Seanette

I don't think this could bear less resemblance to the facts of the Ed Gein case if there had been a deliberate effort to avoid getting any details accurate. About all they got right was Gein's name, the deaths of his mother and brother, and the year and location of events. Most of the principal characters are not historically correct, Gein was NOT known to have killed men or young women (the only two he's known to have killed were both middle-aged and similar to his late mother), he did NOT have an accomplice, and the personality and physical type for Gein are all wrong. Then there were the problems with sound quality, cinematography, etc. Even on an HDTV, it was very hard to make out what was going on in some pivotal scenes due to very poor lighting and photography and dialog was hard to understand (and just why were the young deputy's mother and girlfriend so Southern when they were both residents of Wisconsin and the girlfriend's father did not sound Southern?)

I would really like to get back the hour and a half I wasted on this.

I saw about the last 20 minutes of a rerun at about 3am, without the precautionary warnings used in the original airing, and still remember how believable and intensely effective the movie was. Based on what I saw of it and remember after about 15 years [I probably saw this in the late 80s or very early 90s], very well done. I might even add it to my "to rent" list so I can see the whole thing :-). I even woke my grandfather [I was living in his house at the time] to ask him if we knew anyone in Charleston. Once we worked out that it had only been a movie, he was sympathetically amused. His sister had been taken in by the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, so he apparently readily understood how easy it had been for me to be confused by an apparent newscast with no commercials or warnings.

Interesting concept, not badly done, but it's really not something you can stretch into a feature film [even 80 minutes]. This would have been just fine as an episode of "Twilight Zone" or "Tales From the Darkside", I think.