There was the case of a Wisconsin writer who heard the story of a certain demented farmer in a nearby town who kept a mutilated corpse of a 58-year-old woman hanging in his kitchen (some version of the story say shed) like a dressed-out deer. Once the police made the discovery, of this and other things found in the house, a few missing person cases were closed.
Harold Schechter has written a book 'Ripped From the Headlines! The Shocking True Stories Behind the Movies.' In it, he lists movies from novels that were based on true crimes. The WSJ weekend features a 'Books' section, and this past week they highlighted Mr. Schechter's book by taking five examples from the book and writing a thumbnail sketch of the true crime the novel was based on. One of the five is 'Psycho.'
It turns out Psycho was taken from a story written by Robert Bloch, a writer living in Weyauwega, Wisconsin in 1957. Weyauwega is still pretty much a rural enclave with a 2010 population of 1,900, located in the northeastern portion of the state, not very far from Green Bay. Just the sort of place you'd expect a writer to live in.
Apparently Robert Bloch was a well-known pulp-horror author who couldn't resist the story of the police investigation in the nearby town of Plainfield that revolved around the disappearance of a 58-year-old widow.
The police found her; found her mutilated body on the property of a demented farmer, Edward Gein, who had her hanging like a dressed-out deer. And boy, that wasn't all they found.
They found soup bowls made from skulls and a skin vest made from the torso of a middle-aged woman, a vest that Mr. Gein admitted to wearing when he pranced around his kitchen pretending he was his mother. The guy had problems, to what certainly had to be living alone.
Being of a certain age, I remember when the movie Psycho came out in 1960 and the adults were talking about it, specifically about the famous shower scene where Janet Leigh doesn't get the chance to towel off, but instead is slashed to death by a knife from an unseen person to the very scary Bernard Herrmann score. Even in a black and white film, you can tell it's not just water that goes sluicing down that tub's drain.
I don't exactly know how true it was that people who saw the movie admitted to going without showers for a bit, but I imagine some skipped on hygiene from a while.
I wasn't allowed to see the movie as a the kid, but certainly became familiar with it as I grew older, particularly when my wife and I rented it in the early days of VCR rentals. It is quite a movie, but I never gave any thought that it might be based on a true crime story. And any time I read about the movie I read things like Alfred Hitchcock used an Edward Hopper painting of an old, federal-style, mansard roof house as the model for Norman Bates's house. Things like that. Never anything about Edward Gein.
Thus we are treated to an HLN series of 'Very Scary People.' where people like David Berkowitz, Charles Manson and the BTK killer, and others are featured. But no one seems to highlight Ed's problems with being social. The Internet solves that.
His murders, mutilations and grave robbing of at least nine bodies inspired no less than three movies: Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. He died in a mental institution in 1984 when he was 77 years old.
The Wikipedia entry has a revolting list of the body parts found in Mr. Gein's house and how they were repurposed. Given the portrayal of Norman Bates in the movie Psycho, Norman appears to be only mildly disturbed.
Years ago in the early '80s there was a pretty good thoroughbred named Bates Motel. I remember seeing him win easily at Monmouth. The sire and mare's names, Sir Ivor and Sunday Purchase give no clue as to how the horse came to be named Bates Motel. But I remember reading that the breeders thought it would be funny when it came time for Bates Motel to be a stud horse himself, it would be humorous to think of sending female horses, fillies and mares, to Bates Motel for breeding purposes. Get it?
In today's world, that would seem to be a very lame attempt at humor, given what really went on in Mr. Gein's house.
But then again, who really knew what Psycho was based on?
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