Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein

...as I found this 4-part documentary on Ed Gein VERY interesting! Sure, the guys from Last Podcast from the Left are annoying as hell but everyone else interviewed here has some interesting and informative things to say about this infamous man. Sure, I've seen all of the archival footage of Ed and know his story (found Harold Schechter's book "Deviant" to be excellent as well as a few other books) but the interviews of the current and former Plainfield residents, seeing the cemetery and the Gein family graves, seeing the town itself were all new to me.

In Chapter 4 now where the documentary is discussing "Psycho" (and will go on to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Silence of the Lambs" I hope).

VERY interesting altogether!! Read the reviews but check this film out if you are at all interested in who spawned Norman Bates, Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill.

First off, the three podcasters in this are really, really annoying, laughing and joking around about Ed Gein's murders and laughing about the victims...

Let's just all admit that podcasting is not a genuine form of media when clowns like this are included in a documentary that has actual experts, from people in the town to the author of what's the quintessential Ed Gein biography...

Why these podcaster clowns are included is a mystery, but it's probably because the filmmakers felt that most young people can relate to young jokers, or something...

As for the titular interview tapes: they take about ten lines from Gein and try making a four-part doc with them, and that's a tall order...

With horror-movie music and a few shots making Gein look formidable, it's really the case of taking who's more a backwoods Barney Fife type than a Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill and making a contrived terrorizing study, which doesn't gel here at all...

However it's not a terrible documentary as you do learn some things about Gein... but learning/educating audiences isn't what passes for documentaries anymore...

For True Crime, books are always the best bet because there aren't any repetitive facts, opinions, speculations or photos, and best yet, no annoyingly childish podcasters.

Had to put a small review after two episodes as I can't understand the low rating. If you like true crime then this is a good watch. They're not telling you anything we don't already know as such, it's just much more detailed and a 'deep dive into Geins crimes, mindset and family history. Also the impact on this quiet backwater town in Wisconsin which is forever known as 'Geinsville'. You also get to hear Geins voice for first time which is interesting. Anyway so far so good for me.

*edit* now watched all 4 episodes and it did dip slightly. The first episode remains the best one by far. That been said its still worth your time and a broad take on both him, his crimes and the impact the crimes made on cinema.

This could have been an interesting series listening to the tapes and revisiting some of horrors from the Geins case. Instead we have an overly produced mess with loud overly dramatic music that makes you feel like you're watching a low budget horror movie.

It seems more like an experiment to see if they could make a series with very limited new material. What we have shows that MGM thinks that dramatic music will hide how poorly researched and put together this docuseries is, repeated half truths that have been corrected over time are in here, the entire series feels lazy.

A frustrating and annoying watch.

This is yet another so called "documentary" that relies on over-the-top dramatization to present a topic that would be so much more interesting if the filmmakers respected their audience. Notice all of the sinister background music. Why not just call it a horror film? Not to mention there is misinformation, and certain common rumors are presented as though they were true. One example is with the alleged occurrence of a human heart being found on Gein's stove in a frying pan. This is simply not true. The heart was found in a plastic bag on the floor near the stove. When Gein speaks you can barely hear his voice and these moments in the show are few and far between. Rather than forking out money for MGM+ go on YouTube and find a real Ed Gein Interview for free.