MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > A Thought On Scream Scenes

A Thought On Scream Scenes

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

I have reminisced here before about how, after having seen Psycho on TV and revival houses about six times from 1970 to 1978, it was finally at a 1979 college screening that I FINALLY got to see Psycho the way it was meant to be seen: with audiences screaming, loud and long, at not only the two murders, not only the fruit cellar climax, but at Lila's reflection in Mrs. Bates' mirror and even at Norman appearing behind Sam in the motel doorway("Looking for me?")

I suppose one should save greater miracles for a hint of divine intervention, but I've always felt I was almost "divinely delivered" to that one(and one only) chance to see -- and HEAR -- Psycho the way it was meant to play in 1960. You don't WATCH Psycho...you experience it. That way. And I only saw it that way once. I've been to revival and college showings since and...nothing. Oh, maybe sometimes a "jump grunt" when Arbogast is attacked.

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"Reversibly":

I saw Jaws at its first noon-time showing on opening day, June 1975. Long line to get in, full house...LOTS of screaming. And something else...lots of yelling and "angst" -- that sound of desperation people make when the monster is closing in on the victims and you want to warn them (like when the unseen shark pulled the dock loose and chased the fisherman.)

There are lots of big screams in Jaws:

The head popping out of the boat. So large were the screams that they continued well into the next scene(Chief Brody and Hooper trying to convince the Mayor to close the beach)...you couldn't hear the dialogue. (Just as in Psycho this way, after Arbogast is killed, everybody kept screaming through the Sam/Lila "Sometimes Saturday night has a lonely sound.")

The shark popping out of the water at Chief Brody -- followed by his line to Quint "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

Famous line, right? We didn't hear it. Everybody was still screaming -- AND laughing -- the scare had been set up like a joke(somebody said that Roy Schedier bounced up like Bugs Bunny in fear.)

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But the BIG screaming scene I recall from Jaws -- given how the screams built and shifted and peaked -- came when the lifeguard was attacked.

Consider: all the false alarms about the shark in the water; people running out of the water; two kids being discovered as faking it("He made me do it").

And then : the REAL shark, sneaking in to the estuary.

We got that great shot of the lifeguard in his boat, talking to the kids on the raft("You guys OK?") as the shark fin came relentless at him from behind. And then the attack. And the screams were like this:

ONE: Shark fin closing in on lifeguard: yelling, SCREAMING ("Look behind you! Get out of there!)

TWO: The lifeguard is knocked out of his boat. High shot over the shark's head -- for the first time clearly seen -- opening its jaws and closing them on the lifeguard, who screams like a small terrified child. (BIG SCREAMS on the FIRST VIEW of the SHARK.)

THREE: A shot of the lifeguard's bare leg under water...suddenly revealed to be severed and sinking to the bottom (the BIGGEST SCREAM of them all.)

I'm not sure even Quint's grisly demise later in the film got the screams of the lifeguard scene.

The corollary in Psycho is Arbogast getting attacked: Mother runs out the door(BIG SCREAM), Arbogast's bloody face(BIGGER SCREAM), fall down the stairs(continual SCREAMING), hits floor and Mother jumps on him for final blows(BIGGEST SCREAMS.)

But I tell ya what happened with Jaws...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

...what happened with Jaws was: I saw it two more times in the theater.

Again in July, and I'm pretty sure there were still some screams...some new people seeing the film for the first time.

A third time in early October...the movie had been "in play" for three months, the theater was barely half full and...

...no screams at all. Nothing. For the duration of the movie. We'd all seen it, I guess.

And I remember how -- in that one final, third viewing with nobody screaming at all -- Jaws suddenly and simply "deflated" as a thriller to me. It was as if the movie was now slow, sedate, and kinda dull.

It was a very weird sensation. My favorite movie of the year suddenly reduced to a boat with no engine, floating listlessly on the sea.

I've kept instead my memory of that June scream-a-thon.

But the moral is this: scream shockers like Psycho and Jaws really only SOMETIMES work the way they should.

