What would Halloween be without discussing a “B” horror film?

This essay includes a few spoilers, but nothing to get all hacked up about. If black humor refuses to capitulate to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it also refuses to take them seriously. We can only contemplate death soberly if there is some means of avoiding it. When faced with the inevitable, laugh, clown, laugh. And the more spectacular the death, whether in total numbers or intensity of the individual event, the darker the laughter. Consider the films that are based to a greater or lesser degree on the ghoulish career of Ed Gein, the Wisconsin part-time handyman and full-time psycho. Everyone needs something to do to fill the hours of the day. It’s just that Gein’s choices were eccentric, to say the least. They were also such stuff as cinematic nightmares are made on. Deranged. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Silence of the Lambs. Motel Hell. Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield. Three on a Meathook. Ed and His Dead Mother. Psycho. But the oddest thing about the films that draw ...  more