Psycho’s Norman Bates

Long before slashers had a name, Ed Gein’s story inspired Psycho (1960). Author Robert Bloch lived near Plainfield, Wisconsin, and borrowed Gein’s obsession with his mother to create Norman Bates. Alfred Hitchcock amplified it into cinematic legend, introducing the world to a polite killer with a fractured mind. The film’s success transformed horror, making Bates—and indirectly, Gein—symbols of the monster next door.