"I'd like to thank Ed Gein for all the great movies he inspired"

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Look, I think we should just take a minute or two here to salute a person who is, really, a great inspiration to the art of film-making. No, it's not Hitchcock. It's not even Bergman. Nor Truffaut. No, the motion picture hero - and I don't use that word lightly - is none other than notorious serial killer Ed Gein. OK, calm down. I know what you're thinking. Your mind's going a million miles a minute with thoughts like "But didn't he murder numermous people and rob graves to descrates corpses?"; "Didn't he make a waistcoat out of a vagina and breasts as well as a belt made of human nipples?" and "Didn't he practice cannibalism and necrophilia after his nutcase mother died leaving him all alone in the world?"

And you'd be right in thinking those things. Maybe even right in saying, nay screaming them. But despite Gein's murderous nature - or perhaps because of it - he has cemented himself into the canon of Hollywood stardom. Why he doesn't have his own star outside Mann's Chinese Theater with his hand prints forever immortalised in cement?

After all, Ed Gein is the man who, through serial killing, grave descration, cannibalism and other quite-nasty things, inspired the classic films Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Silence of the Lambs, to mention only a few. These films have been influential in film-making and modern movies are indebted to them for their groundbreaking depictions of what are, essentially, Ed Gein's quirks. By the way, you like that Slayer song 'Dead Skin Mask'? Well, that's a song about ol' Eddie too.

So, all I'm saying is, let's give credit where credit is due. The world of movies is better for having depicted the depravity of Mr. Gein and I think we should not be stingy in paying homage to him where ever we can. Think about it folks. You love Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill? You think Leatherface was kinda cool? You think Norman Bates was a great character? None of those creations would be diddly squat without Ed Gein. My hero and yours. God bless you, where ever you may be.

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