could argue
that he has a mental disorder,

but that's not all with respect
in meeting the legal standard.

You need a defect of reason.

And that usually means
your thinking is delusional --

"God told me to do it."

"Martians are controlling
my mind" -- that type of thing.

Well, Gein knew
what he was doing.

He knew very well
what he was doing.

When I look at
this from a distance,

I don't see any basis for
incompetency or legal insanity.

Disturbance?
Yes.

Legal insanity?
Based on what?

He knew what he was doing,

and he knew what he was doing
was wrong.

That's the standard.

Back in 1962,

the crime-scene investigators
returned all the body parts

from Ed Gein's house, and they
put them in a mass grave,

which would include
Mary Hogan's head.

So they're all
in that one grave.

So this is the spot
of the mass grave

where all the body parts are.

His skin suit, all the masks,

Mary Hogan's head
is probably here.

So now we're trying to
uncover it.

Okay. This is it.
We found it.

It says, "This is dedicated
to the unknown

that are buried here."

Gein admitted
to digging up nine to 11 bodies,

most from
this Plainfield cemetery.

But to this day,

no one is sure how many graves
may actually be empty.

So it's actually weird that
they would not have confirmed

and identified precisely who
was missing from which grave.

I don't think nowadays
anyone would accept the --

What should we call him?

The patient or the perpetrator?

...would accept
their self-report as being valid

and entirely truthful,

especially if you're raising
issues about mental illness.

Plainfield does not
want to be remembered

as the home of Ed Gein.

People here do not want to be
reminded that it was murder

and grave robbery
which put Plainfield on the map.

The people
of Plainfield were angry

that the world had shined
a spotlight on them

as the home of Ed Gein.

They were this small
farming community

that was perfectly happy
with being isolated

and not being known
by the rest of the world.

It was very
traumatic to the community.

And after the Gein crimes
came to light,

all these jokes began to
circulate around the community.

They were called "Geiners."

So they're not especially funny,
but it would be like,

"Why did Ed Gein always keep
the heat on in his house?

So the furniture wouldn't get
goose bumps."

Or, "Why didn't people
want to play cards with Ed?

'Cause they were afraid
he'd come up with a good hand."

"What were Ed Gein's
favorite pastries?

Ladyfingers."
You know, stuff like that.

You know, folklorists tend to
see that kind of sick humor

as, you know, a defense
against all the horrors.

I remember when we first
were reading Harold Schechter

about the concept of Geiners,

and it's kind of a direct line
to us,

to The Last Podcast on the Left.

It's more of kind of a mirror
of, like, how people react

to that horrible thing
and why we say these jokes,

which is to cope
with horrible information.

It's showtime.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

came out in 1974.

A lot of people were very upset
by Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

What's the matter, honey?
You don't look so good.

Some people were very,
very disgusted

and walked out of the film.

They were so upset by what they
saw as hyperviolence on-screen.

You're going to see a movie
called Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Like, what do you expect?

But for a lot of audiences,
it also was thrilling.

It was something that was
so new, that was so different,

that was doing something
entirely new with this form

and with this genre.

When you understand

that it's partially based
on an actual story,

on something
that actually happened...

What happened was true.

...all of the sudden,
that outlandishness

becomes something
that's possible in real life

and possible in somewhere
like Wisconsin.

Part of the film's
inspiration came from the news.

And it was so graphic.

I mean, it was --
it was unbelievable.

I have relatives from Wisconsin

that lived about 27 miles
from, you know,

where the Ed Gein incident
happened.

And so when the Wisconsin
relatives came to town...

...they would tell this story

about the guy that covered his
furniture with human skin...

...makes the human-skin
lampshades.

"Oh, my God."

And, you know, those people
continuously wound me up.

Whatever they told me --

and I'm sure I can't or wouldn't
even want to recall all of it --

but it stuck with me.

It was always ever-present.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

After you stop screaming,
you'll start talking about it.

People are afraid
of that little house

in the middle
of an abandoned field...

