Alan Ormsby, who of course would write another B-movie cult classic decades later with "The Substitute", brings us this Brit flick loosely based on Ed Gein. In this version, Ezra Cobb (Robert Blossom, best known for Escape from Alcatraz and Home Alone) pretty much goes completely mental when she passes on.Blossom is extremely suitably creepy throughout and anytime he's on camera the movie soars yet the flip side of that is the on screen narrator who's pretty useless and temporally brings the film to a screeching halt. Thankfully these scenes are seldom enough as to not ruin a memorable little slice of horror.

One of the first of many movies dealing with the Ed Gein murders that have inspired many films throughout the last forty years. "Deranged" at times resembles more a black comedy than a horror film as Roberts Blossom's hokey performance as the ultimate momma's boy Ezra Cobb is anything but intimidating. When Ezra's devout mother dies he is suddenly left alone in a world where his thin social graces have hampered him so much that he has no idea how to interact with other people especially women. When Ezra's neighbor tries to set him up on a date in one of the silliest scenes Ezra constantly envisions his mother berating him with all the sinful pitfalls that come with the fairer sex. Missing his mother's company Ezra digs up her corpse and begins to assemble her into a makeshift shrine in her bedroom. In an attempt to make her look more presentable he begins to lure women to his house in order to kill and skin them for spare parts. This is the catalyst for his derangement as he moves from simple homicide by a firearm to the capture, torture, and murder of his female victims. Again, it's hard to approach a macabre subject like this but the murders in "Deranged" lack any edge and come off more as witless shenanigans than anything. One scene has Ezra banging a skin-lined drum with a femur bone while trying desperately to convince his tied up victim that he truly is crazy when it seems like it's the audience that needs the persuasion. In an attempt to ramp up the shock value of his crimes Ezra kidnaps a young lady that becomes the finale of the film as she is dating his neighbor's son, strings her nude body up, and disembowels her. Sadly the red paint spattered over her nude body is the same kind of tacky murder scenes that were prevalent in the early seventies. "Deranged" has quite a little cult following but in my honest opinion this is an average at best B-movie that starts out slow and just gets goofy as it progresses. It seems hardcore fans of this movie are the deranged ones.

Loosely based on the true horror story of Ed Gein, 'Deranged' will definitely make you question why you watch movies like this.A lonely, borderline retarded man digs up his mother's corpse and keeps her in the house and goes about trying to seduce women and lure them back to his house so he can kill them and make furniture out of the skin and bones.Some parts are so ridiculous I wasn't sure if they were supposed to be funny or not. Watch this movie, 'Psycho,' 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' and 'Silence of the Lambs,' to see how different filmmakers have used (or exploited) the Ed Gein crimes for their own artistic visions.

This movie is a (somewhat) accurate movie on Ed Gein. Ezra Cobb (Roberts Blossom) is a middle-aged man who has cared for his ill mother for 12 years. She dies and he's all alone and slowly goes mad. He digs up her body from the graveyard and brings it home. He also digs up other bodies and uses their various limbs or organs. Then he decides to go after live humans...I originally caught this on VHS back in the early 1990s. Back then it was uncut and had a doc on Ed Gein as an extra. The 2002 DVD release from MGM looks fantastic but is, sadly, edited. This got an R rating back in 1974 but the ratings board insisted that an eye gouging and brain scooping sequence be removed to get an R rating today. That makes no sense. The scene wasn't THAT graphic and it was obviously fake. Idiots. That aside this is a creepy, unsettling film. It was made on a VERY low budget and has its slow spots but it works on you. It isn't that gory either but pretty sick. There are only three killings here but there are the various rotting corpses and, at one point, Ezra wears the skin of one of them (which Ed Gein did do)! Also there's an absolutely revolting scene at the end showing what Ezra did with his last victim (a young blonde here--in reality it was a middle-aged woman). This isn't all grim and violent. There's a very funny séance scene that works well. Blossom is excellent as Ezra. It's his movie and he knows it. He shows Ezra's madness slowly growing until it overcomes him. Also there's a VERY creepy music score that adds to the unpleasant tone of the film.This is a must-see for horror fans but the casual movie goer might want to steer clear. If you can, see the unedited version. I give this a 7.