The latest addition to Netflix’s notoriously controversial Monster series just got a release date that promises it won’t be long now until we get new episodes.
Charlie Hunnam is set to star as Ed Gein, the serial killer who inspired the Buffalo Bill character in Silence of the Lambs.
Living alone on a Wisconsin farm in the 50s, Gein gained widespread notoriety when police discovered he had been fashioning trophies and keepsakes from corpses he dug up at cemeteries, as well as from two women he murdered.
Known as the ‘Butcher of Plainfield’, Gein confessed to two murders – of tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954 and hardware store owner Bernice Worden in 1957 – and was suspected of seven others. While standing trial he was found to be legally insane and remanded to a psychiatric facility, where he died in 1984.
This will be the third instalment of the Monster anthology true crime series, which has so far focused on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer as well as the Menendez brothers, who are still behind bars for murdering their parents.
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Monster: The Ed Gein Story comes from never-not-working producer Ryan Murphy and has just released a series of first-look images showing Hunnam’s transformative appearance – as well as confirmation that the new episodes will drop on October 3 (coincidentally, Mean Girls day).
Netflix shared a series of posters leaning in to Gein’s influence on modern horror films, as he in part inspired not only Silence of the Lambs, but Alfred Hitchcock’s classic mummy-problem-nightmare Psycho and horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
The official description for the new season describes Gein as a ‘serial killer, grave robber, psycho’.
The synopsis continues: ‘In the frozen fields of 1950s rural Wisconsin, a friendly, mild-mannered recluse named Eddie Gein lived quietly on a decaying farm – hiding a house of horrors so gruesome it would redefine the American nightmare.
‘Driven by isolation, psychosis, and an all-consuming obsession with his mother, Gein’s perverse crimes birthed a new kind of monster that would haunt Hollywood for decades.
Why has Ryan Murphy’s Monster series been controversial?
While Murphy said his Menendez series was ‘the best thing that has happened to the brothers in 30 years’, their family took issue with the show.
Members of the brothers’ family said the pair were ‘victimised by this grotesque shockadrama’ and also claimed the show was ‘riddled with mistruths’, per a social media post.
Murphy responded to the comments by saying they were ‘predictable at best’ in an interview with Variety.
‘I find it interesting because I would like specifics about what they think is shocking or not shocking,’ said the Glee creator. ‘It’s not like we’re making any of this stuff up. It’s all been presented before.
‘What we’re doing is we’re the first to present it in one contained ecosystem. What’s grotesque about it?’
The Jeffrey Dahmer Monster series also received blowback, with some victims’ relatives claiming that nobody from the production notified them of the show or consulted them. Murphy in turn said they had reached out but received no response.
The show was slammed for its incredibly protracted scenes of grisly violence and also criticised for its sometimes-sympathetic depiction of Dahmer.
‘Gein’s macabre legacy gave birth to fictional monsters born in his image and ignited a cultural obsession with the criminally deviant. Ed Gein didn’t just influence a genre — he became the blueprint for modern horror.’
Fans of the Monster series won’t have to worry about the show’s future beyond this upcoming season, as Netflix has already greenlit a fourth instalment.
That season will focus on Lizzie Borden, who was tried and acquitted for the axe murders of her father and stepmother in 1892. Borden will be played by Annette Bening and Warren Beatty’s daughter Ella Beatty.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story arrives on Netflix on October 3.
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