MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > A Hitchcock/Psycho Slot Machine

A Hitchcock/Psycho Slot Machine

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
7 replies | jump to latest

In one of the recent threads around here, poster "MizhuB" made the great point that a lot of young folks today have no idea who Alfred Hitchcock was, MizhuB offered good evidence based on a considerable number of people saying that. Evidently, only Psycho got any recognition at all , and I will guess that's because between the recent Bates Motel series, the remake and the sequels, etc...its never really gone away. But it didn't sound like these people made the connection BETWEEN Psycho and its once-famous maker.

This discussion weighed on my mind this week when I found myself in a casino (just passing through.) As I walked past the various slot machines that had TV shows and movies as their themes(Sex in the City and the GENE WILDER Willy Wonka for instance), I came to a halt when I saw this one:

An Alfred Hitchcock slot machine. It seemed to be called "ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS" and the main screen had those credit titles and multiple photos of Hitchcock in his hosting duties. But soon those images faded away and onto the screen floated the image from that God's eye view of the seagulls descending upon Bodega Bay, and the clashing words: "A FRENZY of free spins on THE BIRDS board."

I drew closer. An old woman(appropriate) was playing the machine and on a spin several small screens with the PSYCHO logo (the greatest logo in screen history) lined up. In a row!
PSYCHO. PSYCHO. PSYCHO. There was a ringing bell and a butcher knife appeared on the screen with some sort of "WINNER" word. I don't think the woman won a big jackpot. She just won that spin.

I could see that other spin screen had the VERTIGO poster art(Jimmy chasing Kim into a spiral.) And The Birds logo(its rather fanciful as opposed to the slashing PSYCHO logo -- almost Disney-esque.) I didn't see a FRENZY spin screen, but I didn't linger too long. By my count, the slot machine was using Psycho, Vertigo, and The Birds in the main (I'm guessing that Universal owns this machine and hence: no MGM/Warners North by Northwest.) With a Frenzy reference. And a BIG amount of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" footage(which Universal owns, too.)

In my moments watching this Alfred Hitchcock slot machine, I considered: but we've been discussing that nobody knows who he is anymore. Or remembers his movies. What's the point of this machine?

And then it hit me: Looking around, I saw that most of the people using these slot machines were...elderly. And more elderly than me in most cases(though I dunno, maybe I look elderly to other people.) Anyway...aha...THESE people WOULD remember Alfred Hitchcock, his TV series, his biggest and "most recent"(ha) hits.

But there was also this: for some reason, this slot machine with all of its floating and spinning images of Hitch(usually chosen or modified to make him look his most mature and borderline handsome), and his movie titles(and the Bates House at one point of course)...filled me with a certain nostalgic pleasure. Yeah, this guy WAS big at one time, truly a star and one who influenced everybody from mere fans like me to directors like DePalma and Scorsese and Spielberg(and, grudgingly on his part, QT.) It also struck me as a "cool" slot machine, classy.

I wonder how long it will be in circulation. There's probably only one generation left who really remember Hitchcock and really treasured his films.

Anyway, a fun surprise for a Hitchcock/Psycho buff...

[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

No one made any connection between PSYCHO and Hitchcock at all. Well, only those of us who were over 50 and mentioned some of his other films.

It was only when I mentioned PSYCHO that one girl (25 or 26) said she'd seen it. I asked her if it was the remake and she was stumped. I asked, 'Was it in black and white, or color?'

She answered, 'In color. I don't watch old movies. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a black and white movie.'

The under-30s had also never heard of the sequels. I assume they never heard of the Bates Motel series. Which, honestly, I've never seen either.

I would've been all over that slot machine. I would have liked it to be a question and answer thing. I'm sure I would have aced it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

No one made any connection between PSYCHO and Hitchcock at all. Well, only those of us who were over 50 and mentioned some of his other films.

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Well, its a phenomenon of age and time, isn't it? 60 years is a long time ago when one talks human lifespans. Many people who saw Psycho first run at the age of, say, 30...are now mostly dead.

And in certain ways, Psycho was "the end of Hitchcock's real career." The Birds perhaps edges in as a work of mass popularity, but things were wrong with it that reflected Hitchcock's inability to top Psycho and the impact of creeping age (on his part) and a changing audience(then, the fans of A Hard Days Night and Goldfinger -- today, well we are generations removed from Psycho.)

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It was only when I mentioned PSYCHO that one girl (25 or 26) said she'd seen it. I asked her if it was the remake and she was stumped. I asked, 'Was it in black and white, or color?'

She answered, 'In color. I don't watch old movies. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a black and white movie.'

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One of the reasons Gus Van Sant got his greenlight to remake Psycho is that he made it in color. "Van Sant Psycho" Producer Brian Grazer contended that a younger generation would never watch Hitchcock's version BECAUSE it was in black and white, so why not make a facsimile in color that would at least use Hitchcock's camera angles, cuts and supervised script by Joe Stefano?