The first time. In the first week. With a full house.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

These Memories (esp. about Jaws) are a reminder that going to a hit movie in its first week or two of release (formerly for the first few months, but now with so many screens 'packedness' can't be sustained that long) is in many way the *core* communal movie-going experience. A recent example: Rogue One (2016), the Star Wars prequel meanders unevenly and uncertainly for its first half but delivers in its second half with a thrilling set of action set-pieces and emotional climaxes (almost everyone we meet in the first half of the films dies and gets their own separate Wild Bunch-style heoric death), finally arriving at a Vader horror scene for the ages which then quickly transitions to Leia and the opening of Star Wars (1977). This in a packed theater first week meant cheers, tears, cheers, big screams, and then cheers to take us out in quick succession.

This sort of 'communal high' movie-going is more like going to a great live music concert than it is to watching a recording at home. It probably distorts our impressions of older hit movies these days when we almost never encounter them the way the were original grasped. On the few occasions I have seen older hits with a full house, completely jazzed crowd it's been a revelation:

E.g. 1, I attended a set of sold-out older Cary Grant movies in 2000: Awful Truth, Philadelphia Story, My Favorite Wife were the big ones I attended. With a rocking audience they were *unbelievably* funny and sexy.
E.g. 2, Seeing Rear Window in 1998(?) on the big screen with a near full house was also completely different, not so much because of audience feedback but just because the big screen physicalized Jeffries POV. The screen became the apartment building into which we, with Jeffries, are peering. You may be able to engineer that impression at home these days, I suppose, with the huge screens people can have now, but in the mid '90s I'd only seen RW on vhs on tiny screens at home - not the same!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

This in a packed theater first week meant cheers, tears, cheers, big screams, and then cheers to take us out in quick succession.

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Great to hear that "Rogue One" could deliver that kind of excitement in a full-house showing. Modernly the blockbusters I go to don't seem to get that kind of participation. I'm glad it is still happening SOMEWHERE , with SOME movies.

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This sort of 'communal high' movie-going is more like going to a great live music concert than it is to watching a recording at home. It probably distorts our impressions of older hit movies these days when we almost never encounter them the way the were original grasped.

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Yes. I can certainly say that Jaws, Wait Until Dark (on the "scream" side) and Star Wars(on the cheering and clapping side) were movies that almost ONLY work for me in memory. The good news is that when I watch these films on TV today, I hear the screams and cheers from "memory." (Or as Hitchcock said, "I hear the screams while I'm making the picture.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

On the few occasions I have seen older hits with a full house, completely jazzed crowd it's been a revelation:

E.g. 1, I attended a set of sold-out older Cary Grant movies in 2000: Awful Truth, Philadelphia Story, My Favorite Wife were the big ones I attended. With a rocking audience they were *unbelievably* funny and sexy.

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We can't forget how great COMEDIES are with a big crowd. Again...lines are drowned out, you have to see the film a second time to hear all the jokes.

For Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder famously gave Jack Lemmon some maracas to shake in a hotel room scene with Tony Curtis. Lemmon shook the maracas for the assumed time necessary for laughs to die down.

And I once saw a full-house screening of North by Northwest in which the audience roared with laughter start to finish -- not AT the movie(as, alas, with The Birds sometimes) but WITH the movie. I mean, Grant's reading to Saint of the words "Seven parking tickets" got a roar and applause. I didn't think it was THAT funny...

Perhaps the issue here is Cary Grant. You wanted to laugh with him, love him(if you were a woman), BE him(if you were a man.) He was a "participatory movie star."

One of the great "takes" in film history is after a silent Grace Kelly first kisses Grant at her hotel room doorway in To Catch a Thief. As Kelly closes the door and disappears from view, Hitchcock holds on the back of Grant's head long enough for the laughs to build; then Grant turns around with a sly smile, wiping the lipstick from his lips, and then Grant walks down the hall with that great Grant walk as Hitchcock pulls his camera back to take it in. Funny, sexy...and oddly exhilarating...this scene is. Its one of the reasons that To Catch A Thief is my favorite of 1955.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

E.g. 2, Seeing Rear Window in 1998(?) on the big screen with a near full house was also completely different, not so much because of audience feedback but just because the big screen physicalized Jeffries POV. The screen became the apartment building into which we, with Jeffries, are peering. You may be able to engineer that impression at home these days, I suppose, with the huge screens people can have now, but in the mid '90s I'd only seen RW on vhs on tiny screens at home - not the same!

