Line #28 Film/Deranged


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3	''Deranged'' (also known as ''Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile'') is a 1974 Canadian psychological horror film directed by Alan Ormsby and Jeff Gillen and starring Creator/RobertsBlossom (in his only leading role), Cosette Lee, Creator/LeslieCarlson, Robert Warner, Marcia Diamond, Marian Waldman, and Micki Moore. The film is a RomanAClef based on the crimes of the infamous {{serial killer}}[=/=]{{grave robb\|ing}}er UsefulNotes/EdGein, here renamed Ezra Cobb. The film's visual effects were provided by a young Creator/TomSavini.
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5	Not to be confused with the [[Film/Deranged2012 2012 film of the same name]].
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9	!! Provides examples of the following tropes:
10	* AnArmAndALeg: It's heavily implied via Ezra's comment about Mary being [[BlackComedy "all over the place"]] that he dismembered her corpse in the process of killing and skinning her.
11	* BerserkButton: For Ezra, speaking ill of [[MyBelovedSmother his mother]] or damaging her corpse is a surefire way to earn a messy death at his hands.
12	* BlackComedy: Elements of dark humour are sprinkled throughout the film. The most notable example occurs when Ezra is talking to his mother's corpse about how crazy and fat Maureen was while casually munching on a chicken leg.
13	* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:At the end of the film, the townspeople find Ezra laughing over the corpse of his latest victim. [[MrExposition Simms]] then states that said townspeople showed up the following day armed with TorchesAndPitchforks and burned down his house, though whether or not they actually succeeded in killing him is left somewhat ambiguous.]]
14	* BreakingTheFourthWall: The reporter character Tom Simms occasionally interrupts the film and addresses the audience, usually to serve as MrExposition.
15	* FemaleMisogynist: Ezra's mother Amanda believes all other women to be sinful and perverted, with the exception of their neighbour Maureen, if only because she is fat and not conventionally attractive. When she dies, Maureen ends up becoming her son's first victim.
16	* GenuineHumanHide: Ezra breaks into graves in order to exhume the bodies and skin the corpses in an attempt to reconstruct his mother's decaying body. Eventually, he starts killing people in order to take their skins.
17	* {{Gorn}}: Some scenes are quite gruesome for such an unassuming horror flick, most notably Mary's death and the scene where Ezra dissects a corpse and scoops out pieces of its brain. Many of these scenes had to be cut in order for the film to avoid being slapped with an [[MediaNotes/AdultsOnlyFilmRating X rating]] by the MPAA.
18	* GoryDeadlyOverkillTitleOfFatalDeath: ''Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile''.
19	* HearingVoices: Following his mother's death, Ezra begins hearing voices in his head telling him to exhume her corpse and preserve her body.
20	* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: Ezra develops an obsession with an attractive young barmaid, Mary Ransum, and later kidnaps her in an attempt to force her to marry him. Mary attempts to flee but is quickly incapacitated and {{bound\|AndGagged}} in Ezra's closet. When she awakens, Ezra tries to force her to have dinner with him and his corpses and then [[AttemptedRape attempts to molest her]], but Mary once again attempts to fight back by flinging his mother's corpse at him, hitting his BerserkButton and resulting in him beating her to death.
21	* TheMentallyDisturbed: Even leaving aside his ghoulish crimes, Ezra clearly isn't there mentally.
22	* MummiesAtTheDinnerTable: Ezra kidnaps barmaid Mary Ransum and then introduces her to the various corpses (including his mother's) that he's unearthed and mutilated, so they can all have dinner together before he "marries" her.
23	* MyBelovedSmother: Ezra's mother Amanda is a domineering [[TheFundamentalist religious fanatic]] who indoctrinates him to believe that all other women are sinners. When she dies, her son completely loses his mind and becomes a serial killing grave robber.
24	* NeverTrustATitle: The film's subtitle is very misleading as Ezra never engages in [[ILoveTheDead necrophilia]] at any point, although as [[MrExposition Simms]] points out on several occasions, the word can also refer to one with an obsessive level of interest in death and corpses.
25	* NoEnding: [[spoiler:The film ends with the sheriff, his deputy, and Harlan Kootz finding Mary's dismembered body in the barn and Ezra at the dinner table with his collection of dug-up bodies, cackling over a bowl of blood... upon which the film ends with a freeze-frame where Simms' narration simply states that his farmhouse was burned down three days later. There is literally nothing saying what became of Ezra, if he was immediately arrested and thrown into the slammer for the rest of his life, was thrown into the nuthouse for the same length of time, if the three men were so appalled and disgusted by his actions that they gunned him down right there at the dinner table, or if they collectively pulled a ScrewThisImOuttaHere and Ezra was killed when his house was burnt down]].
26	* PsychopathicManchild: Due to his sheltered upbringing by a domineering mother, Ezra affects a creepily childlike disposition.
27	* RomanAClef: The names are changed and a few of the details altered, but overall the film sticks fairly close to the real-life events, certainly more so than other films inspired by Gein's crimes such as ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', ''Film/TheTexasChainSawMassacre1974'', and ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs''.
28	* VillainProtagonist: The GraveRobbing SerialKiller Ezra Cobb serves as the film's protagonist.
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Context Film / Deranged