"Audiences are even worse. Hoping to better understand the demand for smutty scares, Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville (Olivia Williams), spend an interminable evening at the theater surrounded by people throwing popcorn and making out while the topless woman onscreen is tortured and killed in a masked man's dungeon. Alma refuses to stay for the ending, and Alfred is equally appalled."
"'You brought it on yourself, Alfred,' he says to himself that evening. 'You knew what your picture would unleash, but you did it anyway.' Alma tries to reassure him, saying, 'You have other stories to tell.' 'But who would I tell them to?' he says. 'The audience is changed, and I'm the one who changed them. They want more and more and more, like hogs who've tasted blood. There's no going back. Not now.'"
"In case you're wondering why a series titled "The Ed Gein Story" lends such focus to people he never met, the episode then jumps back to Gein (played by Charlie Hunnam), who's in his basement torturing a babysitter named Evelyn Hartley (Addison Rae). Stripped to her underwear and tied to a chair, Evelyn begs for her life as Gein wheels out a corpse, wraps its long-dead fingers around the handle of a hammer, and brings both inanimate objects down on Evelyn's head."
Alfred Hitchcock laments that the success of Psycho pushed studios and audiences toward increasingly graphic 'sex-horror' films demanding more blood, violence, and nudity. His agent lists sensational titles as examples of what studios want. Hitchcock and his wife Alma watch a lurid film amid a raucous audience, and both are appalled; Alma leaves early. Hitchcock tells himself he brought the escalation on, fearing there is no going back from audiences' hunger for shock. Separately, Ed Gein tortures babysitter Evelyn Hartley in his basement, using a corpse's hand to swing a hammer and repeatedly striking her head.
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