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It remains intriguing that the movie theater business is still fighting TV (even when TV is showing theatrical movies uncut) with SIZE.

But back then, the big screen really mattered in a different way, I think. Filmmakers like Hitchcock knew how to "fill that rectangle" and give us composition and density.

I would like to note that with Psycho on the big screen , three things -- the house, the shower scene, and the staircase murder -- are all bigger and more enveloping and frightening than on TV. The "Arbogast fall" effect is perhaps less "fake," because we FEEL the fall on the big screen and have to look at a huge close-up of his bloodied face.

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All this said, many of us watch our entertainment on smaller screens, and there are compensations. I have always watched shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men with a significant other chatting away with me and commenting on the action..sometimes more than one other person is with me. (Growing up, we had the whole family watching together and commenting away.)

In college, groups of us would gather in a dorm rec room to watch "Columbo" and cheer or applaud every time he caught the suspect in a lie or discovered a clue. (Maybe this is why I have such affection for the Arbogast-Norman interrogation...)

T

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

THAT said..one critic noted that, unlike Rear Window, NXNW, or Psycho..one particular Hitchcock classic felt like it was pitched to "one viewer alone": Vertigo. The critic said that each viewer of Vertigo enters its world alone, experiences it alone(with Scottie for most of the film, then with Judy, then with both) and is left alone at the film's tragic end. It is as if Vertigo is made for "An Audience of One."

While Psycho only played for me once in a theater with screaming, etc....it rather haunted me as a TV attraction for years before that. Psycho broke loose from most other TV broadcasts of the late sixties/early 70's because it DID have a powerful forbidden reputation. Its like for the two hours it took over the airwaves (watched at the same time by millions of people in millions of homes in Los Angeles the night it premiered)....the scary world of Psycho took over all the homes with a TV set.

I guess I am saying that there are MANY ways to "see a movie."

And what of the physical experience of seeing a movie, anyway? We take it for granted, but we look at those images of "fake" scenes enacted by "fake people" (actors) and we're transfixed. We enter the world of the film as if hypnotized. We leave our own reality.

And we take it for granted!

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

ecarle, I think you've nailed the big difference between Vertigo and Rear Window when they were rereleased in theaters in 1983. RW is truly an audience participation movie with us watching the movies that Jeffries is creating in his head out of boredom. Vertigo is much more awkward in a crowded theater with different people having different reactions, and sad to say, a lot of laughing AT (not with) the movie in 1983.

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One of my great "Hitchcock interludes" was the seven month or so period from about November 1983 to May 1984 in which -- at the rate of roughly one a month -- "the Missing Hitchcock Five" were re-released to art theaters.

Rear Window went first

Then Vertigo(I saw it on Xmas day, 1983.)

Then Rope (the first time I ever saw this film, I think February 1984...the latest year I saw a "new" Hitchocck film.)

Then The Trouble With Harry(starring Shirley MacLaine -- who had just won her first Best Actress Oscar for Terms of Endearment -- she was a hot star again; this was likely April)

And finally, The Man Who Knew Too Much(May 1984, I saw it as an afternoon matinee and then went out to see Robert Redford in The Natural that night -- talk about two eras colliding!)

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Of the group, Rear Window got the full house and the most massive audience participation -- the whole sequence of Grace Kelly sneaking around in Burr's apartment with his return and attack --audience yelling, vocal anxiety and a BIG SCREAM when Burr looked at US.

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My 1983 Vertigo experience was quiet -- a half full silent theater on Xmas Day.

But my 1996 Vertigo experience was ...the worst time I've ever had at the movies in my life. More below.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The 1983 re-release of Vertigo was part of a package.

