Domination 03 ch19 Deep Tales
Deep Tales.
...and marching on from last issues terrific story Shadow Jack, in this issue I have decided to include an interesting article concerning the true story behind the Texas chainsaw massacre. Let's begin.
The Ed Gein story
After many imitations the very most outrageous and infamous film based on the Gein case is to be Hooper's 'the chainsaw massacre'. Made at the cost of under $200,000, the Texas chainsaw massacre wasn't so much released as unleashed on an unsuspecting public in the autumn of 1974, firstly in San Francisco and then a few weeks later to the rest of America. The Texas chainsaw massacre all but caused a riot when patrons of the Empire theatre settled back for a preview. Within 20 minutes of the start of the film, members of the audience stormed the manager's office demanding a refund. Other viewers were still inside, some quietly throwing up into their neighbours' laps. Others, meanwhile, had been bludgeoned into shocked submission, while just a few were slowly becoming aware that they were slowly becoming aware that they were slowly seeing the uncoiling of a bona fide classic of American cinema. watching chainsaw today, from the safety of 12 years later, and the flood of gore flicks and imitations which have all but desensitised horror movie fans to genuine shock, it's hard to see what all the fuss was about. Of the three films based on the Ed Gein case, the Texas chainsaw massacre is the one. The one that captures the nightmarish qualities of what that un-named sheriff discovered when he flicked the light on back in Plainfield in 1957. The one that draws the viewer into the gates of Gein's house of hell. the one that makes its audience suffer vicariously every nerve-jangling terror that Gein's victims must have endured. it is, without doubt, a genuinely disturbing film. yet director and co-writer Tobe Hooper found it necessary to change one real-life character into four. it's almost as if, nearly 20 years after the real event, it was still impossible to believe that one man could be responsible for so many hideous crimes. in essence, the family of four psychos in chainsaw is a compendium of Ed Gein. perhaps the real power of chainsaw is its understatement. while audiences swear blind that they have seen all manner of dismemberment, there's very little actual physical violence in the film. it's a pity that chainsaw is so readily lumped in with its imitators. reviled on its original release, banned in many countries, mutilated in others, the Texas chainsaw massacre is gradually earning its classic status. when confronting the Gein house. like all of the outbuildings - a barn. smokehouse, chicken coop and toolshed - it was dilapidating, with paint peeling and timbers showing signs of rot. the sheriff took the few steps to the front door and knocked. silence. he tried the handle and the door creaked open a few inches. darkness. getting a torch from the car he pushed the door open and played the light around as he stepped inside. a sweet and sickly smell assaulted his senses. finding the light switch he flicked it on the dull yellow glow illuminated a scene of horror which would haunt the sheriff the rest of his life. he found Bernice Worden - or at least the parts that went up to make her. suspended from a beam by the ankles was the body of a woman. decapitated and gutted, the corpse hung over a tub which caught the last drops of draining blood the sheriff gagged and, with the bile rising in his throat, reeled over to the kitchen sink. he screamed. there staring up at him with sightless eyes, was the blood-caked head of Bernice Worden. he fell back, scrambling for the door. out on the porch he vomited, his breath coming in desperate gasps. he sat hunched over for a moment, his head pounding with the sheer ghastliness of what he had discovered. be he had a job to do. attempting to regain control of his emotions he again entered the house of horror. in the parlour he discovered a grotesque "trophy room". nine female heads were mounted on the wall; the skin tanned and stretched tight over plaster death masks suspended from the blind string hung a pair of dried human lips. back in the kitchen the sheriff opened the fridge. stacked neatly inside were parcels wrapped in butcher's paper. in each were human organs - hearts, livers, lungs. on the stove stood a frying pan that held a heart; on the table a cup which contained four shrivelled noses and two bowls made from human skulls with the tops sawn off. in each room strips of human skin adorned the walls and were stretched over the arms and backs of chairs; light shone through the human hides covering lampshades. the sheriff was numbed by the spectacle of deathly depravity that surrounded him. a routine call had become a visit to a charnel house. but the worst was yet to come. he went into the bedroom - more dried flesh festooned the walls and furniture. a drum stood in the corner, crudely fashioned from a wooden barrel. its skin predictably by now, was human. when he opened the wardrobe his eyes refused to believe what they were seeing. at first it looked like a strange leather suit, and then it looked like some kind of mummified body - that of a woman. but no, it was a suit, a very special suit made by Ed Gein. coat, vest and pants, all sewn together from tanned, human hides. it was more than the sheriff could stand he ran outside, his gorge rising for the second time. as he powered his car back to Plainfield, he radioed to the sheriff's department details of his diabolical discovery and a word of warning that he didn't think he had found all there was to find on the Gein farm. Lloyd Beining, reporter for a Marshfield newspaper, was the first journalist to arrive at the scene of the crimes. apart from police photographers he was the only person to record the nightmarish tableau. but not only were his photos banned from publication, the film itself was seized and presumably destroyed - by the newspaper. but Beining could never forget what he saw. in an article on the Gein case published in the American underground comic "weird trips", Beining recalled the scene of carnage he found. "when I got there the place was crawling with state troopers and county police. they all seemed to be in a state of shock. these were cops who were used to bloody highway accidents and deer hunters being shot, so they didn't shock easily. the sheriff said I could go in and 'take a look myself', so I did - and got sick. I went back out to the car, got a drink and loaded the camera. "the cops had discovered a lot