What If?

What if:

Sam agreed, right there in the hotel room at the beginning, to marry Marion? (He might even say, "suddenly that back room SEEMS big enough for the two of us."

What if:

The millionaire Cassidy arrived at Lowery's real estate office with the $40,000 to buy his daughter a house -- but the money was in the form of a cashier's check made out to the seller?

But What if:

Sam didn't agree to marry Marion; Cassidy still brought the 40 grand in cash but ..what if Marion still stole the money, but...never drove off the main road...and drove straight to Fairvale with the money, and met Sam, who convinced her to get it back to the bank Monday morning.

What if:

The door to Cabin One had a deadbolt and chain and what if Marion secured the door to Cabin One by locking the deadbolt and putting on the chain.

But what if:

Marion got killed in the shower, after all and Norman sank her car in the swamp and the car stopped halfway down -- and STAYED THERE -- exposed to anyone who might come by the swamp(and who would that be?)

What if:

Arbogast DID "drive right past" the Bates Motel(in the movie he tells Norman "I almost drove right past) and never went there in the first place?

But what if:

Arbogast DID find the Bates Motel, DID talk to Norman , WAS thrown off the property by Norman and...drove back to Sam and Lila instead to report in, then went to his hotel for the night, and came back the next day with Sam, Lila, and Sheriff Chambers.

But what if:

Arbogast DID go back to the Bates Motel on his own, and DID climb the stairs -- but had a handgun pulled , pointed and ready to shoot?

But what if:

Arbogast still got killed, and Sam and Lila checked with the sheriff the next day at church and agreed to "put this in the lap of the law" by having dinner with the sheriff and his wife that night...SKIPPING a side trip out to the Bates Motel?

But what if:

Sam and Lila DID go to the Bates Motel, and Lila did go in the house, but when Norman ran up the hill and up the stairs...Lila just ran out of the house, waked Sam up and got the hell out of there?

And what if:

Norman was captured, and put in a cell and the Police Chief said: "We don't know what's going on here. We are going to transfer Bates to the state courthouse and have a psychiatrist interview him next week. You folks go on home for now.

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This little exercise is meant to illustrate how the plotting of Psycho is very good indeed, but also how the film relies on a very strong theme: the "cumulative impact" of wrong decisions, wrong choices, and literal wrong turns in the road that, on the one hand, get two people horribly killed but which, on the other hand, lead to the capture of their killer.

Life is like that: choices and decision and turns...and how they turn out.

Its another reason that Psycho is such a great, great movie.