The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was one movie lightly based on Ed Gein. The story is about a group of travelling teens who stumble on a horror house. The residents of the house are a family of weird homicidal cannibals who also perform grave robberies, and construcs furniture made of bones, skulls and human skin. The lead bad guy is called Leatherface. Leatherface chases the teens around with his chainsaw, wearing a human face mask. There are about four Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies.

The movie Psycho is based on the Robert Bloch novel and made into a Hitchcock film. The overpowering mother is directly inspired by the story of Ed Gein - Robert Bloch says he got most of the ideas for Psycho from Ed Gein's life.

The movie Silence of the Lambs is about tracking down a serial killer called Buffalo Bill, who's also a transvestite and a cannibal, and he makes clothes out of his victims skins.