Deranged

Deranged (also known as Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile) is a 1974 psychological horror film directed by Alan Ormsby and Jeff Gillen, and starring Roberts Blossom. Its plot, loosely based on the crimes of Ed Gein, follows Ezra Cobb, a middle-aged man in a rural Midwestern community who begins a string of serial murders and grave robberies after the death of his mother, a religious fanatic who raised him to be a misogynist. Though based on Gein, the film's title is misleading since Gein never experimented with necrophilia; although a necrophile is also defined as having "an obsessive fascination with death and corpses." Funded by an American concert promoter on a small budget, the production took place in Oshawa, Ontario in the winter of 1973, with a largely Canadian cast and crew. The film premiered in Los Angeles on March 20, 1974. The film had disappeared since its release in 1974; however, it was rediscovered in Florida in the mid-1990s and was released into home video by distributor America International Pictures’ parent company Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Plot Middle-aged Ezra Cobb helps operate a farm in the rural Midwest with his elderly mother, Amanda, a religious fanatic who has indoctrinated him since childhood to abhor women. Amanda dies following a protracted illness, and Ezra withdraws. Nearly a year after her death, he experiences auditory hallucinations that compel him to exhume his mother. He arrives at her grave one night and digs up her decomposed body, returning it to his home where he cobbles it together using discarded fish skin and wax.