...when you're driving
down the highway.

It's why
Texas Chainsaw Massacre

was based off of his actions,

why Psycho was based
off of his actions.

Because it was just such a
unique moment in crime history.

And then you see the guy
who did it,

and it's this goofy
backwoods gremlin.

I first saw Texas Chainsaw
Massacre when I was 22.

I can identify that it was
at this exact moment

because it left, like,
a really dirty stain on my brain

that I have never been able
to scrub away since.

I remember really clearly seeing
that opening of the film...

and being so unsettled
and so upset,

because what that extreme
close-up of an eye does

is it puts us immediately in
the zone of watching something.

I think by making Leatherface
into this character

who wears somebody else's face,

Tobe Hooper is in some ways
making a really sick joke

about how we understand
character psychology to work

and how we understand
our own psychologies to work.

The face that we present
to the world,

often that is kind of the face
of another person,

but here it's literalized
in Leatherface.

And so imitators
and people inspired by it,

they kind of sprang up really,
really quickly,

because it was
so abundantly clear

that this was a work of such
imagination, such creativity,

but also it was a work
that was so rooted

in exactly what was happening in
the U.S. at exactly that moment.

I probably saw him
about 10 times.

Every time I went,
I was a new person to him,

even though I had seen him
before.

And he would not recognize me --

or he wouldn't seem
to recognize me.

People in the hospital basically
didn't react at all to him

because he was basically
just a patient.

He was demented.

So he really didn't cause
any problems.

They never had to call any codes

or any special kinds
of interventions

because he was acting out.

He was just there.

He was a monster.

And I think people tended
to not see that part of him.

Gein lived as a model prisoner.

Never displayed, certainly,
any signs of violence.

The big story was
that he was harmless.

I think people
kind of felt sorry for him

because he had been there
for years now

and wasn't showing symptoms.

It just seemed,
in many, many ways,

Ed's life
in a mental institution

was far better,
you know, than the kind of life

he had been living
up to that point.

You know, he was living
in this horror house,

you know, surrounded by
the body parts of human beings.

No electricity,
no running water.

The only living things
in the house were the spiders

and the vermin.

Now he was, as they say,
three hots and a cot.

We had other human interactions
and so on and so forth.

So, you know,
I think he lived out his life,

you know, pretty contentedly.

My takeaway
from my time with Ed Gein

was I was very sad for him.

He was really an enigma...

and he could never have made
anything different in his life.

This is it.

Ed's right here.

The tombstone got stolen.

So once it got returned,
it's right now in a basement --

Some cemetery board member
has it,

and they're talking about
burying it somewhere,

so they never put one back on.

Augusta's right here.

Henry's on the far left end.

I always get an adrenaline rush
being out here,

seeing all the souvenirs
being left for Ed.

All the incense and work gloves
and flowers.

A lot of people come out here
and visit Ed.

Eddie had a very troubled life,

and I think it had to be a
relief to him when the end came.

It affected me not one way
or the other.

Eddie had been there
part of my life.

Now he's gone.

I'm from Chicago,

so Ed Gein was always
satelliting in my consciousness.

I'm Chuck Parello.

I am the director
of the movie Ed Gein.

It is time for you
to do the Lord's work.

Are you ready, Edward?

I'm ready, Mama.

I got into the preparation

for making the Ed Gein movie
by first watching

as many incarnations
of the story that I could.

So I watched Psycho,
Silence of the Lambs,

Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Deranged.

And we did go to Plainfield.

I did feel an obligation to
make it historically accurate.

I thought there had been
so many fictitious takes on it

and people just borrowing
elements from it

that this time around,
we were going to tell it

the way that it really happened.

The portrayal of Ed in my film

actually comes off
as kind of sympathetic.

I think that ended up being
the right decision

because you do empathize
with him,

even though he's a horrible,
degenerate person.

He was misunderstood,
and he just didn't get any help.

I don't really see him as evil.

I see him as someone who's sick,

whose psychosis just kept
getting worse and worse

and...who couldn't get any help.

