1 00:00:03,421 --> 00:00:06,424 [dramatic music plays] 2 00:00:30,114 --> 00:00:33,367 [Reid] Bernice Worden had been murdered. 3 00:00:33,451 --> 00:00:37,538 They'd caught Eddie because he was the one that had done it. 4 00:00:55,431 --> 00:00:58,184 I knew Bernice well. 5 00:00:58,267 --> 00:01:01,187 She'd been gutted out like a deer. 6 00:01:16,619 --> 00:01:22,374 It was very hard to visualize somebody doing that to a human. 7 00:01:22,458 --> 00:01:24,710 But we didn't know the peculiar thoughts 8 00:01:24,794 --> 00:01:27,296 that went through Eddie's mind at that time. 9 00:01:38,474 --> 00:01:40,726 [Boyd] What time was that? Do you remember? 10 00:01:40,810 --> 00:01:43,729 [Schechter] Eddie is such a mythic figure. 11 00:01:43,813 --> 00:01:47,650 Hearing this actual human voice... 12 00:01:47,733 --> 00:01:50,486 [Gein] I can't even remember that. 13 00:01:50,569 --> 00:01:55,825 It just makes these crimes that much more real. 14 00:01:55,908 --> 00:01:58,577 [dramatic music plays] 15 00:02:00,287 --> 00:02:03,249 [theme music plays] 16 00:02:22,309 --> 00:02:25,396 [dramatic music plays] 17 00:02:34,947 --> 00:02:36,907 [Marcus] Well, we've been debating for years 18 00:02:36,991 --> 00:02:38,701 what did Ed Gein sound like? 19 00:02:38,784 --> 00:02:43,455 [Henry] I have been playing Ed Gein in my brain for so long. 20 00:02:59,889 --> 00:03:03,559 He sounds just as bewildered as I always expected him to. 21 00:03:03,642 --> 00:03:05,269 -Sure. -Always wondering, 22 00:03:05,352 --> 00:03:06,729 "Why did I do this? 23 00:03:06,812 --> 00:03:11,567 What possibly could have driven me to dig up these women, 24 00:03:11,650 --> 00:03:13,986 to make these, you know, costumes, to do all of this?" 25 00:03:14,069 --> 00:03:16,655 Like, he's still -- He's marveled. 26 00:03:16,739 --> 00:03:19,658 My first reaction to him talking 27 00:03:19,742 --> 00:03:23,913 is he's actually a lot more canny than I thought he was. 28 00:03:23,996 --> 00:03:25,831 As I'm listening to him react, 29 00:03:25,915 --> 00:03:29,627 he knows there are things he can't tell the police. 30 00:03:29,710 --> 00:03:31,545 It's almost like he's already known 31 00:03:31,629 --> 00:03:33,297 that this has been going on for so long 32 00:03:33,380 --> 00:03:34,381 and he's surprised that they're shocked. 33 00:03:34,465 --> 00:03:36,216 [Marcus] Yeah. 34 00:03:36,300 --> 00:03:39,219 He's almost ignorant of his own macabre ways. It's crazy. 35 00:03:39,303 --> 00:03:40,512 That's what people said 36 00:03:40,596 --> 00:03:42,932 again and again during his confessions, 37 00:03:43,015 --> 00:03:44,808 people who spoke to him, 38 00:03:44,892 --> 00:03:47,603 is that people would start off a little bit hard towards him 39 00:03:47,686 --> 00:03:49,480 and then they would become sympathetic 40 00:03:49,563 --> 00:03:52,983 because the way they described him was as a little boy, 41 00:03:53,067 --> 00:03:56,236 a demented little boy, but a little boy nonetheless. 42 00:03:59,615 --> 00:04:03,869 [man] Oh, you're bright, you know, aren't you? 43 00:04:03,953 --> 00:04:06,288 [man #2] Well, now, will you let me do this after? 44 00:04:06,372 --> 00:04:12,044 Ed Gein had the emotional social maturity of a small child 45 00:04:12,127 --> 00:04:17,549 who was, on all accounts, very dependent on his mom. 46 00:04:17,633 --> 00:04:21,971 When I listened to the tapes, he seems very suggestible. 47 00:04:22,054 --> 00:04:25,849 He's somebody who seems very passive. 48 00:04:54,086 --> 00:04:56,463 He didn't go through the kinds of stages 49 00:04:56,547 --> 00:04:59,091 and the maturation that a person would go through 50 00:04:59,174 --> 00:05:02,011 if they, you know, were allowed to socialize 51 00:05:02,094 --> 00:05:05,514 and have friendships outside of the home 52 00:05:05,597 --> 00:05:09,518 and lived in a place where he had that kind of support. 53 00:05:09,601 --> 00:05:14,314 He had never really developed into a full-fledged self. 54 00:05:14,398 --> 00:05:17,484 [dramatic music plays] 55 00:05:40,883 --> 00:05:43,343 [Bowser] This is the front of the Waushara County jail 56 00:05:43,427 --> 00:05:47,639 as it looked in 1957. 57 00:05:47,723 --> 00:05:50,476 This is where the Ed Gein tapes were actually made. 58 00:05:50,559 --> 00:05:51,810 And in the back of the building 59 00:05:51,894 --> 00:05:54,521 was actually where Ed Gein was held. 60 00:05:56,523 --> 00:06:01,612 Everything inside the building is still original to 1957. 61 00:06:01,695 --> 00:06:04,782 He actually came out of this door to go to the courthouse. 62 00:06:09,578 --> 00:06:12,164 First night he got here, they put him in a drunk tank 63 00:06:12,247 --> 00:06:15,584 to protect him from all the people of Plainfield. 64 00:06:15,667 --> 00:06:17,836 Thought they'd be coming to get him. 65 00:06:17,920 --> 00:06:21,799 Then after that, they moved him into his regular cell. 66 00:06:21,882 --> 00:06:24,510 Ed Gein's cell is directly behind that second window. 67 00:06:24,593 --> 00:06:27,554 He was here for three days and two nights. 68 00:06:29,723 --> 00:06:32,433 This is a small town in Wisconsin. 69 00:06:32,518 --> 00:06:34,144 Where they just know that train's coming. 70 00:06:34,228 --> 00:06:36,605 They know it's coming. And if you're law enforcement, 71 00:06:36,688 --> 00:06:38,065 this is not what you want. 72 00:06:43,278 --> 00:06:47,116 You do not want this stain on your community. 73 00:06:47,199 --> 00:06:48,951 People are humble, 74 00:06:49,034 --> 00:06:51,954 but they have a lot of pride in -- in being good people. 75 00:06:52,037 --> 00:06:53,872 [Henry] Also, it happened under your nose. 76 00:06:53,956 --> 00:06:55,958 -[Ben] Under your nose. -[Henry] You know, like, 77 00:06:56,041 --> 00:06:58,043 you did not know that this ghoul was operating 78 00:06:58,127 --> 00:06:59,711 right next to you. 79 00:07:03,048 --> 00:07:06,969 [Lee] The relics of Hollywood representations 80 00:07:07,052 --> 00:07:10,180 of serial killers is that they're kind of like geniuses 81 00:07:10,264 --> 00:07:14,476 who are plotting and scheming the perfect murder 82 00:07:14,560 --> 00:07:16,687 and building a whole kind of, like, structure 83 00:07:16,770 --> 00:07:18,438 around getting away with it. 84 00:07:18,522 --> 00:07:20,732 He's an example of somebody who was not doing that. 85 00:07:20,816 --> 00:07:22,985 He was acting in plain sight. 