The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, May 11-17
Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile (1974)
Directed by Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby
1974 was a special year. Two films inspired by the life and crimes of Ed Gein were released in the U.S. at the time—Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Gillen and Ormsby’s Deranged. The former is a stone cold classic while the latter is an uncomfortable oddity. Deranged “is the story of Ezra Cobb: murderer, grave robber, necrophiliac perhaps,” so says the reporter popping into the film from time to time to remind the viewer that, yes, this is a factual, true crime story. Yet the mixture of pop colors with such a grim narrative makes Deranged more of a Tales from the Crypt story. Mamma’s boy, farm boy, shut-in—Ezra is a real creep. He’s a skeletal Neil Hamburger with cobalt eyes. Ezra becomes a psychosexual killer after the death of his one true love—his mother. Once she’s gone, the kidnapping, killing, and preserving of women’s bodies begins. Tanner Tafelski (May 12, 9:30pm at the Nitehawk)