Ed Gein (In the Light of the Moon) [2000] with Steve Railsback

In the Light of the Moon (2000)



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230169/




In the Light of the Moon (Ed Gein in the US and Australia) is a 2000 film about serial killer Ed Gein.



Steve Railsback ... Ed Gein

Carrie Snodgress ... Augusta W, Gein

Carol Mansell ... Collette Marshall

Sally Champlin ... Mary Hogan

Steve Blackwood ... Brian

Nancy Linehan Charles ... Eleanor

Bill Cross ... George Gein

Travis McKenna ... Ronnie

Jan Hoag ... Irene Hill

Brian Evers ... Henry Gein

Pat Skipper ... Sheriff Jim Stillwell

Craig Zimmerman ... Pete Anderson

Nicholas Stojanovich ... Dale

Dylan Kasch ... Melvin

Tish Hicks ... Leigh Cross





Gein's crimes inspired the novel and film Psycho, as well as plot elements of both The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs.



The film stars Steve Railsback as Ed Gein and Carrie Snodgress as Augusta Gein, his mother.



Gein dug up the corpses of over a dozen women and made bizarre objects out of their remains before finally shooting two people to death and butchering their bodies.



The film also tells of Gein's tormented youth, his adored but domineering mother, and the 1957 arrest that uncovered the bizarre series of murders.



In a land that in no way lacks in murdering sickos, one of the most legendary and influential is without a doubt Ed Gein. A less than bright, soft-spoken farmer from Plainsfield, Wisconsin, Ed is credited with few murders but with numerous grave robberies — how many graves he actually robbed is unknown, for many families in the area preferred to remain in the dark and refused to let the plots of loved ones be opened. Up until he was caught at the age of 51 in 1957, he was well integrated in the local community of Plainfield, Wisconsin, known as a harmless oddball and unsuccessful farmer who lived alone on the deteriorating family farm; Ed even babysat for local families. How he could fit so well and easily into the community becomes obvious during the opening minutes of Chuck Parello's movie when old newsreels of interviews with local men reveal that they all looked, talked and carried themselves pretty much the same way as Ed did. (One of the many interesting aspects of this movie is just how easily an utter nutcase can function socially, abet bizarrely, within a community and not be found out.)



A practicing cannibal and believed necrophiliac with an excessive Opedial complex, Ed Gein has been the inspiration for countless films, including (to name but a few) Psycho (1960), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Deranged (1974). Oddly enough, for all the cinematic stories he inspired, no film has been made telling the "true" story, not even a television miniseries. At least, not until Chuck Parello's movie, although it too takes many liberties in the known facts, mostly by speeding up a generation worth of events and condensing them into what seems to be but a few weeks or months. Originally entitled In the Light of the Moon, the film has since been given the less poetic and more marketable title Ed Gein. As directed by Chuck Parello, the man behind the interesting but unnecessary Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Part 2 (1998) and the disturbing Hillside Strangler (2004), the movie will definitely be a disappointment to lovers of the gore and flashy serial killers of the average American killer on the loose flick, including those very films Gein helped inspire. But then, this movie is not a typical body count film, but is rather much more an un-sensationalistic character study of a sick individual, his development and his environment. The murders are few but unpleasant, less bloody than sad and none are half as quick as the average movie death.



Still, the film leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, achieved primarily through the disturbing, oppressive and creepy aura that pervades virtually every scene, including a singular short scene of Ed (B-movie stalwart Steve Railsback) dancing to the light of the moon in a suit made of women's skin, which is effective more due to its perversity than to how it is filmed.







Fantafestival

2001 Won Best Actor Steve Railsback

2001 Won Best Actress Sally Champlin



Fantasporto

2001 Nominated International Fantasy Film Award Best Film Chuck Parello Festival title: Ed Gein.



Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival

2000 Won Best Actor Steve Railsback

2000 Won Best Film Chuck Parello Festival title: Ed Gein.