MONSTER, Ed Gein - Netflix

[3Sheetstothewind]

Having been a massive fan of the previous 2 series, just binged the Ed Gein story on Netflix and wondered what others thought of it. I'm a bit undecided! Enjoyed it nevertheless!

I'm halfway through it and it's probably the only series that's really made my stomach turn. Because it's a true story, it really puts it into perspective how messed up Ed Gein was. It was the part where he was wearing his mother's face. I can't get the picture out of my head. Just goes to show it's a very good series as it's having a lasting effect on me. I was dubious at first as I loved Charlie Hunnam in the The Gentlemen/Sons of Anarchy and didn't expect him to play the role so well. I definitely can't see him in the same light!

I thought Charlie Hunnam was great! It was a really tough watch though, DH and I were having our tea at one point and had to switch over until we finished...

I'm obsessed. Every so often I find a new serial killer to be obsessed with and Ed is currently top of the list. Oh my God it's amazing and I love the way they have woven in SOTL, Psycho and Texas Chainsaw into it to show how he was the inspiration for those movies. Just WOW. One more episode to go and I don't know how I'm going to cope.

I am on episode 6 of 8, and I'm loving it. Can't wait to snuggle down later and watch the last 2 episodes. Absolutely fantastic.

We watched the first one, not sure if I’ll watch another. It seemed excessively salacious as well as being annoyingly disjointed. My husband found it too unpleasant to watch another as it seems to relish in the perverse details.

I finished it yesterday and although I liked it and Charlie did a great job it bugged me that they added so much to it. Ed’s crimes were sick enough without having to add more to it for shocks.

I thought it was the most amazingly exploitative and bad-taste production I have ever, EVER, seen. It was clearly about that sort of exploitative and bad taste consumption of true crime, though, which made it just (but only just) excusable.

I thought it was pretty unforgivable to include segments that portrayed the eroticisation of Holocaust atrocities, and there were a couple of scenes of woman-hating murder that were also too extreme for the programme's self-consciousness to be used in justification (especially the Ted Bundy murder portrayals).

I also thought that a lot of it was bizarrely wandering and unsure of itself, especially in relation to the portrayal of Adeline (Gein's girlfriend). The last episode seemed to be one surreal scene after another, each of them having a sense of trying to pull everything together but then segueing into a new and different attempt at the same thing.

Parts of it were good. I wish that a much much more accomplished director, with a much sharper sense of the severe exploitation of women in the true crime genre, had been given hold of it.

Yes that's really the only criticism I have - I don't understand Adeline. Was she a real person?

I think all we really know about Adeline is that she went out with Gein a few times. The way she was portrayed in the series was so inexplicable that for a while I thought that she didn't exist and was just a hallucination by Gein.

Actually a possibility yes! Good shout!

I hobbled through E1 and have given up. No problem with the gore, but the production is such hard work. Seems to be all over the place and very disjointed - if you'll.pardon the pun!

lolol at disjointed.

Not to teach you to suck eggs or anything, apologise in advance, but I think if you have a good understanding of The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho and TCM it helps with the disjointing. So to speak.🤐

I really enjoyed it, I found the tie ins with Psycho etc really well done. I do like the production style of the monster series. I sometimes end up zoning out of the true story type documentaries with police interviews. I did have to keep reminding myself that it's not fictional and this man was truly horrible.

I've only just twigged with the moths and SOTL....wondered what the moths were all about. I really enjoyed it but there was (only in my opinion) too much bloodshed (the whole chainsaw scene) i understand what it was signifying etc but didn't think it needed to be there, as someone else already said, his crimes were bad enough. That's whats made me undecided, as much as I've enjoyed it (and cant wait for whoever comes next!!!)

Absolutely totally loved the ending. I'm a huge fan of all three of those films and I think it was an excellent nod to them as well as a way of freaking out the ones who stole his headstone. Best thing I've seen in a long time and Charlie was excellent in the role.

I think the moths came from the general dirtiness of the house as well as the corpses. Again another nod to SOTL, brilliant.

@3Sheetstothewind Lizzie Borden is next!!!

I really hated it (on retrospect).

I knew nothing about Ed Gein and at the same time as starting the first episode, I got hold of a e-book on Gein, that was such compelling reading that I finished it in 2 days.

What a sensationalist, made up load of crap this series is. A poor excuse to have Charlie Hunnam posing in women's underwear (none of which was found at the Gein farmhouse) probably for the gratification of the gay filmmakers. Furthermore the depiction of Bernice Worden is truly horrific. She was a respectable grandmother in real life with a son and grandchildren and not the cartoon nymphomaniac of the series. Her surviving family must be devastated that she has been depicted in such a trashy way for cheap TV. They didn't even change her name.

True Crime has suddenly become joke-y TV entertainment and has erroneously been heavily sexualised for titillation. The real life accounts place Ed Gein as child like (but not simple with an average IQ of 99) seriously disturbed individual who probably died a virgin. I don't think on top of the horror of what happened it also needed to be sexed up.

What stuck me more about the e-book was if Gein had taken to eating human flesh as a means to survive? He was known in the news reports of the time as 'The Butcher of Plainsfield'. By his own admission, he didn't hunt deer. After his brother and mother died he spent 12 years living in solitude in the empty, increasingly dilapidated farmhouse. Both his victims were killed just before the long hard winter set in and Gein lived hand to mouth doing odd jobs. When he killed Bernice Worden, he also took the cash register which means he was also needing cash. Her body was 'dressed out as you would a deer' - an odd thing to take the time and preparation to do unless you needed to. Gein is known to have given meat to the townsfolk in the past as tasty venison and maybe realisation that they may have eaten human flesh was one that was too hard to contemplate in 1957, as it is today. They also didn't want to identify which graves had been interfered with.

After reading the book and watching the Netflix 'show' I did feel that TV had turned a corner and taken a new low - one which has no respect for the truth or the victims.

This really is trash TV.

I didn't like it. It was over sexualised and disgusting in parts but at the same time boring as hell.

I was completely put off when my daughter told me he made a belt out of nipples and a sofa out of someone. Not for me.

I initially watched E1 and said I was watching no more, but then did give it another try and watched it to the end. As long as we remember that it's a dramatisation, and not particularly true to fact, then it is quite thought provoking. I did think Charlie Hunnam did a very good job, even if some of the script was far fetched. I will also say that I watch and listen to quite a bit of true crime documentaries and podcasts, but try to remind myself often that these crimes may be analysed but never glamourised - I say this because there's some shocking 'fan' videos going around on places like Tiktok.

On a superficial (i guess) level, the ham radio episode got me. Bernices sons reaction felt so raw it was painful to watch.i now love 'Goodbye Horses' and 'owner of a lonely heart'.
have never seen Charlie hunnam in anything. He is so handsome even in women's underwear. Am rewatching it as I loved it so much.
The ping of a bell for Ted bundy meant something but I dont know what.

I really struggled with this as so much of it was just made up. I had a break from it after a few episodes because it was bugging ne so much. I decided to finish it, and view it as fiction. So quite enjoyed it in the end but people should know that its really not a true account at all.

I think the other 2 were much more factual.