Have you watched Ed Gein? I was recently quoted in both Business Insider and People Magazine for my comments on Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story, specifically Episode 2’s depiction of Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho.

In the episode, creator Ryan Murphy dramatizes a scene where Hitchcock walks actor Anthony Perkins through a reconstructed version of Ed Gein’s farmhouse on the Universal lot, supposedly to “prepare him” to play Norman Bates.

As I told Business Insider reporter Jason Guerrasio, this sequence is pure dramatic license:

“There is no historical record of Hitchcock ever reconstructing Ed Gein’s house at Universal or walking Anthony Perkins through it. The Bates house and motel were built by his design team as fictional constructs, not replicas of the Gein farmhouse. In fact, Hitchcock largely avoided discussing character motivations with his actors. Perkins built Norman Bates from the script, not from any staged exposure to Gein’s world. This sequence in Ryan Murphy’s show is best understood as dramatic license, not history.”

Hitchcock never visited Plainfield, Wisconsin, nor did he study police photos of Gein’s house in any detail. Psycho drew its roots from Robert Bloch’s novel, not from Hitchcock personally researching Gein. The film’s sets, the Bates Motel and the gothic house were purpose-built at Universal Studios by art directors Joseph Hurley and Robert Clatworthy, inspired by small-town Americana, not real crime scenes.

Both Business Insider and People highlighted how Hitchcock’s genius was in transforming Bloch’s lurid source material into a taut psychological thriller without ever resorting to true-crime sensationalism.

“Hitchcock was fascinated by murderers, but his Psycho was about fear, repression, and identity not a biopic of Ed Gein,” I explained. “It’s a reminder of how myth and movie magic can intertwine, especially when reimagined for a new generation of viewers.”

Tony Lee Moral is the author of Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards (Titan Books) and the forthcoming A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, The Myths, The Legacy (University Press of Kentucky, 2026).

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