The 1996 re-release of Vertigo was a "restored version" -- that bugged me from the first scene as the famous opening gunshots of the movie were re-recorded with a new sound.

Anyway, I thought it would be a real treat to see Vertigo IN SAN FRANCISCO. I lived nearby then, and drove on over for a long line/full house matinee. The theater was the Castro, a grand old Palace Theater...in the Castro district, which is a key gay part of town.

With all my respect for all the equality which all of us should have, I have to say I was appalled by the audience reaction of what was evidently a very gay audience: laughter at Vertigo, start to finish, every scene, every line, rather delirious at times. Stewart's late line to Novak, "The hair..." got a huge laugh. And when Judy fell to her death -- pretty damn abrupt, I must admit -- the laughter was huge, strangled, and didn't die down until the screen faded to black.

And then they APPLAUDED.

I was pretty angry. And Vertigo isn't even my favorite Hitchcock film. I spoke to a gay friend about this phenonomenon and he said that movies at the Castro often got laughed at in a kind of "group participation."

Some years later, I read a scolding article by SF Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle where he "gently took to task" the Castro audiences that evidently routinely laughed at classic films.

Oh, well. I guess its the same with hetero guys painting their faces at football games...to each their own.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And I remember how -- in that one final, third viewing with nobody screaming at all -- Jaws suddenly and simply "deflated" as a thriller to me. It was as if the movie was now slow, sedate, and kinda dull.

It was a very weird sensation. My favorite movie of the year suddenly reduced to a boat with no engine, floating listlessly on the sea

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I return to clarify my remarks here.

While I DO remember Jaws "deflating" with no screaming in the audicence a mere four months after the screamathon, over the years, I recovered my strong affection for the film and how it plays "sans screams."

For one thing, I finally heard the line "We're gonna need a bigger boat" and the entire Brody/Hooper/Mayor conversation after the head popped out of the boat.

For another thing...Quint's great USS Indianapolis speech.

And whenever I watch Jaws today -- with a mix of nostalgia, excitement and affection -- I can hear the screams.

[–] Martoto (5034) 7 years ago

You've still never heard the line, "We're gonna need a bigger boat." Because that line is never said in Jaws. :)

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

@martato. Huh? Are you quibbling about "We're" vs "You're":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKxsW8DKJQQ
An interesting point about seeing the film live in 1975 was that, because profanity was still relatively tight-controlled in G-rated entertainment (Jaws was rated G/PG) and on TV, the packed-with-kids-including-me screenings laughed loudly when Brody says 'Slow ahead [harrumph]... I can go slow ahead... come on down and chum some of this shit.' Our kid thought: Heh, he said 'shit'. The shark appears about half a second later, at which point our sneaky, superior laugh/squeal kind of merged/surged into a huge scream. It was a laugh-into-scream moment.... and as Broady staggered slowly back to Quint's cabin to deliver his punchline the audience wasn't continuing to scream, rather it was *laughing* with pleasure at itself (some people were talking to their buddies - 'That was amazing' etc.) for having been gotten/manipulated so brilliantly.

I *seem* to remember still being able to hear 'You're gonna need a bigger boat' and then that triggering another big full laugh and its associated meta-awareness that we were in *really* good hands, being played like a fiddle. But maybe I've confabulated that from subsequent viewings.

[–] Martoto (5034) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm not quibbling There is no line "We're gonna need a bigger boat." but it happens to get regularly misquoted while ignroing why it is "You're" and not "We're" in the film.

It wouldn't be a quibble if someone here misquoted Norman as saying "We just go a little mad sometimes.." in Psycho, would it?

Brody saying "you're" rather than "we're" highlights that even though he is completely out of his depth he recognises Quint's lack of preparedness for what they are facing while firmly placing the responsibility for the situation on Quint.

"We're" simply describes the scale of the problem for all three men.

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The "misrememberer" (me) finally can show up to express the requisite remorse. And indeed for those of us to whom Psycho is sacred text, a mis-remembered line can stick out like a sore thumb.