The evilness
that manifests itself

in the bad stuff that he did
was quite another matter.

There was a scene in the script

where Ed was sewing together
a skin suit,

and I ended up taking it out
just because it was too similar

to something that was in
The Silence of the Lambs.

I knew there would be fanboys
who would say,

"Oh, you took that from
The Silence of the Lambs,

not knowing that it was actual
source-material stuff.

There's been six movies
based on the book Psycho,

and there's been
a prequel TV show.

House of 1000 Corpses

is a movie that clearly fits
into this lineage.

It's so clearly influenced
by Tobe Hooper,

but then also with Ed Gein
put back in and made central,

more so than in
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Then Devil's Rejects
is a great example,

because that film also takes on
a kind of twisted Americana.

There's definitely things
about movies like Ed Gein

and Psycho
that really makes you look twice

at the kindly neighbor,

you know, that lives next door
to you.

When Ed Gein came out,
it just became a hit.

All of a sudden,
it was everywhere.

But at the end of the day,

you just turn it off and go back
to leading your normal life.

One thing I tried to do was to
show the plight of the victims

and show that these people

actually had horrible things
happen.

I think that's
what makes it have longevity

and stick-to-your-ribs
kind of appeal.

I think all of these movies

and the story of Ed Gein,

they really demonstrate
a couple of things.

They tell us that horror

is something that is a way
that we understand ourselves.

It is a necessary element of how
the United States functions.

I think
one of the main attractions

to the Ed Gein character
is that he was an outsider.

We've all felt like
we didn't belong,

people didn't like us.

So there's this general thing
that just --

that everybody can identify
with, and I certainly did.

Well, I mean, no one knew
of the existence of this tape.

I mean, this casts a whole
new light on the Gein case.

It's the whole context.

It's almost
as if something emerged,

a crack in Gein's psychology
that allowed all this primitive,

archaic stuff to pour out.

In this modern America,

where all these families
were gathered around,

you know, watching
Leave It to Beaver on TV,

you know, you had this guy,
simultaneously,

in this little hellhole
of a house...

...dressing in the victims' skin
and so on.

The question arises
as to why does Gein

or any offender like him keep
doing it over and over again?

And the answer is it's part
of what arouses them sexually,

and the sexual instinct itself
is strong.

The fact that Gein kept doing it

shows how strong
the compulsion was,

how strong the urge was to do it
over and over and over again.

And if he didn't get caught,

he would have continued to do it
until he got arrested.

When I listen to the tapes,
there's the researcher in me

that's interested
at an intellectual level

about learning more from
the actual words of a killer

describing in detail
why they did what they did.

So there's a part of me

that's just intellectually
fascinated by that.

But then there's another part
of me that, you know,

when I take off
the researcher hat,

there's an eeriness
in hearing somebody

who's seemingly so oblivious

to the nature
of what they have been doing.

Ed Gein doesn't even remember
some of the things

or pretends or talks about
how he doesn't remember things.

So the banality
of what he's talking about

is also really striking.

The man is truly very ill.

So as you're talking to him,

it's becoming very, very evident
that he is --

You're hearing him.
One-word sentences.

They end like, "That's right.
That's right."

Like just trying to just -- like
he's talking about the weather.

He sounds exactly
as I expected him to sound,

but he has an underlying urge
that he does not understand.

Like, there's something
inside of him

that is absolutely undying.

It will not go away.

And this is the only way
that he can manifest that.

That's the most calm person
I've ever heard

with a bunch of vulvas in a box,
you know?

What do you think Augusta
would have thought of all this?

Augusta would have disapproved.

Ed Gein was a puzzle.

Why did he come out
the way he did?

Why didn't his brother turn out
the way Ed Gein did?

They were raised
in the same family...

...the same
kind of relationship,

the same mother and father,
the same environment.

Why did Ed Gein become
such a horrible murderer?

Someday, somebody
who's smarter than I am

is going to figure out
these people

before they kill everybody.