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.

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.

I wanted to like it and some parts were good but there's to much Speculations from bloggers and podcasters that say what they think happened without any prof that happened and it's been over 50 years so i assume that if it had merit it would be facts by now cause this is the most researched serial killer in history. It's hard to take it serious when the "experts" are 3 podcasters or someone that found about about Ed by mistake and than wrote a book. But if you can ignore that i would still recommend it because of the new tapes.and fotagedes it adds to the story that hasn't been known previously.

Like a lot of these shocking docu-series, you realize the producers do all they can to stre-e-e-e-etch 90 minutes worth of material into four hours, and it really dilutes the finished product. The premise is a bit shaky, in that we're never told why these "lost tapes" have never been heard, not even by Gein's biographers. We're just supposed to accept that they are unearthed treasures. The tapes are somewhat interesting but anticlimactic because Gein doesn't have much to say. We hear from a few experts, a few interesting people who actually knew Ed Gein, a good cross section of contributors, and three sophomoric podcasters who, I guess are there for color but seem to think the whole topic is one big joke and end up dumbing down the documentary significantly. All the while, we see the same stock footage and hear the same audio clips over and over, even within the same episode. If all that superfluous filler had been trimmed it could have been an interesting and tight project. Not bad overall, but way too long.

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.