A Hitchcock historian fact-checked Netflix's 'Ed Gein Story' and calls it 'dramatic license, not history'

"Netflix's " Monster: The Ed Gein Story" appears to have taken some creative liberties when depicting the making of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Ryan Murphy's twisted anthology series, which focuses on different infamous killers each season like Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers, turns to the granddaddy of them all for season 3: Ed Gein, the 1950s-era serial killer who inspired horror classics like "Psycho" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.""

"A majority of episode two of "The Ed Gein Story" focuses on a series of events that suggest Gein's crimes inspired Hitchcock. The legendary filmmaker, played by Tom Hollander on the show, is shown having meetings with "Psycho" author Robert Bloch and even walking his star Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari) through a replica of Gein's house on the "Psycho" set to get him in the right mindset to play Norman Bates. But according to Tony Lee Moral, who has written several books on Alfred Hitchcock and his movies, many of the details of this episode are a Ryan Murphy fantasy."

"In one scene, Perkins believes he's having rehearsals with his costar Janet Leigh, but Hitchcock surprises the actor by bringing him to the "Psycho" set and showing him a replica of the Gein house as it was found when the police arrested him. Along with the disheveled house having shrunken heads in the living room and a skull bowl in the sink, Hitchcock has Perkins open the freezer to find female genitalia."

Season 3 centers on Ed Gein and ties his crimes to the creation of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho through dramatized sequences. The show stages meetings between Hitchcock and Robert Bloch and depicts Hitchcock guiding Anthony Perkins through a replica of Gein's house to prepare him for the role of Norman Bates. The recreated house contains shrunken heads, a skull bowl, and a freezer holding female genitalia. Hitchcock scholarship identifies several of these portrayed elements as fictionalized dramatization rather than documented historical events.

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