Deranged (1974)
Directed by Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby.
Starring Roberts Blossom, Cosette Lee, Micki Moore, Robert Warner, Pat Orr

Of all the films based on the real life story of Ed Gein, I would say this one is the most accurate. Since I grew up in a small town in Michigan, I’ve always found this film to be very creepy, since there were a few people in my town that could easily have been another Ed Gein. In case you’re not aware of the facts, Gein was from Plainfield, Wisconsin that murdered at least 2 people, but also had dug up several people from the local graveyard, using their body parts for nefarious things, before he was caught in 1954. How something like that could have be going on, and nobody would have ever know, boggles the mind. According to author Robert Bloch, that is the one thing that he took from the whole Ed Gein affair for his book Psycho, that a small town America could be housing a terror that nobody was aware of. Tobe Hooper also took a lot of ideas from Gein for his film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), including the fact that Gein had face masks made from human skin.

Deranged is a low budget film, co-directed by Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby, told in sort of a pseudo-documentary style, with a narrator popping in every now and then giving some exposition. Ezra Cobb lives alone with his bed-ridden mother who dominates his life. Once she dies and he is truly alone, the madness really sets in, digging his mother up from her grave and bringing her back home. He’s known around town as a bit strange, even making weird comments about what he has at home, but everyone thinks he’s just joking or crazy, or a little of both, but nothing they take seriously. Once a shopkeeper goes missing, only then do they realize what Cobb has been doing at his home. The way the ending unfolds is dramatic, highly effective, and still packs a punch today.

Cobb is played by the famous character actor Roberts Blossom, who hasn’t appeared in too many horror films other than this and John Carpenter’s Christine (1983), but has shown up in everything else from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) to the old neighbor in Home Alone (1990). He creates this characterization of a man that we all could have known in our own neighborhood, one that was quirky, a bit off, but fit in to society enough that some things weren’t questioned by those that knew him. In other words, he seemed real and believable. The way he talks to his dead mother shows how deep he was into the character. With his beady eyes, and the things he does with his face, really pulling off the innocence and ignorance that his character has, he gives one of the best performances of a demented psycho committed to film. Then again, Blossom had already been acting on screen and TV for over a decade and had won four Obies (an acting award for Off-Broadway shows) in his career. He was also a poet and playwright. Maybe because there was more going on in Blossom’s head than most, that maybe he could channel that in some twisted way for the portrayal of Ezra Cobb.

Another actor that might not be that familiar with in the film, mainly because he’s a lot younger, is Leslie Carlson, who appears as the narrator. If you’re a fan of David Cronenberg, then you’ll know Carlson from playing Barry Convex in Videodrome (1983), as well as appearing in Dead Zone (1983) and The Fly (1986). But he also appeared in Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) and A Christmas Story (1983).

Directors Gillen and Ormsby were both friends with Bob Clark, and appeared as actors in Clark’s Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972). In fact, Ormsby co-wrote Children and did the makeup for it. He also did the makeup effects for Deranged. Helping him in that department was a young Tom Savini, with this being his first feature film. Ormsby would write quite a few screenplays, as well as working on makeup effects for a few titles, like Clark’s Deathdream and Ken Wiederhorn’s Shock Waves (1977). He did start to direct the 1991 cult film Popcorn, but was replaced after a few weeks of principle photography had started. Gillen mainly worked as an actor in bit roles, such as the bartender in Deathdream or even Santa Claus in A Christmas Story (1983).

There’s a lot of movies out there about real life serial killers, and honestly I tend to stay away from them. Maybe because they are too close to breaking the barrier of our movie world and real life. Maybe because it was made in the early ’70s, has a gritty look to it, or the performances here that makes me look past all of my hang ups about that sub-genre and count this as one of my favorite films.

Moore Video was the first put out a copy in 1993 making it pretty much the only way you could find it. In 2002, MGM put it out as a double feature with 1980’s Motel Hell (nice pairing there!) on their Midnite Movies label. That was great for fans to be able to see a nice clean copy of the movie… except it was cut. Well, sort of. There was a short sequence with Cobb scooping out the brains of one of the corpses. That scene wasn’t in the original release print that played drive-ins and theaters, but when Moore Video released it, they edited it back in to their print, which from then on started to be called the uncut print. In 2013, Arrow put it out on Blu-ray, followed by Kino doing it here in the states in 2015. Whether you pick up the Arrow or Kino release, this title needs to be in your collection. It never fails to generate the chills and shivers, as well as maybe an uncomfortable chuckle here and there. Plus, it shows you one of the greatest performances by one of the best character actors ever to grace the screen, playing one of the most disturbed men in our history. Again, this is a must.