Happy Halloween, 2020 - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Thanks, you too. Already watched Psycho a few days ago. Did Night of the Living Dead and Carpenter's Halloween the other night, working on the Dracula Hammer films today.

By the way, I was looking at some of Hitchcock's abandoned projects... this one sounds like it would have been a horror film of sorts:

The Blind Man (1960)
Following Psycho, Hitchcock re-united with Ernest Lehman for an original screenplay idea: A blind pianist, Jimmy Shearing (a role for James Stewart), regains his sight after receiving the eyes of a dead man. Watching a Wild West show at Disneyland with his family, Shearing would have visions of being shot and would come to realize that the dead man was in fact murdered and the image of the murderer is still imprinted on the retina of his eyes. The story would end with a chase around the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary. Walt Disney reputedly barred Hitchcock from shooting at Disneyland after seeing Psycho. Stewart left the project, Lehman argued with Hitchcock, and the script was never shot.

sounds more like a Dario Argento film, actually - or a Night Gallery episode... a bit on the daft and loopy side

Anyway, the death of Sean Connery kind of put a damper on things for me. May have to watch Marnie. I was thinking some of the films Connery did with Sidney Lumet might have made good Hitchcock movies (such as The Anderson Tapes, The Offence, and Murder on the Orient Express).

I saw a movie a while back from 1971 with Richard Attenborough and John Hurt directed by Richard Fleischer that might have made an interesting Hitchcock project: 10 Rillington Place https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066730/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Another Fleischer film from 1968, The Boston Strangler - starring Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda - might have been a good one for Hitchcock as well.

I really think Hitch made a misstep with the pair of espionage films he made in the late 60s. He was trying to get a James Bond vibe and missed pretty badly. People didn't want a realistic spy film at that point. Or if they did, it needed to be moody and stylish like The Ipcress File or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - and his spy flicks were just a bit too dull.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Thanks, you too. Already watched Psycho a few days ago. Did Night of the Living Dead and Carpenter's Halloween the other night, working on the Dracula Hammer films today.

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Those are all pretty "seminal." I will say that as a child of the 60's, while Psycho was the "horrifying terrifying thing you couldn't see" for much of that decade, the arrival of Night of the Living Dead (whose poster said "the scariest film since Psycho") in 1968 took that all up to 11 in playground discussions. I think that Roger Ebert(of all people) wrote an utterly horrified and disgusted essay on the film for Reader's Digest(complete with discussions of the cannibalism in the film) and that put me off seeing that movie for quite a few more years.

Carpenter's Halloween seemed to set off "the REAL slasher genre" in 1978(versus Psycho, there was not nearly so much plot and character development), even as Michael Myers strangles victims as well as slashing them.

I really must get more into Hammer. I recall in high school when scary films were being rented and shown to the kids as fundraisers, "Psycho" was forbidden, but Brides of Dracula made the cut, and boy were kids talking about THAT one, too. (A bit more breastal action was appreciated by the boys in the gang.)

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[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Or at least Night of the Living Dead!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

By the way, I was looking at some of Hitchcock's abandoned projects...

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Judge," which would have starred Audrey Hepburn, Laurence Harvey and John Williams and was being prepped for 1960 release. Hepburn quit it , and ...Hitchcock made Psycho instead(or at least SOONER.) Fate...

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this one sounds like it would have been a horror film of sorts:

The Blind Man (1960)
Following Psycho, Hitchcock re-united with Ernest Lehman for an original screenplay idea: A blind pianist, Jimmy Shearing (a role for James Stewart), regains his sight after receiving the eyes of a dead man. Watching a Wild West show at Disneyland with his family, Shearing would have visions of being shot and would come to realize that the dead man was in fact murdered and the image of the murderer is still imprinted on the retina of his eyes. The story would end with a chase
Quite an interesting list -- the Hitchcocks we never saw. A few of them had fully written scripts, notably "No Bail for the around the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary. Walt Disney reputedly barred Hitchcock from shooting at Disneyland after seeing Psycho. Stewart left the project, Lehman argued with Hitchcock, and the script was never shot.