86 00:07:23,068 --> 00:07:26,029 [dramatic music plays] 87 00:07:34,830 --> 00:07:38,792 [Gein] But I told them I can't understand it. 88 00:07:38,876 --> 00:07:42,880 [Schechter] No one knew of the existence of this tape. 89 00:07:42,963 --> 00:07:46,842 Till now, everyone, and myself included, 90 00:07:46,925 --> 00:07:49,970 believed that his first confession came much later 91 00:07:50,053 --> 00:07:53,599 than this when he was taken to the crime lab. 92 00:07:56,185 --> 00:07:59,688 The fact that he was interviewed in the jail cell 93 00:07:59,771 --> 00:08:02,524 immediately after he was taken into custody 94 00:08:02,608 --> 00:08:05,110 changes our view of the whole timeline 95 00:08:05,194 --> 00:08:08,572 and sheds very different light on the case. 96 00:08:08,655 --> 00:08:14,494 When Sheriff Schley discovered Bernice Worden's naked corpse 97 00:08:14,578 --> 00:08:17,206 strung up by her heels, 98 00:08:17,289 --> 00:08:20,626 Gein is actually not at home, 99 00:08:20,709 --> 00:08:24,046 but he is at a neighbor's house having dinner. 100 00:08:24,129 --> 00:08:27,716 One of the -- the sons suddenly comes in 101 00:08:27,799 --> 00:08:33,597 and -- and says he's heard that Bernice Worden has gone missing 102 00:08:33,680 --> 00:08:36,141 and there's a big commotion in town. 103 00:08:36,225 --> 00:08:38,644 And, you know, he wants to go into town 104 00:08:38,727 --> 00:08:39,937 and see what's going on. 105 00:08:40,020 --> 00:08:42,272 And -- And Ed volunteers to go with him. 106 00:08:48,654 --> 00:08:52,574 Ed makes some kind of weird remark at the time, 107 00:08:52,658 --> 00:08:57,955 almost indicating that he knows something dreadful has happened. 108 00:08:58,038 --> 00:09:00,207 But before the two of them could leave, 109 00:09:00,290 --> 00:09:04,211 the two deputies who had been dispatched to the Hills' house 110 00:09:04,294 --> 00:09:07,547 show up, and they take Gein into custody. 111 00:09:20,352 --> 00:09:24,022 The search of his house was actually going on 112 00:09:24,106 --> 00:09:26,650 at the time this interview was taking place. 113 00:09:26,733 --> 00:09:30,028 So the full extent of Gein's horrors 114 00:09:30,112 --> 00:09:32,656 had not even come to light yet. 115 00:09:50,215 --> 00:09:53,218 [Berrill] Here's this socially isolated, 116 00:09:53,302 --> 00:09:55,304 clearly disturbed individual. 117 00:09:55,387 --> 00:10:00,225 He finds himself being questioned by the authorities. 118 00:10:00,309 --> 00:10:03,228 But the people who are interrogating him, 119 00:10:03,312 --> 00:10:04,896 and I guess they were trying hard 120 00:10:04,980 --> 00:10:07,274 not to be overly judgmental, 121 00:10:07,357 --> 00:10:08,900 they weren't being harsh with him 122 00:10:08,984 --> 00:10:11,028 or they weren't threatening him. 123 00:10:11,111 --> 00:10:15,365 But, I mean, he was really in a kind of odd spot. 124 00:10:15,449 --> 00:10:19,244 All of a sudden, you know, the truth is revealed. 125 00:10:19,328 --> 00:10:21,997 [Schechter] Much more would be discovered 126 00:10:22,080 --> 00:10:24,166 in the coming hours and days 127 00:10:24,249 --> 00:10:27,210 as investigators excavated 128 00:10:27,294 --> 00:10:30,255 this archeological dig in hell, 129 00:10:30,339 --> 00:10:32,799 coming upon all of these horrors. 130 00:10:32,883 --> 00:10:38,930 Gein had spent years fashioning these incredibly grotesque 131 00:10:39,014 --> 00:10:43,977 household objects out of human body parts. 132 00:10:44,061 --> 00:10:48,148 Investigators see objects and artifacts 133 00:10:48,231 --> 00:10:51,943 that they couldn't even comprehend. 134 00:10:52,027 --> 00:10:57,115 Would be in that time period a series of entirely unexpected, 135 00:10:57,199 --> 00:11:01,703 very peculiar, very bizarre, shocking behavior. 136 00:11:15,050 --> 00:11:18,720 Actually, the dialogue was relatively placid 137 00:11:18,804 --> 00:11:20,180 and civilized, 138 00:11:20,263 --> 00:11:22,766 given what you imagine could have happened 139 00:11:22,849 --> 00:11:24,101 back at the police station. 140 00:11:24,184 --> 00:11:27,145 [dramatic music plays] 141 00:11:50,419 --> 00:11:53,797 [Marcus] One of the sheriffs that spent just six hours 142 00:11:53,880 --> 00:11:56,133 in that house went back 143 00:11:56,216 --> 00:12:00,429 and physically attacked Ed Gein in his jail cell 144 00:12:00,512 --> 00:12:03,390 because he was so disturbed by what he'd seen 145 00:12:03,473 --> 00:12:05,434 and so disturbed by what Ed Gein's actions 146 00:12:05,517 --> 00:12:06,935 did to him personally. 147 00:12:16,611 --> 00:12:20,157 [Schechter] Schley shows up and bursts into the cell, 148 00:12:20,240 --> 00:12:21,825 grabs Eddie, 149 00:12:21,908 --> 00:12:25,162 immediately begins to manhandle him. 150 00:12:25,245 --> 00:12:28,498 Schley was in this uncontrollable blind rage. 151 00:12:28,582 --> 00:12:32,836 Schley immediately wants to know who else Gein has killed 152 00:12:32,919 --> 00:12:35,881 and really has to be pulled off of Gein. 153 00:12:35,964 --> 00:12:38,341 [Lee] Ed Gein seems like a quiet, 154 00:12:38,425 --> 00:12:39,968 sort of unremarkable person. 155 00:12:40,051 --> 00:12:42,846 And yet when you compare the image of him 156 00:12:42,929 --> 00:12:47,392 to the stuff that police found at his house, 157 00:12:47,476 --> 00:12:49,895 it's almost so jarring. 158 00:12:49,978 --> 00:12:52,063 And there -- there seems to be a real disconnect 159 00:12:52,147 --> 00:12:54,107 between his appearance 160 00:12:54,191 --> 00:12:58,028 and the gruesome things that they discovered at his house. 161 00:12:58,987 --> 00:13:01,323 [Henry] I can't imagine what it must have been like. 162 00:13:01,406 --> 00:13:05,785 You did not know that this ghoul was operating right next to you 163 00:13:05,869 --> 00:13:08,246 and he was insinuated in all of your lives. 