MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > "Psycho" at the Drive-In

"Psycho" at the Drive-In

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
6 replies | jump to latest

I've been visiting some pages at a website called "The Hitchcock Zone" which connects also to a "Hitchcock wiki." Its a treasure trove of stuff, though frustratingly limited in one particular way: pages with information about all the articles written about Hitchcock(and each of his movies) sometimes don't have the articles or the links, just research references.

But a lot of stuff CAN be read there. Some articles. Lots of photos.

And I found some good stuff in the Psycho photos page.

One that might merit a post later is an early -- and detailed -- production drawing of the interior of the Bates house. It looks very real to me -- with an Academy copyright -- and gives us a detail not in the movie: a big clock in the foyer where the Cupid statue ended up instead. Still, the drawing must have given everybody an "advanced feeling" of how Psycho would feel, atmospherically.

But my subject here is: "Psycho" at the drive-in.

The Hitchcock Zone has photos from, I think, a Variety promotional piece showing how Psycho not only had lines around the block in indoor engagements -- it had cars lined up down the highway at the drive-in.

With photographic proof. And the drive-in is in New Jersey, which would put it right across the river from Psycho's opening engagements at the DeMille and the Baronet in NYC.

Staring at the photos made me think a bit. How WOULD Psycho play, full-house(full cars?) at a drive-in. Would screams during the murder scenes fill individual cars and then echo out into the night countryside? Did some terrified drivers start up their cars and drive away?

One article about the drive-in engagements of Psycho said that drive-ins hired staff to zip around in golf carts serving food.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And also this: this premiere drive-in engagement of Psycho played in New Jersey. Sopranos country! I don't think Tony Soprano was born yet, but his horrific mother Livia may have seen it with Mob Dad Johnny Soprano. Uncle Junior, too. OK, I'm mixing fact and fiction, but given how "real" New Jersey is(to this West Coast fellah) on The Sopranos, I can sort of shoehorn Psycho playing there into my brainpan.

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Another Psycho drive-in tie-in.

In the seventies, there was a collection of albums of rock and roll hits from various years of the 50's and early 60s. It was stuff like Chuck Berry and Fats Domino and the like. I thing the collected albums were called "Cruising: (INSERT YEAR.)"

Each cover had some cartoon teenagers drawn in color.

Well, for "Cruising: 1960," the cover was a pretty girl and a handsome guy sitting in the front seat of a car, at a drive-in, looking at whatever was on screen. Behind them, a streetside marquee said:

PSYCHO
THE TIME MACHINE

Well, yeah!

I remember the girl's "think bubble" line, with her face upset: "Its.....EDDIE!" I think she was upset to see her ex-boyfriend in a car with a girl.

Anyway. Psycho. The Time Machine. Two greats of 1960...and we'll never see the likes of them again...even though remakes have been made of both.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Some final "odds and ends" tidbits about Psycho at the drive-in.

1965: Visting relatives in the bay area and driving around the marshy San Francisco pennisula south of San Francisco(Vertigo country, but just sort of), there was a drive-in, in the daytime, against a gray sky and a murky wet landscape. The marquee said: PSYCHO. It was that first re-release year, and just seeing the marquee creeped me out. Did that movie follow me EVERYWHERE?

1969: Psycho gets a second re-release "See the version of Psycho that TV dared not show!" Our family is driving past the drive-in, which is next to a freeway, and I strain to look at the sliver-like image on the screen. It was -- word -- Arbogast at the foot of the stairs. But the screen disappeared behind us on the next turn and my quest remained unfinished to see that scene, let alone that movie.

1976: Family Plot is in wide release, and a few drive-ins showed it...with Psycho! Already an annual staple on local TV stations all the time, Psycho STILL merited getting a theatrical showing. Outdoors at the drive-in with a new Hitchcock. I'd already seen Psycho by then on TV, and I couldn't find the time to get to one of those drive-ins. It was gone within two weeks, anyway.

BONUS:

1972. Though I first saw Frenzy indoors at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, a few weeks later I saw it with "the gang" at the drive-in. I've recounted this before, with my one friend getting vocally angry about the "wrong man" plot("I HATE stories like this!") Anyways, a group of us(teen boys AND girls) watched Frenzy under a starry, starry night sky, in lawn chairs and from the back of trucks and...it wasn't very popular. I wasn't very popular for recommending it. Thank God Play Misty for Me was the second feature. That one had consensual sex and some Psycho-style knife(and scissors) violence.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

My, oh, my! There's a ton of stuff at both the Zone and Wiki sites! Seeking out that production drawing, a couple curiosities caught my attention among the image files.

The first was Hitchcock's 1/8/60 list of "suggested" music cues and durations (image 2973). It's as notable for the instances in which the score departs from those suggestions as for those to which it conforms. I guess it's a fairly well-known story that the shower murder was originally intended to be unscored, but it's the first I've learned that Arbogast's had been intended the same way, with Hitchcock's specificity of "shut the music off when Arbogast's face is slashed."