If Norman said "You all go a little mad sometimes," he might be talking about the humanity he views from afar. If he says "We all go a little mad sometimes," he is including himself in the mix.

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I will note that I think the line has been misquoted in the public realm; I think I've heard the wrong "We're" as much as the right "you're.." in other people's articles.

All this said, I'm always mostly paraphrasing lines, unless I have a script page, a book quote or an IMDB quote to work from. Its out of my head, and even with Psycho -- the movie whose lines I SHOULD know by heart -- I don't. I got one wrong in the past coupla of week's -- Lila's line about Norman's "worthless business." I guessed at exactly what she said, and I was wrong. You can check it out.
THAT said, I'm pleased to see someone reading this stuff and coming in with comment correction. I like Jaws very much(its my favorite of 1975, and edged only by The Godfather for my favorite of the 70s) , but I don't know it like Psycho.

I'd say I'm sorry, but "love means never having to say I'm sorry." Or something like that. Love of film, I mean.

[–] Martoto (5034) 7 years ago

Lets just say that you may have placated me, but we certainly haven't placated our mother. ;)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Then our mother met me! Can I meet our mother?

Hey , that doesn't work...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

An interesting point about seeing the film live in 1975 was that, because profanity was still relatively tight-controlled in G-rated entertainment (Jaws was rated G/PG) and on TV, the packed-with-kids-including-me screenings laughed loudly when Brody says 'Slow ahead [harrumph]... I can go slow ahead... come on down and chum some of this shit.' Our kid thought: Heh, he said 'shit'. The shark appears about half a second later, at which point our sneaky, superior laugh/squeal kind of merged/surged into a huge scream. It was a laugh-into-scream moment.... and as Broady staggered slowly back to Quint's cabin to deliver his punchline the audience wasn't continuing to scream, rather it was *laughing* with pleasure at itself (some people were talking to their buddies - 'That was amazing' etc.) for having been gotten/manipulated so brilliantly.

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This is exactly how our best entertainments work, swanstep. I've written a lot about the value of line READING by the actors, but the timing of what is being said, in what order, and how it works -- that's how comedy in particular zings right along. The surprise at the end of a sentence, the surprise within.

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I *seem* to remember still being able to hear 'You're gonna need a bigger boat' and then that triggering another big full laugh and its associated meta-awareness that we were in *really* good hands, being played like a fiddle. But maybe I've confabulated that from subsequent viewings.

--

Hard to say. As I noted, I saw Jaws the first day in a screamahon; then in October with no screams -- but I saw it in between. Probably heard the lines, and there must have been screaming, or the October screening wouldn't be so memorably quiet.

But I think the sequence as we have it is a delightful case of "everything building and paying off quickly."

There's even the "tag" of Quint turning to listen to Brody's line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" and not understanding it for a moment...until he DOES, and then, boy is he excited: The Big Boy is HERE!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I remember the line about "chumming this shit" getting a big laugh, and I heard THAT one, and laughs DID explode into screams as the shark's head came lurching up out of the water in the frame(and it DOES lurch, that damn shark never quite worked right, did it?)

Hitchcock was always calling Psycho a comedy -- which it only was "around the edges" -- but Jaws REALLY pushes for comedy within the shocks. The whole sequence where a bunch of idiot "shark hunters" take to the sea in their motley bunch of boats, crashing into each other -- that's all meant for laughs, with the one professional seaman mumbling about how "these people are all gonna be rueing the day their mothers met their fathers when" ...I can't remember the rest of his line, but I remember that STARTER part. And I'll bet he didn't say "rueing." Because spell check says I'm wrong.

There's also that bit where Hooper is on a dock saying something scientific and a rather dopey guy says

"A WHAAAA-TT?"

And of course the very elderly man with his shirt off at the beach when the Kintner boy gets killed, of whom Scheider famously says "That's a bad hat, Harry." (Which became the name of some current hot shot's movie company: bad hat Harry.)

The elderly man has "sagging man boobs" which got continual laughs. It was easy for me to laugh at that when I was a young, fit fellow....the passing years have brought Harry's man boobs closer to reality. Yikes!