164 00:13:08,330 --> 00:13:10,832 And he did all of these things. 165 00:13:10,916 --> 00:13:12,334 They almost probably, 166 00:13:12,417 --> 00:13:14,920 almost equal to Ed don't want people to know about this. 167 00:13:15,003 --> 00:13:17,130 "Let's not get into too many details, Ed." 168 00:13:17,214 --> 00:13:18,423 If it's true that there's a ghoul 169 00:13:18,507 --> 00:13:19,925 in Plainfield, Wisconsin, 170 00:13:20,008 --> 00:13:21,092 then it's also an indictment on the police. 171 00:13:21,176 --> 00:13:22,844 It's an indictment on everybody. 172 00:13:22,928 --> 00:13:26,556 [dramatic music plays] 173 00:13:30,602 --> 00:13:34,272 [Gein] No, my, uh -- The way I remember, 174 00:13:34,356 --> 00:13:40,946 I think it was two -- either a day or two after that. 175 00:13:41,029 --> 00:13:43,490 [Weiland] My dad was Art Schley, 176 00:13:43,573 --> 00:13:48,078 County Sheriff of Waushara County. 177 00:13:48,161 --> 00:13:51,581 We lived in the jail at the time. 178 00:13:51,665 --> 00:13:56,294 It was no different than living in a home somewhere. 179 00:13:56,378 --> 00:13:59,589 That was our home, let's put it that way. 180 00:13:59,673 --> 00:14:03,176 This is a picture of us in the jail. 181 00:14:03,260 --> 00:14:08,306 It is my mom and myself and my dad. 182 00:14:08,390 --> 00:14:11,226 And it's in the office. 183 00:14:11,309 --> 00:14:12,936 My bedroom, 184 00:14:13,019 --> 00:14:15,355 if you were to cut a hole in the wall, 185 00:14:15,438 --> 00:14:19,609 I would have been upstairs by the bullpen. 186 00:14:19,693 --> 00:14:22,320 When my dad was voted in as sheriff, 187 00:14:22,404 --> 00:14:25,865 it would have been probably the summer of '57. 188 00:14:25,949 --> 00:14:28,493 And this case broke 189 00:14:28,577 --> 00:14:31,204 the last part of November of '57. 190 00:14:31,288 --> 00:14:34,291 He had never had any law enforcement training 191 00:14:34,374 --> 00:14:35,542 before this. 192 00:14:35,625 --> 00:14:40,005 And so when this big case came about, 193 00:14:40,088 --> 00:14:42,424 he really didn't have a lot of experience 194 00:14:42,507 --> 00:14:48,513 or a lot of knowledge on how to handle something this big. 195 00:14:48,597 --> 00:14:51,641 On the night Ed Gein was arrested, 196 00:14:51,725 --> 00:14:55,186 I would have been probably 11 years old. 197 00:14:55,270 --> 00:14:58,481 I was in the sixth grade. 198 00:14:58,565 --> 00:15:00,650 All these men were sitting in the stairway 199 00:15:00,734 --> 00:15:02,152 and I couldn't get up to bed. 200 00:15:02,235 --> 00:15:03,570 And I said, "Why?" 201 00:15:03,653 --> 00:15:09,534 And that's when I was told what had happened. 202 00:15:09,618 --> 00:15:15,248 I can't imagine someone being as normal as he seemed 203 00:15:15,332 --> 00:15:19,544 and yet could do such horrible things. 204 00:15:19,628 --> 00:15:23,590 Ed was just in the lower level of the jail. 205 00:15:32,349 --> 00:15:35,477 I can remember Judge Boyd Clark. 206 00:15:35,560 --> 00:15:39,397 He was a very nice-looking, very nice-appearing man, 207 00:15:39,481 --> 00:15:41,066 had a young family, 208 00:15:41,149 --> 00:15:44,069 and I probably was at his house at one point. 209 00:15:44,152 --> 00:15:47,197 I actually had a crush on his son, Nelson Clark. 210 00:15:47,280 --> 00:15:49,532 [laughs] 211 00:15:57,082 --> 00:15:59,376 I remember Ed Kileen. 212 00:15:59,459 --> 00:16:02,003 He lived right across the road from us. 213 00:16:11,513 --> 00:16:18,103 People had said my dad roughed up Ed Gein a little bit. 214 00:16:18,186 --> 00:16:20,605 I heard he grabbed him by the front of the shirt 215 00:16:20,689 --> 00:16:23,608 and pushed him up against the -- the wall. 216 00:16:23,692 --> 00:16:28,029 My dad was a friend of Frank Worden 217 00:16:28,113 --> 00:16:31,032 because Frank Worden was a deputy of his. 218 00:16:31,116 --> 00:16:33,576 And this was his mother. 219 00:16:33,660 --> 00:16:36,579 I guess my dad probably was just upset to think 220 00:16:36,663 --> 00:16:39,582 one human being could do something so horrific 221 00:16:39,666 --> 00:16:42,584 to another human being. 222 00:16:42,669 --> 00:16:46,672 I just think maybe it was a normal reaction as why 223 00:16:46,756 --> 00:16:50,008 or how could you do something like that? 224 00:16:50,093 --> 00:16:53,012 [dramatic music plays] 225 00:17:15,243 --> 00:17:18,288 You would imagine there would be an outcry. 226 00:17:18,371 --> 00:17:22,333 "We want to know if Mom is in her grave or not. 227 00:17:22,417 --> 00:17:25,670 Did this ghoul take her from her grave?" 228 00:17:25,754 --> 00:17:28,047 Families would raise a fuss. 229 00:17:36,514 --> 00:17:39,559 It is odd that he could just tell them, 230 00:17:39,642 --> 00:17:41,186 "Well, it's this -- this number," 231 00:17:41,269 --> 00:17:43,354 and they go, "Okay, we'll -- we'll check two. 232 00:17:43,438 --> 00:17:46,065 We'll accept that -- that everything is accurate 233 00:17:46,149 --> 00:17:47,567 and valid." 234 00:17:47,650 --> 00:17:50,612 So that seems kind of sloppy and a little weird. 235 00:17:59,204 --> 00:18:02,165 [telephone rings] 236 00:18:06,628 --> 00:18:09,631 [Reid] The phone rang. 237 00:18:09,714 --> 00:18:11,299 We were just finishing up supper 238 00:18:11,382 --> 00:18:14,719 before we went out to milk the cows. 239 00:18:14,803 --> 00:18:17,847 We found out that Eddie had been picked up 240 00:18:17,931 --> 00:18:21,267 for killing Mrs. Worden. 241 00:18:21,351 --> 00:18:23,102 It was shocking. 242 00:18:23,186 --> 00:18:25,647 There hadn't been a whole lot of murders around, you know? 243 00:18:25,730 --> 00:18:28,900 You just wait for the news to develop, and -- 244 00:18:28,983 --> 00:18:30,777 and it did. It didn't take long. 245 00:18:34,280 --> 00:18:37,283 [dramatic music plays] 246 00:18:44,749 --> 00:18:46,417 I went in to supper. 247 00:18:46,501 --> 00:18:48,378 My sister-in-law, she said, 248 00:18:48,461 --> 00:18:51,130 "Did you know Eddie Gein's killed Mrs. Worden?" 