Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007)

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is one of the most inaccurate attempts to make a dramatization of the real life events. The movie takes so much liberty with the story, it just comes off as a lie. The main villain looks nothing like Ed Gein, and his actions are nowhere near to what Ed Gein had done in reality. The way the movie was done, he might have as well pop out a chainsaw and wield it around. There is a much better independent movie called Ed Gein (2001), so I'd recommend to all who are interested in the gruesome case of Ed Gein to watch that one instead - this one is just a bad attempt to make a slasher movie out of real life. And it appears that my review is too short, because I really have nothing else to say about this movie, so I'll just write this down at the end. In the words of The Critic, Jay Sherman, "It stinks!".

Inspired by the true story of one of the most gruesome killers in American history...With big successes like "Psycho" and "Silence of the Lambs", the story of Ed Gein (in a highly fictionalized manner) has been told many times. The story was probably told best in a film called "Deranged". But this may be the runner-up.Clearly the writer-director did not want to tell the completely true story, because it there is enough deviation to show that this does not match up with Gein's life. There are some attempts, though -- such as his dead mother and brother, and at least they actually set the film in Plainfield (though being shot in California, it looks nothing like the place.)

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.

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