Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 2, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Of all the real-life serial killers that could be portrayed on screen by erstwhile Jason performer Kane Hodder, Ed Gein seems one of the less likely. Not, as some might imagine, because of his age—as Hodder notes on the Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield commentary, he was the same age when he acted in this film as Gein was at the time of his arrest, though the years have been much kinder to him than they were to Gein. Rather, the hale and hearty Hodder seems an odd match for the physically unassuming deviant who murdered at least two people and plundered numerous graves in 1950s Wisconsin.
In his first lead role without a mask or makeup, Hodder plays Gein low-key, resisting the potential urge to rant and rave and toning down the brute power that made him an imposing Jason. It’s an appropriate choice, but the effect of watching him enact this particular part is the feeling that you’re viewing a cinematic killer inspired by Gein, and not the man himself.
The long legacy of screen maniacs who have inherited Gein’s traits, in fact, creates one of Butcher of Plainfield’s major problems; the film is a victim of its own selling point. As the DVD packaging makes sure to remind, Gein’s pathology and m.o. have influenced Psycho’s Norman Bates, Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface and The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill among others, and by this point, the iconography—torture chambers replete with chains and rusty tools/weapons, human-skin-wearing, etc.—has become familiar enough that a new wrinkle is needed to set apart even a movie purporting to tell the real facts of the case. But writer/producer/director Michael Feifer doesn’t offer much that hasn’t been seen in those aforementioned films, Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby’s Deranged, the Steve Railsback-starring Ed Gein, etc.
Feifer insists on that commentary that his feature is different from the Railsback movie, and that “This isn’t a slasher film”—though he takes advantage of the fact that Gein was suspected of more murders than he was convicted of to give Hodder’s Gein a Jason-sized body count in the first half. Other facts the filmmaker gleaned from his research inspired the particulars of his screenplay: One of Gein’s confirmed victims was the mother of a sheriff’s deputy, the latter of whom becomes the key protagonist (Shawn Hoffman as Bobby Mason), and he apparently was joined on his early graverobbing exploits by a partner in crime (played by Michael Berryman in what amounts to glorified cameo). Feifer even notes that Hodder’s real-life burn scars are appropriate for his role, since Gein once escaped a brush fire that claimed the life of his brother!
Pity that Feifer evidently spent more time delving into his subject’s history than on writing the script, which he claims he finished in three days. The scenes in between Gein’s crimes aren’t terribly compelling, focusing largely on Bobby’s wan romance with sheriff’s daughter Erica, played by Adrienne Frantz (no prizes for guessing what’ll eventually happen to her), and the ambitious deputy butting heads with his superior and the rest of the clueless police. On a low budget, a 10-day schedule and locations previously seen in The Devil’s Rejects, Feifer mounts a generally persuasive rural period atmosphere, albeit one that’s broken at times by unfortunate anachronisms; it’s unlikely that anyone in late-1950s Wisconsin referred to Gein as “that loser,” and it’s a sure thing that nobody back then dialed 911, which wasn’t introduced until over a decade later.
That visual scheme is nicely supported by the DVD’s 1.78:1 transfer, which favors earth tones and dark contrasts, backed by a sharp 5.1 soundtrack. The commentary, on which Feifer and Hodder are joined by co-star John Burke (a grandson, we learn, of the warden at the prison where Gein was incarcerated!), offers a satisfying chronicle of Butcher’s production, the director and star’s approaches to their respective tasks and assorted low-cost filmmaking anecdotes. One quibble: Feifer starts to explain why Gein lets one potential victim live—a serious plausibility issue—gets interrupted, and never returns to the subject. Also included are a small still gallery with a few good behind-the-scenes pics, and a handful of deleted scenes. At least one of the latter was very rightly excised: a discussion of forensic bullet evidence that would be far more at home in an episode of CSI than in a movie set five decades ago in an obscure corner of the Midwest.
