Deranged – the closest portrayal

Released in 1974, Deranged is one of the most accurate dramatizations of Gein’s crimes. The film follows Ezra Cobb, a fictionalized Gein who digs up corpses to “reunite” with his dead mother. Its low-budget realism and grim tone made it an underground classic. Actor Roberts Blossom delivers an eerily restrained performance that captures the loneliness and obsession behind Gein’s madness more convincingly than any slasher caricature.