249 00:18:51,214 --> 00:18:52,507 And I said, "Do you know 250 00:18:52,590 --> 00:18:54,676 that's the biggest damn lie I ever heard?" 251 00:18:54,759 --> 00:18:56,928 That's just the very words I said. 252 00:18:57,011 --> 00:18:58,888 How long had you known Mr. Gein? 253 00:18:58,972 --> 00:19:00,431 -Seven years. -Seven years. 254 00:19:00,515 --> 00:19:02,308 What kind of a man did you know him as? 255 00:19:02,392 --> 00:19:05,353 Well, a man -- a nice man, 256 00:19:05,436 --> 00:19:07,689 just like anybody else. 257 00:19:07,772 --> 00:19:09,607 The only difference I'd say in the man, 258 00:19:09,691 --> 00:19:11,734 he seems to be little odd. 259 00:19:15,238 --> 00:19:17,740 [Henry] Think about this also -- 1957, 260 00:19:17,824 --> 00:19:19,534 having an actual news reporter 261 00:19:19,617 --> 00:19:22,537 have to say the words "human skin suit 262 00:19:22,620 --> 00:19:25,874 made from local man's mother's body." 263 00:19:25,957 --> 00:19:28,710 Like, this -- They didn't want to cover, like, 264 00:19:28,793 --> 00:19:30,670 that there were Black people in the Olympics. 265 00:19:30,753 --> 00:19:32,380 Like, what are they going to -- 266 00:19:32,463 --> 00:19:34,632 Now you have this thing. They're going to literally, 267 00:19:34,716 --> 00:19:37,677 like, blow your mind with this piece of information. 268 00:19:39,596 --> 00:19:42,682 The term "serial killer" doesn't come out for another 269 00:19:42,765 --> 00:19:46,352 20, 30 years after Ed Gein was caught. 270 00:19:46,436 --> 00:19:51,608 So Ed Gein's arrest must have been a massive shock 271 00:19:51,691 --> 00:19:54,694 to the American psyche and to the world. 272 00:19:54,777 --> 00:19:56,821 [Weiland] I don't remember when I realized 273 00:19:56,905 --> 00:19:58,698 what was really going on. 274 00:19:58,781 --> 00:20:01,534 Probably it had to do with all the newspaper men, 275 00:20:01,618 --> 00:20:03,953 all the media that was there. 276 00:20:04,037 --> 00:20:06,456 [Marcus] They were this small farming community, 277 00:20:06,539 --> 00:20:09,208 perfectly happy with being isolated 278 00:20:09,292 --> 00:20:11,336 and not being known by the rest of the world. 279 00:20:11,419 --> 00:20:14,464 All of a sudden, they're going to have to deal with 280 00:20:14,547 --> 00:20:17,550 people like us driving into their town, 281 00:20:17,634 --> 00:20:20,845 looking around, going to the graveyard 282 00:20:20,929 --> 00:20:23,890 for the rest of the town's existence. 283 00:20:23,973 --> 00:20:26,935 Plainfield, Wisconsin, for as long as America exists, 284 00:20:27,018 --> 00:20:31,606 will be the hometown of Ed Gein, no matter what. 285 00:20:34,317 --> 00:20:35,693 [Weiland] It was just crazy. 286 00:20:35,777 --> 00:20:38,988 After a while, there was so much media there. 287 00:20:39,072 --> 00:20:41,532 They'd be sitting on the steps and we'd have to say, 288 00:20:41,616 --> 00:20:42,909 "Excuse me, can I get upstairs?" 289 00:20:42,992 --> 00:20:45,244 And they'd have to get up and get out of the way 290 00:20:45,328 --> 00:20:46,746 so we could go upstairs. 291 00:20:46,829 --> 00:20:49,707 And, I mean, they weren't just sitting one or two of them. 292 00:20:49,791 --> 00:20:52,460 The stairs were full of media. 293 00:20:52,543 --> 00:20:55,838 [reporter] What kind of a man did you know of Ed Gein as? 294 00:20:55,922 --> 00:21:00,843 Well, rather simple-minded, 295 00:21:00,927 --> 00:21:02,804 but he always -- 296 00:21:02,887 --> 00:21:06,349 I always figured he was just perfectly harmless. 297 00:21:06,432 --> 00:21:08,810 You could be a serial killer or just kind of gay 298 00:21:08,893 --> 00:21:10,687 and they would be in Wisconsin, be like, 299 00:21:10,770 --> 00:21:13,523 "He's just a little different. He's just a little different." 300 00:21:13,606 --> 00:21:15,775 I'd say he was more or less a pleasant man 301 00:21:15,858 --> 00:21:18,611 who would be nice man to talk to 302 00:21:18,695 --> 00:21:20,780 or somebody would like to have around. 303 00:21:20,863 --> 00:21:24,033 Seems to be a harmless fella, you know. 304 00:21:28,788 --> 00:21:31,874 Plainfield -- It's the home of Ed Gein. 305 00:21:31,958 --> 00:21:35,503 It's not on the sign. But -- But it's -- it's known. 306 00:21:35,586 --> 00:21:38,673 There are -- There are hints throughout the town. 307 00:21:38,756 --> 00:21:39,841 [Lee] On one hand, 308 00:21:39,924 --> 00:21:42,719 we're horrified by what happened. 309 00:21:42,802 --> 00:21:45,763 Like footage of, like, a car accident 310 00:21:45,847 --> 00:21:47,682 or, like, an earthquake is, 311 00:21:47,765 --> 00:21:51,519 on one hand, just horrifying and scary. 312 00:21:51,602 --> 00:21:55,773 But there's something also morbidly exciting about that. 313 00:21:55,857 --> 00:21:58,109 And we don't want to look, 314 00:21:58,192 --> 00:22:00,945 but we can't look away at the same time 315 00:22:01,029 --> 00:22:05,116 because of the nature of the crimes. 316 00:22:05,199 --> 00:22:08,411 [Schechter] It's been years since I've been to Plainfield, 317 00:22:08,494 --> 00:22:11,914 but even when I was researching my book, 318 00:22:11,998 --> 00:22:15,334 it was a sore subject with a lot of people. 319 00:22:15,418 --> 00:22:18,671 There were people who had family members 320 00:22:18,755 --> 00:22:21,424 whose bodies had been exhumed by Gein. 321 00:22:24,093 --> 00:22:28,556 [Reid] You kind of begin to think about it. 322 00:22:28,639 --> 00:22:30,141 People are talking about it. 323 00:22:30,224 --> 00:22:33,770 That sucker, he's really kind of a sick devil. 324 00:22:33,853 --> 00:22:35,646 You've heard of people killing people, 325 00:22:35,730 --> 00:22:38,149 but you don't hear them taking them in and gutting them out 326 00:22:38,232 --> 00:22:40,026 and all that kind of stuff that Eddie did. 327 00:22:40,109 --> 00:22:44,781 He was in a box by himself when it come to his murders. 328 00:22:47,075 --> 00:22:49,660 If you drive around the country, 329 00:22:49,744 --> 00:22:54,040 there are all these small towns that take civic pride 330 00:22:54,123 --> 00:22:57,001 in being home to whatever. 