Deranged (1974 film)

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. The film features a diegetic narration in which a newspaper columnist occasionally appears and narrates the events depicted. 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 was released regionally in several U.S. states on February 8, 1974, before opening in Los Angeles on March 20, 1974.

Deranged had disappeared since its release in 1974; however, it was rediscovered in Florida in the mid-1990s and was released on home video by distributor America International Pictures’ parent company Metro Goldwyn Mayer.