Gotta Preserve Mama

Roberts Blossom sure was inspired casting. Ghoulish Ezra Cobb, totally dominated by his mother from a young age, told women couldn't be trusted and were sluts and whores, his upbringing isolating and cut off from any other outside influence, is left after her death to somehow keep her memory alive. How he does that, including talking to her, digging her body up, and eventually gaining access to other corpses including fresh ones; the film, "Deranged" (1974), takes us down a very dark path. One of death masks, collection of rotting corpses set up as guests for mama, and chicken meals while conversing with the dead. The narration by familiar face in Canadian film, Leslie Carlson, is often mentioned as a major error in the storytelling of the film but I thought his presence within the very framework of Cobb's life was clever and amusing. Marian Waldman, known to "Black Christmas" fans as the sorority housemother, has a brief but memorable role as a kook Ezra's mom said could be trusted only for her to use seance to communicate with her dead husband to lure him into bed with her! I first saw this on a MGM double feature DVD with "Motel Hell" (1980), with "Deranged" not the intended interest. This turned out to be the nicer surprise, because it wasn't why I rented the disc. MGM HD channel showed the film not long back and I hadn't seen this since 2007. Blossom absolutely conjured Gein for this role. I felt we were actually dropped into the history of a very close facsimile of Gein. I had forgotten how genuinely unsettling the Cobb cutting and bleeding of Sally while her naked body hung upside down like a deer was. Not for all tastes, "Deranged" is often presented very matter-of-factly. Shot on the cheap, the cold, rural landscape and low budget approach feels on pointe.

Old IMDb user comments from January 2007...

A film inspired by the notorious killer, Ed Gein has Roberts Blossom portraying Ezra Cobb, a man who slowly grows sociopathic after his mother dies. We see more of how Cobb becomes crazy rather than his killing which comes out towards the end.

I felt the film is completely a black comedy playing off the absurd gimmick of documentary even having a narrator popping in at times to tell us this and that about Ezra. It's straight-faced, but one can see this is supposed to be parody. I'm pretty sure many might find this film a tasteless exercise sending up a sick individual who did horrible things, but I felt the filmmakers were stating that Ed Gein was an absurd person, quite deranged and aloof. He was quite simple-minded and a shut-in from the outside world where his whole being swirled around the care of his mother. The "mother complex" one associates with Norman Bates in PSYCHO is played to the hilt here as we see Ezra seeing images of mom warning him about sin and it's curse to those who commit acts of lust. The film really has a weird vibe(as I'm sure we would all feel weird if we peered into Ed Gein's nights at homes with his dead skin and body parts..and dear old mama)once Ezra begins to bring home corpses and chats away with them believing whole-heartedly that they were quite alive. He even admits to having bodies in his house to neighbors who laugh it off as if Ezra is just joshing with them. That whole "not taking Ezra serious" attitude may've cost lives because once he admits to holding the body of a missing waitress(we see what happens to her when she tries to escape Ezra's clutches while throwing the corpses at him in desperation only to receive a femur bone to the skull)he is on a dark path to kill as many as it takes for fresh skin. The film really has only two disturbing death sequences, the waitress and a beautiful young girl, operating the register of a department store(she is the girlfriend of Ezra's neighbor's son)who almost gets away until she walks right into a bear trap her boyfriend's father just planted down.

I think what makes this such a unique experience is that the film starts as a very dark comedy showing how goofy a man completely cut-off mentally from those around him, living in his own created world, can be in a realistic way. The bodies in his home is absolutely abnormal obviously, but somehow seeing this man joyous with these lifeless shells of former people is fascinating in a sordid, sad sort of way. He never much had a chance of a normal life because of his unfortunately sheltered upbringing, specifically with how he was told by his mother that females were nothing more than sluts with disease. The film then takes a very disturbing, ominous turn once Ezra begins selecting and destroying innocent women who have no ill will towards him and seem comfortable around him.

The film lives and breathes because Blossom is absolutely convincing as an Ed Gein sociopath. I accepted completely as this strange, quiet man whose little normalcy dissolves when he wishes to preserve the corpses in his home. The film is also quite well made despite a very low budget which can often either be a hindrance or a blessing. In this film, using unfamiliar faces is indeed an asset as I felt it was as if we were watching real people in a grotesque situation no one could've imagined. I'm sure the Ed Gein situation was the same way.