331 00:22:57,085 --> 00:22:58,961 Plainfield was suddenly like, 332 00:22:59,045 --> 00:23:03,049 "This is the town where Ed Gein committed his crimes." 333 00:23:09,097 --> 00:23:12,850 [Weiland] Here's a picture of my grandpa and grandma's car 334 00:23:12,934 --> 00:23:15,895 that my dad would use at times to take Ed Gein 335 00:23:15,978 --> 00:23:18,189 to different appointments or something 336 00:23:18,272 --> 00:23:21,484 when he thought maybe he'd be followed or something like that. 337 00:23:38,751 --> 00:23:42,964 Okay. My dad is opening the door for Ed Gein. 338 00:23:44,507 --> 00:23:46,008 Yes. 339 00:23:47,802 --> 00:23:48,886 Yeah. 340 00:23:48,970 --> 00:23:52,557 Ed's covering his face. 341 00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:56,811 Ed was always a very polite man. 342 00:23:56,894 --> 00:23:59,939 My mother made the meals and done the laundry, 343 00:24:00,022 --> 00:24:03,151 and we would help take the meals down. 344 00:24:06,863 --> 00:24:09,866 And when we take the food tray in to him, 345 00:24:09,949 --> 00:24:13,202 he'd always thank us for bringing it. 346 00:24:13,286 --> 00:24:15,788 I don't know what to say about him. 347 00:24:15,872 --> 00:24:18,916 Saying the man is a nice man when he done what he done -- 348 00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:20,501 It's a terrible thing for him. 349 00:24:20,585 --> 00:24:23,045 It's a terrible thing for the people involved. 350 00:24:23,129 --> 00:24:24,672 And it was a terrible thing 351 00:24:24,755 --> 00:24:27,758 for the -- for the whole community of Plainfield. 352 00:24:27,842 --> 00:24:30,678 [dramatic music plays] 353 00:24:47,862 --> 00:24:50,031 [Schechter] After Ed's arrest, 354 00:24:50,114 --> 00:24:51,949 he was declared mentally incompetent 355 00:24:52,033 --> 00:24:55,578 and consigned to a mental institution. 356 00:24:55,661 --> 00:24:59,248 [Berrill] Competency is not the same thing as insanity. 357 00:24:59,332 --> 00:25:02,126 Competency is really can you understand 358 00:25:02,210 --> 00:25:04,587 the meaning of your charges. 359 00:25:04,670 --> 00:25:09,550 Can you participate in a knowing manner with your attorney 360 00:25:09,634 --> 00:25:11,135 and your own defense? 361 00:25:11,219 --> 00:25:14,513 Are you fit to proceed to trial? 362 00:25:14,597 --> 00:25:17,975 It's no shock that he'd wind up in a hospital. 363 00:25:18,059 --> 00:25:21,938 The crimes are too weird. They're too violent. 364 00:25:22,021 --> 00:25:23,814 They're peculiar. 365 00:25:23,898 --> 00:25:28,653 Had it been something like a sexual assault or a murder, 366 00:25:28,736 --> 00:25:31,239 the commission of a -- a robbery, 367 00:25:31,322 --> 00:25:33,991 they would have just thrown him in prison. 368 00:25:34,075 --> 00:25:37,578 But this stuff that he did was just too unthinkable 369 00:25:37,662 --> 00:25:39,163 and too weird. 370 00:25:39,247 --> 00:25:43,626 And, you know, my rule of thumb is if it scares a jury, 371 00:25:43,709 --> 00:25:45,586 you're going to the hospital. 372 00:25:50,007 --> 00:25:53,636 I'm looking at Edward Gein's records 373 00:25:53,719 --> 00:25:56,597 from Central State Hospital, 374 00:25:56,681 --> 00:25:59,809 and this reflects his intake. 375 00:26:01,769 --> 00:26:05,690 What is interesting and consistent with his interview 376 00:26:05,773 --> 00:26:11,904 at the police station is that he was found to be coherent. 377 00:26:11,988 --> 00:26:14,991 The records are very descriptive, 378 00:26:15,074 --> 00:26:18,786 but also in some respects contradictory. 379 00:26:18,869 --> 00:26:22,081 I mean, on one hand, they talk about his train of thought 380 00:26:22,164 --> 00:26:26,210 as coherent and relevant, but sometimes illogical. 381 00:26:26,294 --> 00:26:29,088 Now, I don't know what that means. 382 00:26:29,171 --> 00:26:32,383 That seems to be an implicit contradiction. 383 00:26:32,466 --> 00:26:36,053 They also say that he experiences visual 384 00:26:36,137 --> 00:26:39,181 and auditory hallucinations, 385 00:26:39,265 --> 00:26:43,811 and yet they then go on to say it's uncertain 386 00:26:43,894 --> 00:26:48,733 if these should be designated as overt hallucinations. 387 00:26:48,816 --> 00:26:52,028 Well, I don't know what you would call them. 388 00:26:52,111 --> 00:26:54,739 There's only two questions you can ask. 389 00:26:54,822 --> 00:26:57,158 Is it real or is it not real? 390 00:26:57,241 --> 00:26:59,076 They even are curious about whether or not 391 00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:03,331 he found the bodies sexually stimulating. 392 00:27:03,414 --> 00:27:06,250 And there's some speculation about that. 393 00:27:06,334 --> 00:27:09,003 But I don't see anything where he says 394 00:27:09,086 --> 00:27:14,091 that he found the bodies sexually stimulating. 395 00:27:14,175 --> 00:27:17,345 Though he's not providing much of an explanation 396 00:27:17,428 --> 00:27:22,183 for his own conduct as to what motivates him. 397 00:27:22,266 --> 00:27:24,101 It's my sense that they don't have, like, 398 00:27:24,185 --> 00:27:28,356 a really great idea about who this guy is 399 00:27:28,439 --> 00:27:32,026 and what would have motivated him to do what he does. 400 00:27:32,109 --> 00:27:34,153 They're hedging their bets. 401 00:27:34,236 --> 00:27:36,280 They're not really sure themselves 402 00:27:36,364 --> 00:27:39,825 and they probably never saw anything like this. 403 00:27:42,411 --> 00:27:45,831 [Sherman] I was a consulting psychologist 404 00:27:45,915 --> 00:27:48,334 at Central State Hospital 405 00:27:48,417 --> 00:27:54,924 where, in the early 1970s, I had an encounter with Ed Gein. 406 00:27:55,007 --> 00:27:57,843 And I must say it was memorable. 407 00:28:02,306 --> 00:28:07,186 I was there working hard in this office. 