He makes futile attempts at reviving them, before decorating his home with pieces of their corpses, at one point passing "shrunken heads" off as gifts from a cousin in the Philippines.

Ed begins suffering from hallucinations of Augusta, who commands him to kill "sinful" women, starting with a tavern owner named Mary Hogan.

I would recommend a rental to the curious horror or true crime fans out there looking for something sort of along the lines of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but tamer, but at the same time a lot sicker.

"[7] Time Out found the film to be "a surprisingly sober response to a potentially salacious subject" and wrote, "As with the best scenes of Deranged, the conjunction of colourful case history, odd impulses, gallows humour, low budget austerity and genuinely grotesque iconography produces a felicitous and engaging variant of American Gothic.

"[10] While The Guardian's Philip French offered praise to Railsback's performance as Gein, he found the film itself to be "a generally unsensational chunk of bizarre Americana" that "adds little to our understanding of the man.

"[11] Fellow Guardian reviewer Peter Bradshaw had a similar response to the film, writing, "Really, it's the same old pulpy, paranoid voyeuristic stuff, and Ed's fear and hatred of women is never that edifying.

"[12] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times afforded the film moderate praise, commending the performances, the atmosphere, and the historical accuracy, but went on to write, "Ed Gein resists cheap humor in favor of moments that are inherently darkly comic, and tries for a seriousness of purpose, yet is at times awkward and under-inspired, creating a question as to whether so gloomy and repugnant a tale was worth telling simply for its own sake.

"[13] Neil Smith of the BBC called the film "gross and repellent" and awarded it a score of 2/5, writing, "Parello's stated intention is to explore the psychology of his twisted protagonist, but the result has all the hallmarks of a low-budget exploitationer, right down to its B movie leads Steve Railsback and Carrie Snodgress.

"[14] Variety's Robert Koehler gave Ed Gein a wholly negative review, deriding it for being both lackluster and "a disappointingly mild re-creation of true events.