As fascinating as those items are to consider from an artistic standpoint, this one intrigues me even more from an esoteric one: the original photo of Hitch posing for the pointing-to-his-watch image (8741) used on the theater placards warning patrons that "It is required that you see Psycho from the beginning" (image 1629). What puzzles me is WHERE it was taken: in front of the Thalberg Building just west of the main gate on the MGM lot! Inasmuch as North By Northwest had wrapped in December of '58 and was released nationally in August of '59, the "when," "how" and "why" of such a photo being taken just there also come into play.

While it's easy enough to surmise reasons for which he'd perhaps be there for a meeting circa late-'59/early-'60 (to discuss NBNW domestic grosses or upcoming international releases, for example), it's just baffling to try figuring out how it came to be that a photographer (working for whom?) was there to catch him on his way in or out to pose for a publicity photo promoting a Paramount picture shot at Universal at that particular place, when it could otherwise have been done anywhere (on either the Paramount or Universal lots or his offices therein; in a photo gallery rather than in harsh afternoon sunlight) at any convenient time.

I know: talk about minutiae!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

My, oh, my! There's a ton of stuff at both the Zone and Wiki sites!

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Its incredible. I promise that I surf for other movie sites on other directors...but that Hitchcock pile-up is a great place to browse.

I don't quite understand if The Hitchcock Zone is a subset of Hitchcock Wiki, or vice versa.

And one of those sites has a "1000 frames of Hitchcock page" in which all of his movies(well, most of them) are represented in a series of still frames...1000 of them per movie.

But the real gold is anytime something about the production of a film turns up.

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Seeking out that production drawing,

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You know, its funny. I found the production drawing to be the most arresting thing to post about(it is, I think a new addition to the Psycho photos page), but I'd been thinking on the drive-in theme since long ago when I first saw those photos of the drive-in lines, so...

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a couple curiosities caught my attention among the image files.

The first was Hitchcock's 1/8/60 list of "suggested" music cues and durations (image 2973). It's as notable for the instances in which the score departs from those suggestions as for those to which it conforms.
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Its an amazing sheet of paper. Hitchcock's music dictation to Herrmann all in one page. And it is really, really hard to imagine how the Arbogast scene would have played with music right up until the moment of attack. I guess all ya have to do is watch the scene and turn the sound down at that moment, but I'll but Hitchcock wanted a different effect...music...music...music. BOOM slashed face.

The page and Hitchcock's direction also demonstrate how much Herrmann contributed to Psycho BEING Psycho. The silent murders would have given us, well, the murders as we have them in Torn Curtain and Frenzy. Not the same at all. Hitchcock did give Herrmann a bonus and on-screen billing equal with his own. He got it. Well, that year. Came Torn Curtain, not so much.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

this one intrigues me even more from an esoteric one: the original photo of Hitch posing for the pointing-to-his-watch image ... What puzzles me is WHERE it was taken: in front of the Thalberg Building just west of the main gate on the MGM lot! ...the "when," "how" and "why" of such a photo being taken just there also come into play.

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Yep. I saw that and wondered the same thing. The cut out from the photo of Hitchcock looking at his watch is very famous and one would have surmised Hitchcock staged the photo once he knew that he had the "No one allowed after it starts" promotion in place: likely no earlier than February 1960, when production wrapped on Psycho.

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it's just baffling to try figuring out how it came to be that a photographer (working for whom?) was there to catch him on his way in or out to pose for a publicity photo promoting a Paramount picture shot at Universal at that particular place, when it could otherwise have been done anywhere (on either the Paramount or Universal lots or his offices therein; in a photo gallery rather than in harsh afternoon sunlight) at any convenient time.

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Hitchcock photographed on the MGM lot while promoting a Paramount picture shot at Universal -- ha! Not to go too fanboy, but is that a mark of the man's power at that point, or what? Well, maybe it was early '60 and he had his idea in place and that's when he knew a photographer would be around. Maybe he felt MGM had a better photographer. Maybe Paramount -- already upset to have to release Psycho -- didn't want to cooperate. Ha, we'll never know, but it does go to show you that assumptions can be all wrong about how movies are made...and promoted.
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I know: talk about minutiae!

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Oh, not at all. This kind of minutae is how an era is studied.

I suppose The Hitchcock Zone/Wiki can and will provide a few more seeds for new types of discussions here. One's we didn't even have at imdb...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

One more example of "Psycho at the drive-in" occurred to me since last posting:

In the 1996 summer hit "Twister," most the of ever-growing-in-size twisters are seen doing their Midwestern destruction during the day.

But one of them hits in the darkness of night, in a great scene of atmosphere and eeriness. And it hits a drive-in theater playing a revival(one can only guess) of Psycho and The Shining on the same bill.

We never see Psycho playing on that drive-in screen. Its The Shining, instead, and eventually over Jack Nicholson silently mouthing "Heeeerrre's Johnny!" through the axed bathroom door, the screen slowly shreds and disconnects and sends Jack's face decomposing into the darkness.

So its The Shining and Mad Jack that gets struck by that nighttime drive-in destroying twister...but Psycho gets its due.