408 00:28:07,269 --> 00:28:10,314 I was writing away at the desk. 409 00:28:10,398 --> 00:28:11,357 [typewriter clacking] 410 00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:12,900 [clattering] 411 00:28:12,983 --> 00:28:16,821 I heard this noise behind me. 412 00:28:16,904 --> 00:28:21,742 I just kept on working because I was used to distractions. 413 00:28:21,826 --> 00:28:26,163 But then I got thirsty, and so I went out in the hall. 414 00:28:26,247 --> 00:28:29,375 I saw Dr. Schubert. 415 00:28:29,458 --> 00:28:34,004 And he said to me, "Did you meet Mr. Gein?" 416 00:28:34,088 --> 00:28:36,757 And I turned around. 417 00:28:36,841 --> 00:28:40,010 There was Mr. Gein. 418 00:28:40,094 --> 00:28:44,140 He wasn't very tall, white hair, 419 00:28:44,223 --> 00:28:49,019 and he had these tools, a hammer and saw. 420 00:28:49,103 --> 00:28:53,858 He'd been trying to put up a partition behind me. 421 00:28:53,941 --> 00:28:57,111 I just about fainted. 422 00:28:57,194 --> 00:28:59,530 Dr. Schubert goes, 423 00:28:59,613 --> 00:29:03,367 "I guess he was taking your measure." 424 00:29:03,451 --> 00:29:05,035 He was referring to the idea 425 00:29:05,119 --> 00:29:09,331 that Gein had skinned various women and made, 426 00:29:09,415 --> 00:29:13,961 you know, like, lampshades out of them. 427 00:29:14,044 --> 00:29:18,424 I was really upset that Dr. Schubert would do this. 428 00:29:18,507 --> 00:29:22,219 I complained to the other people that worked there 429 00:29:22,303 --> 00:29:25,890 and they said, "Oh, Gein's harmless." 430 00:29:25,973 --> 00:29:30,227 And there wasn't anything malicious in his eyes. 431 00:29:30,311 --> 00:29:34,773 It was only some confusion and concern. 432 00:29:58,589 --> 00:30:03,260 People in general felt kind of sorry for him. 433 00:30:03,344 --> 00:30:08,098 It was an odd contrast in terms of this little old man 434 00:30:08,182 --> 00:30:12,394 that evoked pity and such sensational crimes. 435 00:30:15,940 --> 00:30:22,613 I later asked Dr. Schubert why Gein had done these things. 436 00:30:22,696 --> 00:30:26,283 He said that as far as he could figure, 437 00:30:26,367 --> 00:30:31,956 that Gein was trying to reconstitute his dead mother. 438 00:30:32,039 --> 00:30:35,251 Now, how he would do that, I don't know. 439 00:30:35,334 --> 00:30:38,879 But of course, the man was crazy. 440 00:30:38,963 --> 00:30:41,924 [dramatic music plays] 441 00:30:58,941 --> 00:31:01,068 [Gillard] This is my copy of the novel Psycho. 442 00:31:01,151 --> 00:31:03,195 It's a first edition. 443 00:31:03,279 --> 00:31:04,488 Very happy to have a chance 444 00:31:04,572 --> 00:31:06,615 to read the first edition as it came out. 445 00:31:06,699 --> 00:31:08,576 This is before the film came out. 446 00:31:08,659 --> 00:31:10,286 This is as it appeared 447 00:31:10,369 --> 00:31:12,955 before all the fame and -- and the hoopla. 448 00:31:14,999 --> 00:31:19,420 Robert Bloch is perhaps the best known writer of horror fiction 449 00:31:19,503 --> 00:31:23,257 through the middle part of the 20th century. 450 00:31:23,340 --> 00:31:25,426 There's a quote by Stephen King saying, 451 00:31:25,509 --> 00:31:27,344 "There was nobody better than Bloch, 452 00:31:27,428 --> 00:31:28,679 nobody more prolific, 453 00:31:28,762 --> 00:31:32,349 nobody more profoundly influential." 454 00:31:32,433 --> 00:31:36,312 [Bloch] And when I graduated from high school in 1934, 455 00:31:36,395 --> 00:31:40,107 I sat down and started to write professionally. 456 00:31:40,190 --> 00:31:43,027 Sold my first story six weeks later. 457 00:31:43,110 --> 00:31:47,323 I was 17 then and I didn't have enough sense to quit. 458 00:31:49,116 --> 00:31:52,077 One of the great contributions that Bloch made 459 00:31:52,161 --> 00:31:53,621 to the horror genre 460 00:31:53,704 --> 00:31:57,458 was that he realized that what is between the ears 461 00:31:57,541 --> 00:31:59,043 can be much more horrible 462 00:31:59,126 --> 00:32:01,712 than what's out there rustling in the night. 463 00:32:01,795 --> 00:32:07,426 Bloch idolized H. P. Lovecraft, who was 27 years his senior 464 00:32:07,509 --> 00:32:10,304 and who would die at a young age. 465 00:32:10,387 --> 00:32:12,973 Bloch started off writing that kind of supernatural horror 466 00:32:13,057 --> 00:32:16,560 that H. P. Lovecraft is so well-known for. 467 00:32:16,644 --> 00:32:18,979 But there was a change for Bloch. 468 00:32:19,063 --> 00:32:22,608 He started reading psychology textbooks, 469 00:32:22,691 --> 00:32:26,654 books by psychologists about the craft of psychology. 470 00:32:26,737 --> 00:32:30,407 And so he made a shift, late '40s, early '50s, 471 00:32:30,491 --> 00:32:33,327 into writing psychological horror, 472 00:32:33,410 --> 00:32:37,414 as we see exemplified in Psycho. 473 00:32:37,498 --> 00:32:39,583 [Szczepaniak-Gillece] We have this morass of things happening 474 00:32:39,667 --> 00:32:41,627 at the end of the 1950s 475 00:32:41,710 --> 00:32:44,546 alongside interest in psychology, 476 00:32:44,630 --> 00:32:46,382 interest in psychoanalysis, 477 00:32:46,465 --> 00:32:48,676 interest in theories around trauma, 478 00:32:48,759 --> 00:32:52,304 interest in what does the family structure mean? 479 00:32:52,388 --> 00:32:54,139 And that, I think, makes it a perfect, 480 00:32:54,223 --> 00:32:56,308 perfect moment for Psycho 481 00:32:56,392 --> 00:32:58,227 to really take the country by storm. 482 00:33:02,690 --> 00:33:06,485 [Gillard] Bloch himself was in small-town Wisconsin 483 00:33:06,568 --> 00:33:09,446 when this small-town Wisconsin horror story 484 00:33:09,530 --> 00:33:14,243 was being exposed to the world. 485 00:33:14,326 --> 00:33:16,120 [Bloch] That was the reason for the book. 486 00:33:16,203 --> 00:33:17,996 When I heard of the Gein case, 487 00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:19,998 I didn't hear anything about the details, 488 00:33:20,082 --> 00:33:23,627 but I did hear about an apparently ordinary man 489 00:33:23,711 --> 00:33:26,630 living an ordinary life in a very small town 490 00:33:26,714 --> 00:33:30,634 where he had been observed by his neighbors for many years 491 00:33:30,718 --> 00:33:32,594 and never suspected of his crimes. 