Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007)

Boring, long, and too preachy.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

I don't think this could bear less resemblance to the facts of the Ed Gein case if there had been a deliberate effort to avoid getting any details accurate. About all they got right was Gein's name, the deaths of his mother and brother, and the year and location of events. Most of the principal characters are not historically correct, Gein was NOT known to have killed men or young women (the only two he's known to have killed were both middle-aged and similar to his late mother), he did NOT have an accomplice, and the personality and physical type for Gein are all wrong. Then there were the problems with sound quality, cinematography, etc. Even on an HDTV, it was very hard to make out what was going on in some pivotal scenes due to very poor lighting and photography and dialog was hard to understand (and just why were the young deputy's mother and girlfriend so Southern when they were both residents of Wisconsin and the girlfriend's father did not sound Southern?)I would really like to get back the hour and a half I wasted on this.

"Inspired by a true story..." my hind end. This farce resembled the true story of Ed Gein in only the most remote sense. He was not a hulking, maniacal brute, as portrayed by Kane Hodder in this film. "Coincidentally", Mr. Hodder is one of the actors credited with portraying Jason Voorheis in several of the "Friday the 13th" films. In reality, Gein was a mousy little man who barely stood 5' 3" and didn't weigh 135 pounds sopping wet and with a brick in each pocket. This doesn't mean that he wasn't sick, and that he didn't kill people, but he didn't hold nubile young beauties hostage so that he could torture them. While he did possess a good number of ghastly trophies, most of these were acquired by the robbing of graves, and not by wanton, wholesale butchery.This is a story that could have been told in a compelling fashion without radically transforming Gein into a Jason Voorheis clone. Actor Steve Railsback, who also portrays Gein in another movie, much more closely resembles the actual murderer.Ed Gein, and the acts that he committed, where gruesome and horrifying enough without this kind of cheesy, flagrant embellishment. It's as if the film makers were saying that the atrocities committed by Gein weren't enough... that they could use with a bit of spicing up. If I could give this miserable excuse for celluloid excrement half a star, I would, and that would be generous.

Did we really need another movie-version of the life and crimes of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein? No, of course we didn't, but clever producers realize there's always room for one more, especially because all horror movie fans agree that Ed Gein simply is one of the most – perhaps THE most – fascinating sick individuals in history. And the producers of this movie were even extra clever, as they managed to cast no less than Kane Hodder in the titular role. Hodder is already a bit of a horror legend on himself (depicting Jason Vorhees multiple times in the "Friday the 13th series") and his name alone is guaranteed to attract even more viewers. I've lost count of how many movies – both fictional and non fictional – there already are closely inspired or loosely inspired by Ed Gein. There are the strictly factual and almost biographical ones, like "In the Light of the Moon" and "Deranged: Confessions of a Serial Necrophile", but of course the most commonly known horror classics simply used little morbid characteristics of Gein's utterly demented persona, like "Psycho", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Motel Hell", "House of 1.000 Corpses" and "The Silence of the Lambs". As you can probably derive from its juicy title as well as from the DVD cover art, this particular isn't too concerned with accuracy and merely just sets out to shock and provoke its viewers with a whole lot of gruesome images and perverted insinuations. It feels as if director Michael Feifer wants to make us believe his film version is truthful, but repeatedly "forgets" about the facts in favor of sheer horror movie excitement. Kane Hodder portrays Ed Gein like he was a muscularly shaped and relentlessly unstoppable killing machine, whereas in reality he was a scrawny and miserably timid guy whose horrendous psychopathic tendencies only gradually come to the surface after his arrest. Although Gein only ever got charged with two murders he commits nearly a dozen of vile kills here, so you know you don't have to check out this film for its informative value. Still I don't want to bash this straight-to-video production entirely, because there really are a handful of positive things to say as well. The make-up effects are effectively nauseating and the Californian filming locations were aptly chosen in order to recreate the depressing 50's Wisconsin atmosphere. And in spite of his unfit posture, Kane Hodder isn't such a bad choice to depict Ed Gein. He hardly has lines to speak but looks menacing throughout the entire playtime.

I just saw this movie and it turns out to be pretty lame just as mentioned by other user reviews and the one thing that bothered me the most was the southern accent some of the characters had, it took place in Wisconsin, not the south. As mentioned from other reviews, Ed Geine wasn't a big dude, so why did the guy that plays Jason and Leatherface portray him?I fast forwarded through most of it being that there are many slow parts. Hopefully someone will do their homework on Ed Geine and the town and make a more accurate movie