sounds more like a Dario Argento film, actually - or a Night Gallery episode... a bit on the daft and loopy side

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Hitchcock was aware , in the late fifties/early sixties, of both horror movies(which begat Psycho) and the fantasy of The Twilight Zone(which begat The Birds) . I expect that The Blind Man(dangerously, an original treatment idea that never reached script stage) was meant to be "fantastic" and along those lines. A Hitchcockian chase through Disneyland is one of the great movie sequences we never got, but Uncle Walt thought Psycho was disgusting and ...no go. (You CAN see Disneyland circa 1962 for a comedy chase through there in the Tony Curtis vehicle "Forty Pounds of Trouble" -- and it is really quite a modest park back then.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

or a Night Gallery episode
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Well, the basic idea BECAME a Night Gallery episode, or more famously, one of the stories told in the "pilot TV movie," in a segment starring Joan Crawford and directed by a young kid named Spielberg(as approved -- at first reluctantly -- BY Crawford.)

Crawford was a fairly evil blind woman who paid a poor man big money(but not THAT big) to give up his eyes and his sight forever just so she could see for 24 HOURS. The twist was predictable, but satisfying. And not, these weren't killer's eyes, so that part was dropped.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I saw a movie a while back from 1971 with Richard Attenborough and John Hurt directed by Richard Fleischer that might have made an interesting Hitchcock project: 10 Rillington Place https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066730/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

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Yes...that was about the true "John Christie case," upon which the fictional Frenzy was somewhat based, too. (I think Christie is even named by those pub crawlers in Frenzy.) 10 Rillington Place was perhaps more grim and gray and realistic than Frenzy(it lacked both the humor and the style of the Hitchcock film), but I understand that both Hitchocck and his Frenzy screenwriter Anthony Shaffer watched 10 Rillington Place to prepare Frenzy. Note that Hitchcock's fictional psycho Bob Rusk is a much more handsome, outgoing and stylish man than Attenborough's bald plain cipher of a man as Christie.

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Another Fleischer film from 1968, The Boston Strangler - starring Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda - might have been a good one for Hitchcock as well.

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Well, though that was also based on a true story -- you could have named Frenzy "The London Strangler," yes?

As it turns out, Hitchcock WAS offered The Boston Strangler as a project but turned it down.

Indeed, along with the list of movies Hitchcock prepared but never made is an interesting list of movies Hitchcock was OFFERED(by outside producers) and decided not to make "for hire." These include "Cape Fear"(1962), "Wait Until Dark"(1967), The Boston Strangler(1968) and...Earthquake!(1975-- yes, Hitch could have made a disaster movie.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I really think Hitch made a misstep with the pair of espionage films he made in the late 60s. He was trying to get a James Bond vibe and missed pretty badly. People didn't want a realistic spy film at that point. Or if they did, it needed to be moody and stylish like The Ipcress File or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - and his spy flicks were just a bit too dull.

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Absolutely. Hitchcock got caught between the "rock" of the Bond films and "the hard place" of the realistic Le Carre stuff. Torn Curtain TRIED to be realistic, but wasn't, and did NOT try to be an action spectacle like North by Northwest and paid the price. Hitchcock gave an interview at the time saying that all the spy chase movies had made North by Northwest "now a cliché" and he wanted to return to something "episodic" like The 39 Steps with Torn Curtain. I like the film for what it is (the gruesome Gromek murder rather defines the whole film) but...it failed.

And it failed with the very biggest of stars. So Hitchcock had to make Topaz with a nobody in the lead, and some "noted international character actors" (Piccoli, Noiret) who just weren't well served by the material. Roscoe Lee Browne was good, at least.

During this time, Hitchcock TRIED to make another "Psycho"("The First Frenzy") AND a movie about Italian thieves in a NYC hotel("RRRR") AND a ghost story romance("Mary Rose") but Universal kept saying NO. They wanted "glamorous spy movies" and Hitchcock really couldn't deliver another NXNW(not at Universal, at least.)

So these movies were not entirely his fault, and his London-based Frenzy rather saved him from ruin.

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[–] janelsenor (2044) 4 years ago

Watched Psycho II

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