492 00:33:32,678 --> 00:33:35,139 And I said, "That's the story." 493 00:33:35,222 --> 00:33:39,101 [man] He was a nice man, just like anybody else. 494 00:33:39,184 --> 00:33:41,270 [man #2] Perfectly harmless. 495 00:33:41,353 --> 00:33:43,522 [Bloch] I'm going to write a story about 496 00:33:43,605 --> 00:33:46,608 a man in a similar situation. Point out to people 497 00:33:46,692 --> 00:33:50,362 that they don't necessarily know their neighbors 498 00:33:50,445 --> 00:33:53,615 or the people that they come in contact with. 499 00:33:53,699 --> 00:33:59,121 And that, to me, is truly horrifying. 500 00:33:59,204 --> 00:34:02,332 [Gillard] For Bloch, the idea that this could be happening 501 00:34:02,416 --> 00:34:05,669 in a small town in the middle of Wisconsin 502 00:34:05,753 --> 00:34:08,130 where everybody knows everybody's business 503 00:34:08,213 --> 00:34:11,133 just absolutely fascinated him. 504 00:34:11,215 --> 00:34:14,762 It fit in really well with his ideas of psychological horror 505 00:34:14,845 --> 00:34:17,389 that the person you should be afraid of 506 00:34:17,472 --> 00:34:20,392 is not the werewolf howling at the moon 507 00:34:20,476 --> 00:34:22,478 or some sort of supernatural monster 508 00:34:22,561 --> 00:34:24,646 that will come at you in the night. 509 00:34:24,730 --> 00:34:27,816 It's the guy sitting a couple seats behind you on the bus. 510 00:34:27,900 --> 00:34:30,527 And why is he coming after you? 511 00:34:30,611 --> 00:34:32,237 Maybe there's no reason. 512 00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:34,531 Maybe he's just coming after you. 513 00:34:34,615 --> 00:34:37,409 [dramatic music plays] 514 00:34:40,621 --> 00:34:44,166 The life of a pulp fiction writer during this era, 515 00:34:44,249 --> 00:34:48,545 the idea wasn't necessarily to create great art all the time. 516 00:34:48,629 --> 00:34:51,381 It was to sell your story, get the small payday, 517 00:34:51,465 --> 00:34:55,761 sell another story, get the small payday. 518 00:34:55,844 --> 00:34:58,597 Bloch reported that it took him seven weeks 519 00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:00,849 from start to finish with Psycho, 520 00:35:00,933 --> 00:35:04,228 which is an amazingly kind of brief period of time 521 00:35:04,311 --> 00:35:06,730 if you've ever tried to write a novel. 522 00:35:06,814 --> 00:35:09,858 But he was also of the generation 523 00:35:09,942 --> 00:35:15,197 for whom being prolific was the way to sleep indoors 524 00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:17,616 and eat every once in a while. 525 00:35:17,699 --> 00:35:22,120 [Bloch] It is primarily a story of a girl with a secret. 526 00:35:22,204 --> 00:35:27,835 She's just stolen $40,000 from her employer. 527 00:35:27,918 --> 00:35:29,711 And it's about a young man 528 00:35:29,795 --> 00:35:33,257 who leads a tortured secret life 529 00:35:33,340 --> 00:35:37,135 so secret that he himself is not aware of it. 530 00:35:37,219 --> 00:35:42,599 And it is about the buried and exhumed secrets of his mother. 531 00:35:42,683 --> 00:35:44,810 [Szczepaniak-Gillece] Norman Bates, on the surface, 532 00:35:44,893 --> 00:35:47,688 he seems sweet, he seems vulnerable. 533 00:35:47,771 --> 00:35:49,606 But underneath the surface, 534 00:35:49,690 --> 00:35:51,275 there's all kinds of things roiling. 535 00:35:51,358 --> 00:35:52,693 There's all kinds of dark psychology 536 00:35:52,776 --> 00:35:54,570 that's all wrapped up in, 537 00:35:54,653 --> 00:35:58,532 of course, his obsessive relationship to his dead mother. 538 00:36:01,702 --> 00:36:05,455 [Gillard] Bloch considered many titles for the novel. 539 00:36:05,539 --> 00:36:10,627 He was inspired by words like psychology 540 00:36:10,711 --> 00:36:12,838 and psychoanalysis. 541 00:36:15,257 --> 00:36:18,302 It's about being a psychotic, right? 542 00:36:18,385 --> 00:36:20,304 It's about somebody being a psychopath. 543 00:36:20,387 --> 00:36:23,515 And that is really different from just saying 544 00:36:23,599 --> 00:36:25,475 "This monster is outlandish. 545 00:36:25,559 --> 00:36:29,730 This monster can never happen." 546 00:36:29,813 --> 00:36:32,858 Here we have a monster who is defined 547 00:36:32,941 --> 00:36:35,360 by the inner workings of his brain. 548 00:36:35,444 --> 00:36:37,613 [Narrator] Today, organizations of specialists 549 00:36:37,696 --> 00:36:39,323 in mental medicine 550 00:36:39,406 --> 00:36:41,366 like the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, 551 00:36:41,450 --> 00:36:43,577 have helped to gain general medical acceptance 552 00:36:43,660 --> 00:36:46,413 for such doctrines, considered a radical departure 553 00:36:46,496 --> 00:36:49,499 when first advanced by Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna 554 00:36:49,583 --> 00:36:52,294 some 50 years ago. 555 00:36:52,377 --> 00:36:55,589 [Gillard] It gets us toward a variety of mental illnesses, 556 00:36:55,672 --> 00:36:58,342 including some pretty violent and gruesome ones 557 00:36:58,425 --> 00:37:02,638 that perhaps the Ed Gein story brought up in Bloch's mind. 558 00:37:02,721 --> 00:37:05,682 [dramatic music plays] 559 00:37:13,607 --> 00:37:17,361 Psycho didn't sell particularly in any way 560 00:37:17,444 --> 00:37:20,030 that was different from his previous work, 561 00:37:20,113 --> 00:37:23,283 but it did attract the -- the attention of 562 00:37:23,367 --> 00:37:24,993 a film production company. 563 00:37:25,077 --> 00:37:27,704 They didn't accept the first offer from this film company 564 00:37:27,788 --> 00:37:29,539 that they had never heard of. 565 00:37:29,623 --> 00:37:32,376 They accepted the second offer, which was for $9,500, 566 00:37:32,459 --> 00:37:34,962 and Bloch's cut was about $6,000 for that, 567 00:37:35,045 --> 00:37:39,257 which is a nice payday for a writer of pulp fiction. 568 00:37:39,341 --> 00:37:42,678 Bloch was fairly convinced that it was unfilmable, 569 00:37:42,761 --> 00:37:46,056 partly the way that the narrative is kind of structured. 