of human bones in the basement and about 30 pint jars of blood. some of the blood was human and some of it came from deer. downstairs there were quart jars with hearts, kidneys, livers, stomachs, intestinal parts - all that type of things and all human - preserved in formaldehyde. "I took pictures of it all - the kitchen, Gein’s bedroom, Bernice Worden's torso, the skin masks, and her head in the sink. god, it was just awful. out in the smokehouse we found legs, hung up like hams. he was going to cure them and eat them I suppose. the sheriff said there were parts of at least 15 humans around the farm. young frank had identified his mother - that must have been terrible for him - but they couldn't figure out who all the others were." all through the initial investigation Ed Gein had maintained his composure, still smiling and simply repeating what he said to Frank Worden earlier in the evening: "I had nothing to do with it". but once Gein was presented with the evidence he changed his tune and slowly, over weeks of questioning by the police and by police and psychiatrists, the truth of his ghoulish activities emerged. for Ed Gein, the real horror of what his life was to become started with the death of his mother 10 years before. a religious woman, the widow Gein ruled her two sons Ed and Henry with an iron and oppressive will, constantly warning them of the sins of the flesh. for Ed and Henry all women became evil, selfish and wanton creatures. as the Gein's saw their farm fall into disrepair they tried to make a small living from the arid land, subsidised by the boys' handyman work and occasional jobs guiding out-of-town hunters through the local woods. in the early '40s widow Gein suffered a heart attack, but her weakened state, if anything, strengthened her hold over Ed and Henry. her domination was complete with neither son daring to defy the tyranny of his mother. even after her death in 1947, her presence remained real to her sons. in 1948 Henry died while fighting a local forest fire, creating a fantasy world in which to live. while some in Plainfield might have thought Ed a little odd, his general demeanour was friendly if withdrawn. he'd drop into the local bar for a drink or call into the general store to pick up materials (ordered from a catalogue) for his hobby of taxidermy or buy books related to human anatomy. nobody thought it strange that Ed never showed samples of his work or often refused jobs from local hunters which would have added to his income. on the death of his beloved mother, Ed's mind snapped and, in his unhinged state, the years of matriarchal repression whipped out like a tightly coiled spring his love/hate relationship with the memory of his dead mother festered and his tortured mind slipped into periods of apparent amnesia. he convinced an old friend, obviously as disturbed as Gein, to help him rob graves for, as Ed explained, his 'experiments'. throughout the early '50s the two would raid local cemeteries at night, stealing the bodies and carefully rebury the coffins. Ed would then take them home (always cadavers of women) and practise his taxidermy and tanning skills - among other activities. in 1953 Ed's friend was committed to a home for the elderly and for a while Ed continued his nocturnal plundering alone. but he found the task of grave robbing physically exhausting and, although he would return to it sporadically up until the time of his arrest, the crazed Ed began to look for an easier way to acquire corpses. in the dead of a February night in 1954, Ed Gein travelled by car to pine river, a town 10 miles from Plainfield. after closing hours he went into the tavern where Mary Hogan was finishing up for the night. without a word he shot her through the head with a .22 calibre rifle. taking the body home he disembowelled the corpse. more horrors were revealed as Gein told his story. he practised cannibalism and necrophilia with the freshly buried corpses he stole. yet the grave and body of his mother remained sacred to ed. in his deeply disturbed state he was committing matricide by proxy. both Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden bore a passing resemblance to his mother. ..and what of the suit of human skin? tanning the skins from the stolen bodies, Ed had carefully stitched together the suit, complete with female breasts, so he could "become" his mother. once strapped into the foul costume he would wear his mother's old clothes and, as he told the doctors, "we had long conversations, mother and I, I missed her. I would stay in the house at times like that, and would sit in her favourite rocking chair, pretending I was her" he further explained to his examiners that he wanted a sex change operation so that he could "become closer" to his mother. Labelled with a severe case of psychotic-paranoid-schizophrenic, Ed Gein was deemed insane and, due to a Wisconsin state law, unfit for trial, he was committed to an asylum for the criminally insane. In December, 1958, the old Gein homestead was levelled to the ground by a mysterious fire. after months of national media attention, the people of Plainfield returned to everyday life. but there's no denying that the shadow of Ed Gein and his hideous crimes hung over the town for years. ten years later ed, by then considered sane in the eyes of the law, was brought to trial and convicted for the murder of Bernice Worden. without the death penalty in Wisconsin, Gein was returned to the asylum where he spent his time doing handyman chores and making ladies' handbags from scraps of cloth. in 1974 he applied for parole, but permission was denied. as one of the testifying doctors explained during the proceedings, "I don't think he has the strength to cope with society. he would be a pathetic, confused, out-of-place individual in society today. because of the enormity of the others alleged to him, I doubt very much whether the majority of people would want such a person in society." in this the judge turned to Gein, he said "I wish I knew of a way to give you a bit more freedom, but I don't and must reject the petition". Gein received a similar negative reply when he again applied for parole in 1976 there’s no doubt that Ed Gein remained insane until the end of his life. one report at his 1976 hearing said that he bayed at the full moon. but thanks to the movies, the horror of Ed Gein’s activities has never been far from the public subconscious.
There we have it, the complete Ed Gein story in full detail! Thank you for the kind response in last issues stories and I hope no one gets nightmares!
