Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, TV And Film, True Crime, Explained
Rhiannon Ingle
Just in time for spooky season, the latest instalment of the highly controversial Monsters series has just dropped last week (3 October).
The series has already covered the horrific crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer and the ongoing case surrounding the Menendez brothers, but the third season to hit Netflix really ups the ante in terms of stomach-churning gore, true crime butchery and human cruelty.
Spanning eight episodes, the series boasts a star-studded cast including Charlie Hunnam and Addison Rae, but what did Gein and the other real-life characters in Ryan Murphy's new Monster series actually look like?
In the series, Gein is played by Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam, who was also named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive in 2014.
Gein, who was also known as the Butcher of Plainfield and the Plainfield Ghoul, was born in 1906 in Wisconsin and lived a reclusive life after his mother’s death in 1945. He soon began robbing graves, creating household items and clothing from human remains.
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He murdered tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954 and hardware store owner Bernice Worden in 1957, whose body led to his arrest on November 16, 1957.
While he confessed to murdering two women, he was suspected in other deaths, including that of his brother, but no further crimes were proven.
Found insane, he was committed to a mental institution and later tried in 1968, when he was found guilty but again declared insane and sentenced to lifelong confinement.
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The murderer remained institutionalised until his death from cancer on July 26, 1984, and he was buried in Plainfield Cemetery.
His crimes inspired numerous horror films for decades to come, including The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
"The more I got into learning about Ed, the more it became clear how big the distance was between who I am in my regular life and who Ed was," Hunnam, who lost more than 30 pounds to capture Gein’s lithe physicality, told Tudum.
Ladybird actress Laurie Metcalf plays Gein's domineering mother, Augusta.
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She was known for being extremely strict and religious, especially in her influence over her two sons.
She fervently believed the world was full of sin, particularly condemning women (other than herself) as instruments of immorality.
Metcalf was the only choice to play Augusta with show co-creator Ian Brennan telling Tudum: "I grew up in Chicago doing theatre, so that’s as close to a theatre goddess actually exists in real life.
"It makes your job so much easier when you get somebody like her."
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Augusta's love for her son is bound up in disappointment and deep, cruel shame.
"In her more hostile, vile moments, she would tell him, 'I should have castrated you at birth,'" Hunnam added.
Red Rocket breakout Suzanna Son plays Adeline Watkins in the series.
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Adeline was considered to be the only companion of Gein on the cold wastes of Plainfield, similarly obsessed with death. She also introduced him to several of the killers who would serve as his idols.
"Certain images and certain ideas, once you see them, you can’t unsee them," Brennan notes. "When Ed chose Adeline, they show each other these things. They can’t unsee them. And slowly begin this descent into darker and darker stuff."
Hunnam added: "Adeline is really the only female, or really the only person other than his mother, that he has a consistent and somewhat intimate relationship with.
"He finds this kindred spirit in Adeline."
No doubt, you'll have heard the name Alfred Hitchcock before, considering the fact that he's widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema.
In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, including Rear Window, Vertigo, Notorious and Psycho, many of which are still widely watched and studied today.
In the series, he's played by The White Lotus' Tom Hollander and is the centre of one of Monster’s most surprising subplots: Gein’s influence on Hollywood cinema which is interestingly what drew the Monster team to Gein as a subject.
"There’s something about this story that has really echoed down the ages, just thinking about how influential he was on movies," Brennan says. "That’s when it sort of clicked and I was like, 'Oh, that’s how we do it.'"
Hot Milk star Vicky Krieps plays Ilse Koch, the Nazi 'Beast of Buchenwald' who served as a perverse inspiration for Gein’s use of human bodies.
She was a German woman notorious for her association with the Nazi concentration camp system and the war crimes committed there.
Many survivors and later accounts claimed she participated in, or at least was complicit in, sadistic acts.
After WWII, she was arrested and convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
After being released after four years, she was re-arrested by West German authorities and put on trial, and in 1951, a German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.
She died by suicide in prison in September 1967 at the age of 60.
In Monster, she appears only in Gein’s fantasies.
Oscar nominee Lesley Manville plays Bernice Worden, one of the women of Plainfield who is also the object of Gein's obsession.
She ran a hardware store in Plainfield and, on November 16, 1957, her body was discovered on Gein’s property.
Her gruesome murder was the act that led to Gein’s arrest and the subsequent uncovering of his other macabre activities.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is currently available to stream on Netflix.