Thoughts on the Psycho Movie Poster

Whenever "Psycho" is trending on Moviechat, its poster appears in a row of other posters of other movies that are trending at the same time.

And the Psycho poster just seems to leap right out above and beyond them all , to me.

Irony: its a very COLORFUL poster. The main color is dark blue, punctuated by bright yellow coloring of key elements:

Above all, The Greatest Logo in the History of Movies: PSYCHO, slashed horizontally across the whole word and vertically down the "C." THAT logo -- on the Los Angeles billboards and TV Guide ads for Psycho in 1967 when it premiered on LA TV -- conjured up terror and excitement for me that has never really left. (I always equate the slashes to the word to the slashes to Marion's body and Arbogast's face --- I do NOT see this, as some do, as representing Norman's "cracked" personality.)

Secondarily, Janet Leigh in that bra and halfslip. In 1960, the poster didn't have the House(incredible!) or the motel. It mainly had Janet Leigh "half naked" (for its time) and The Greatest Logo of All Time.

But wait, there's more: John Gavin shirtless gets a sizeable part of the poster...he's more prominent than Anthony Perkins. As with Janet, Psycho seems to be selling sex.

As I've noted before: various print newspapers of the 60's kept the shot of Janet Leigh in her bra...but airbrushed a tee-shirt onto John Gavin's torso. Perhaps he looked naked.

Vera Miles is not featured in the poster on the Moviechat page. I've looked at some 1960 newspaper ads, and SOMETIMES, Vera made the cut along with Janet, Tony , and John.

Martin Balsam, important to the movie as The Other Victim, was not important enough an actor to merit being placed on the poster with a photograph.

Though his name is on the poster. The poster famously made room for six names, done up in a "special way":

Alfred HITCHCOCK'S

PSYCHO

starring

Anthony PERKINS

Vera MILES

John GAVIN

co-starring Martin BALSAM and John McINTIRE

and

Janet LEIGH as "Marion Crane"

Important here: none of the actors gets to be above the title. (Recently, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, James Stewart, Kim Novak , Henry Fonda and -- Vera Miles(!) had over the title biling in Hitchocck films. But nobody gets it here. Neither Anthony Perkins nor Janet Leigh merited it. Only Hitchcock. Strange.

And Janet Leigh's billing was strange . "And Janet Leigh" -- a clue that she's not in the movie very long. "As Marion Crane," ....interesting, a character's name getting onto the poster when not being the title of the picture("Erin Brockovich.")

---

Also interesting: that choice of small letters for the first name, and ALL CAPS for the last name, was a decidedly fifties/early sixties affectation for movie posters:

Alfred HITCHCOCK'S

Anthony PERKINS

(smaller type) Martin BALSAM

Funny, we take this for granted now. But look at it, doesn't it seem a bit weird today?