MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Psycho and "Grand Guignol"

Psycho and "Grand Guignol"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
11 replies | jump to latest

This thought came from a discussion on another board:

I'm reminded that once bloody slasher movies started to catch on -- not in the 70's with Halloween but in the 60's with Psycho, Strait-Jacket, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and the like -- it seemed like every reviewer used the phrase "Grand Guignol" to describe those movies. These were the upscale critics who worked for Time and Newsweek and the like.

In the 60's, these critics used the term so often to describe slasher films that I came to equate the term "Grand Guignol" with "bloody slasher movie." Some research indicates that the Grand Guignol was actually a theatrical tradition dating back to 1897 , in France -- staged performances with blood and violence. Evidently, the phrase came back into fashion once Psycho and the slashers(and the head choppers like Strait-Jacket and Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte) of the 60's came in.

I can't say that I've seen a movie equated by a critic with "Grand Guignol" in decades. I would suppose that so many movies became so increasingly, wall-to-wall violent in so many genres(Western , gangster film, war movie) after Psycho that there was no longer a point to equate them with a blood-soaked French tradition of the late 19th Century in France.

Still -- for this post only -- a toast to Psycho as "the start of the Grand Guignol wave of the sixties."

reply

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I can't say that I've seen a movie equated by a critic with "Grand Guignol" in decades.

The last time GG was used a lot was in the 2000s when there were a lot of very extreme horror films. In the US there was the 'torture porn' genre typified by Eli Roth's Hostel and Hostel 2 and also in a slightly more palatable form by Saw. Most think pieces about this horror sub-genre referenced GG. In Japan there was extreme stuff typified by Takeshi Miike's Audition and Ichii the Killer. GG didn't come up as frequently in discussions of this IIRC presumably reflecting these films more complicated aims I'd say but it was still there occasionally. In Europe there was a whole raft of stuff from France, "the new French Extremity" of Inside, Martyrs, High Tension, Frontieres, etc., and stuff like "A Serbian Film" from the rest. GG came up a *lot* in discussions of these films. Still, one does have to wonder whether name-dropping GG added much to any of these discussions.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

GG came up a *lot* in discussions of these films. Still, one does have to wonder whether name-dropping GG added much to any of these discussion

---

Proof here that my acquaintance with Grand Guignol as a movie critic term seems to have died for me, once I abandoned(for the most part) going to -- or evidently even reading about -- the modern slasher/slaughter films. Good to know that a new generation of critics have adopted it-- the actual practitioners of the Grand Guignol theater probably had no idea that they would influence decades upon decades of horror movies.

Another critic -- can't remember his name right now -- branded Psycho -- "Hitchcock's EC Horror Comics movie." Fair enough. Those eventually verboten 1950's comics were, in the main, far more bloody and horrifying than anything in Psycho -- but, Mama Bates in the fruit cellar isn't too far removed from the Cryptkeeper and the two bloody murders were well in the EC tradition.

Thinking it over, my readings (as a younger youth) on Psycho taught me a few words and phrases I wasn't familiar with:

Grand Guignol
EC Horror Comics
Black Comedy(TV Guide cited an unknown critic as calling Psycho "the blackest of Black Comedies" and I wondered: Psycho is a comedy? (Even then.) Until someone explained the term to me.

And this word, in yet another TV guide summary(not the official TV Guide -- a local newspaper TV guide):

"Alfred Hitchcock's tale of grisly murders at an isolated backwater motel."

Grisly murders. Grisly. I knew from Grizzly bears. I knew from grisly meat...but grisly murders?:

The definition: "Causing horror or disgust."

Fair enough -- in the watching. This was THAT TV Guide's clue that the Psycho murders were not your usual, sedate Agatha Christie-type murders.

CONT

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

CONT

Oh, and also "Kraft-Ebbing"(from Bosley Crowther's NYT review):

From wiki: Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebbing(and that's only HALF of his real name) was an Austrio-German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work "Psychopathia Sexualis"(1886.)

So as you can see, Psycho was very educational and mind expanding as I learned a whole new vocabulary.

Thank you, Hitch!

reply

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

That phrase was replaced with "frisson", I guess.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

That phrase was replaced with "frisson", I guess.

--

HA! I like that....

reply

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Plus ça change, mon ami.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Heh

reply

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

I think Psycho II felt the need to go the Grand Guignol route and suffered for it (reputation-wise) since then. Here's a bit of that Psycho II GG for you: https://youtu.be/rtSEpgmex54?t=120 . This more closely resembles the last act of Hamlet.

P.S. SPOILERS in the above link for anyone who hasn't seen Psycho II yet.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I think Psycho II felt the need to go the Grand Guignol route and suffered for it (reputation-wise) since then. Here's a bit of that Psycho II GG for you: https://youtu.be/rtSEpgmex54?t=120 .

---

SPOILERS for Psycho II:

Some irony here. I had just answered a post ("Psycho and the Frisson") and discussed this very same sequence(and the specific bit with the hands grabbing the knife there.

To look at the full sequence here I am reminded -- sadly to my own mind-- what a ridiculous travesty Psycho II made of the elements and style and narrative soundness of the original.

This material is simply ridiculous. Anthony Perkins performance is terrible...but then he has to just stand there "stalling for narrative time" for much of the sequence, before babbling away during the rest. The "murder" is ridiculous, start to finish(Loggia fell JUST where he had to , to drive the knife home?)

The scene "plays off" the earlier, truly Grand Guignol scene in Psycho II , in which Vera Miles as "Lila Crane Loomis" gets a big butcher knife right through the mouth and out the back of the head("with appropriate orthodontic noises" wrote one angry critic.)

Though I give Psycho II narrative points for having Lila die in exactly the same fruit cellar where she escaped death 23 years before -- the actual nature of her murder was so "un-Hitchcockian" as to make one angry.

Always remember this: nobody tried to make Psycho II until Hitchcock was dead and thus could not comment on this travesty.

Quentin Tarantino likes Psycho II better than Psycho, and I can see why -- a little bit. Psycho is a groundbreaking shocker, but still caught up in the narrative norms of Hays Code cinema. Its probably a little dull for QT's taste, and it is really "before his time". Meanwhile, Psycho II brings on both the ultragore and craziness of the B-movies that QT grew up on.

Still: he was wrong. Psycho II is awful.

--

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

(Psycho II) more closely resembles the last act of Hamlet.

--

Ha. Well -- if you say so. I haven't seen Hamlet in awhile...but I guess it certainly went nuts with the characters killing each other off at the end as I recall.

True story: I went to see a community theater version of Hamlet not too many years ago. A long time male friend was in it, as ..I dunno...the Uncle who gets killed at a certain mid-way point. They restaged this with guns, so he got "shot." Then he fell dead onto the floor -- and had to REMAIN dead as the other actors acted around him(Hamlet fans, you must know this scene). Eventually , they dragged his body across the floor and offstage.

We mingled with the cast after the play and I told my friend, "every night for two weeks, plus matinees, you have to fall down, lie still on the floor dead for minutes until somebody drags you out?"

"Yeah."

"That's ACTING."

reply

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

"(Psycho II) more closely resembles the last act of Hamlet."
Reminds me of Blazing Saddles:

Sheriff Black Bart: "Well, can't you see this is the last act of a desperate man?"
Howard Johnson: "We don't care if it's the first act of 'Henry V'. We're leaving!"

reply