570 00:37:46,139 --> 00:37:48,976 We have this main character in the novel. 571 00:37:49,059 --> 00:37:53,021 She dies, and you're less than halfway through the novel. 572 00:37:53,105 --> 00:37:56,608 And so the idea that -- that this could be filmable 573 00:37:56,692 --> 00:37:58,902 successfully, given a Hollywood formula, 574 00:37:58,986 --> 00:38:02,656 Bloch was just really kind of doubtful about that. 575 00:38:02,739 --> 00:38:04,574 And then he found out that the film company 576 00:38:04,658 --> 00:38:06,076 was actually Alfred Hitchcock, 577 00:38:06,159 --> 00:38:10,038 who was looking for his next film. 578 00:38:10,122 --> 00:38:12,457 [Szczepaniak-Gillece] Hitchcock started in England. 579 00:38:12,541 --> 00:38:14,459 He was a British director. 580 00:38:14,543 --> 00:38:17,754 Eventually he comes over to the States to make movies here, 581 00:38:17,838 --> 00:38:19,840 and that's really where he experiences 582 00:38:19,923 --> 00:38:23,593 the vast majority of his success. 583 00:38:23,677 --> 00:38:26,054 And when he makes Psycho in 1960, 584 00:38:26,138 --> 00:38:29,516 he really hadn't made a straight-up horror movie. 585 00:38:29,599 --> 00:38:32,352 That was really the first time that he had done something 586 00:38:32,436 --> 00:38:36,481 in that extreme horror genre. 587 00:38:36,565 --> 00:38:40,110 [Gillard] Hitchcock was on a tremendous roll at that point. 588 00:38:40,193 --> 00:38:42,863 This is just after North by Northwest. 589 00:38:42,946 --> 00:38:44,990 Maybe the -- the rights conversation 590 00:38:45,073 --> 00:38:46,575 would have been a little different 591 00:38:46,658 --> 00:38:49,661 had Bloch's agent done a bit more homework 592 00:38:49,745 --> 00:38:51,788 before signing away the rights. 593 00:38:51,872 --> 00:38:56,418 [Hitchcock] The power of cinema in its purest form is so vast 594 00:38:56,501 --> 00:39:00,464 because it can go over the whole world on a given night. 595 00:39:00,547 --> 00:39:06,470 A film could play in Tokyo, West Berlin, London, New York. 596 00:39:06,553 --> 00:39:10,474 And the same audience is responding emotionally 597 00:39:10,557 --> 00:39:12,392 to the same things. 598 00:39:12,476 --> 00:39:15,395 And no other medium can do this. 599 00:39:15,479 --> 00:39:17,898 -Dirty night. -Do you have a vacancy? 600 00:39:17,981 --> 00:39:20,400 Oh, we have 12 vacancies. 601 00:39:20,484 --> 00:39:26,656 Psycho the novel bears a tremendous resemblance 602 00:39:26,740 --> 00:39:28,158 to Psycho the film. 603 00:39:28,241 --> 00:39:30,952 But one of the interesting changes that happened 604 00:39:31,036 --> 00:39:32,537 between the novel 605 00:39:32,621 --> 00:39:35,582 and Hitchcock's interpretation of the novel 606 00:39:35,665 --> 00:39:38,835 was that Norman Bates changed subtly. 607 00:39:38,919 --> 00:39:42,672 In the novel, he's probably 20 years older. 608 00:39:42,756 --> 00:39:44,549 He doesn't look like the young Hollywood 609 00:39:44,633 --> 00:39:46,802 leading man of Anthony Perkins, that's for sure. 610 00:39:46,885 --> 00:39:48,720 He's described as balding and overweight 611 00:39:48,804 --> 00:39:50,764 with an alcohol problem. 612 00:39:50,847 --> 00:39:53,642 Do you go out with friends? 613 00:39:53,725 --> 00:39:55,894 Well, a -- a boy's best friend is his mother. 614 00:39:55,977 --> 00:39:57,145 [Szczepaniak-Gillece] Norman Bates 615 00:39:57,229 --> 00:39:59,773 can never be separated from Tony Perkins, 616 00:39:59,856 --> 00:40:02,943 who, of course, plays him and plays him so beautifully 617 00:40:03,026 --> 00:40:05,028 as this kind of vulnerable character 618 00:40:05,112 --> 00:40:09,157 who also houses significant darkness. 619 00:40:09,241 --> 00:40:14,663 But then that also was in some parts influenced by Ed Gein. 620 00:40:14,746 --> 00:40:17,791 [Weiland] Ed Gein had a little round face. 621 00:40:17,874 --> 00:40:20,502 He always would wear, like, a baseball hat. 622 00:40:20,585 --> 00:40:23,797 He'd always thank us or, you know, always say something, 623 00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,675 greet us in some way, usually. 624 00:40:26,758 --> 00:40:28,969 Just a nice little old man, really. 625 00:40:29,052 --> 00:40:31,054 He really was, just like all the people said. 626 00:40:31,138 --> 00:40:34,474 You couldn't believe that he would do anything that gruesome. 627 00:40:34,558 --> 00:40:37,561 I don't know if he snapped or why he would do what he did, 628 00:40:37,644 --> 00:40:39,771 but I don't know. 629 00:40:42,816 --> 00:40:44,776 [Gillard] The very, very famous shower scene, 630 00:40:44,860 --> 00:40:47,612 which occurs on page 39 out of 180 pages 631 00:40:47,696 --> 00:40:49,656 in this edition of the novel, 632 00:40:49,739 --> 00:40:52,993 it comes and goes very quickly. 633 00:40:53,076 --> 00:40:55,871 The economy of language is stunning in this. 634 00:40:55,954 --> 00:40:58,123 You read the novel and you look at that shower scene, 635 00:40:58,206 --> 00:41:01,668 the shower scene is very, very, very brief. 636 00:41:01,751 --> 00:41:03,044 And it ends a section 637 00:41:03,128 --> 00:41:05,505 and it's just a series of very short sentences, 638 00:41:05,589 --> 00:41:07,674 declarative sentences, 639 00:41:07,757 --> 00:41:10,218 and it comes and goes so quickly. 640 00:41:10,302 --> 00:41:12,053 But it's shocking. 641 00:41:14,890 --> 00:41:16,600 It's the economy of language 642 00:41:16,683 --> 00:41:19,269 that creates the horror for Bloch in that scene. 643 00:41:19,352 --> 00:41:22,564 The last four lines of this chapter, 644 00:41:22,647 --> 00:41:25,066 "Mary started to scream, 645 00:41:25,150 --> 00:41:27,277 the curtains parted further, 646 00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:31,698 and a hand appeared, holding a butcher knife. 647 00:41:31,781 --> 00:41:37,204 It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. 648 00:41:37,287 --> 00:41:38,872 And her head." 649 00:41:38,955 --> 00:41:41,166 And that's the end of the chapter. 650 00:41:43,710 --> 00:41:46,671 [mid-tempo music plays]