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The under-30s had also never heard of the sequels. I assume they never heard of the Bates Motel series. Which, honestly, I've never seen either.

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That's OK. Well, I guess that blows my idea out of the water that Psycho has ANY cachet with a younger generation. And if Psycho doesn't -- I Confess can fuggit about it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Part of what I'm doing with my stay on this Psycho board is to keep alive the childhood vision of it as "forbidden work," "the most terrifying movie ever made"(which, among mainstream Hollywood studio productions with wide release at the time, it was); "the movie that TV dared not show"(CBS in 1966). The movie that took over Los Angeles, at least, in November of 1967 as a late night showing broke records and led to endless schoolyard chatter.

"My Psycho is not your Psycho"...and it certainly isn't the Psycho of the generations that follow.

One very weird, tactile memory of Psycho that I have was seeing that Hitchcock Tour Guide trailer in 1965(for the first re-release)..in a somewhat musty mini-Palace theater right next to the BEACH and the ocean. It renders the gray gloomy Psycho a "beach memory" ...and that's always been a potent memory for me. Psycho was like this tabloid-sick, creepy spidery thing....it didn't belong in the sunshine of a sunny beach day. (Jaws, later, DID.)

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I would've been all over that slot machine. I would have liked it to be a question and answer thing. I'm sure I would have aced it.

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I didn't get close enough or stay long enough to see how it actually worked. I think(as swanstep notes elsewhere) that there is little interactive about a slot machine. No Q and A. (But maybe I'm wrong -- a "slot machine expert" could tell me.) And very little gambling skill involved, if any.

Still, what impressed me was how much the "exterior' of the machine summoned back the "Age of Hitchocck" -- his TV series, his star persona(movies, TV, books, magazines, records) and key late films: Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo...I'll bet Rear Window was represented. And even Frenzy (which had a mini-life of its own in the 70's, sort of a way of keeping Hitchcock alive in the public eye a decade past his end.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

And since I just mentioned David Lynch, it's worth reporting here that this year's Honorary Oscars have been announced including one for Lynch (probably the most deserved and most avant garde directing nominee ever for Blue Velvet & Mull Drive) and one for Lina Wertmuller [director of sexy-artsy-political Italian films in the '70s like Swept Away - unwatchably remade in English, not by Wertmuller, with Madonna in the '90s/early '00s?! - Love&Anarchy and Seven Beauties (for which she got a directing Oscar nom - the first woman to get one I believe).... all pretty great in my view]. Consensus seems to be that her post-70s films aren't so interesting, but I haven't explored. Her Hon Oscar will force people to give that stuff another look, which is a good thing.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I've never taken a close look at a slot machine but they're not games of *skill* at all, right? Your knowledge of Hitchcock or your hand-eye co-ord. or... alike play *no* role in what happens, rather you just hit-a switch/pull-a-lever which initiates a supposedly identical chance process every time (just like rolling dice, tossing coins, spinning roulette wheels, etc.).

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That's all true to my mind, swanstep. I think the only real "skill" related to playing a slot machine is somehow figuring out how long to keep pulling that lever until ever-bigger jackpots are issued. Players refuse to "walk away" even for a bathroom break if they might lose their chance at the "big pull."

With this Hitchcock slot machine, I was "lucky" enough to see a bunch of PSYCHO logos line up in a row and pay off, with a butcher knife flashing on the screen. Maybe PSYCHO is the low-level "winning pull" one sees the most on that machine.

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Note that slot-machines played a large role in David Lynch's trippy, alternately endearing & infuriating, Twin Peaks continuation two years ago. Lynch just is prepared to do stuff like finish an episode with ten minutes of someone mopping a floor or have a beloved character play slots (and have no intelligible dialogue) for 3-4 episodes.

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Hah...you gotta hand it to that David Lynch. A true art film director.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And since I just mentioned David Lynch, it's worth reporting here that this year's Honorary Oscars have been announced including one for Lynch (probably the most deserved and most avant garde directing nominee ever for Blue Velvet & Mull Drive)

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As I note elsewhere, he is a true art film director -- pure. And yet he DID get nominations for Blue Velvet and Mullholland Drive, yes?

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and one for Lina Wertmuller

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I didn't know she was still alive!

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[director of sexy-artsy-political Italian films in the '70s like Swept Away - unwatchably remade in English, not by Wertmuller, with Madonna in the '90s/early '00s?! - Love&Anarchy and Seven Beauties (for which she got a directing Oscar nom - the first woman to get one I believe).... all pretty great in my view]. Consensus seems to be that her post-70s films aren't so interesting, but I haven't explored. Her Hon Oscar will force people to give that stuff another look, which is a good thing.

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In the 70's, I didn't see her films, but I was reading Pauline Kael and other critics back then, and living in LA, so I certainly knew who she was. Maybe I should add "see great foreign films" to "travel and read the great novels" to my Bucket List.

We're reminded yet again that even as the Oscars lose contemporary relevancy, they still manage to salute -- retrospectively -- the best in filmmaking.