MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > "My Psycho is Not Your Psycho" PART ONE

"My Psycho is Not Your Psycho" PART ONE

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
42 replies | jump to latest

OK. I have attempted in this year to put a few "anchor" posts into the Psycho board to attempt to leave behind here a small legacy about what this movie has ended up being "about." My intent is to post these posts only once -- and not return to them. Nor to return much to this board (I haven't, if you've looked lately -- though it remains more age-appropriate and "safe" than other boards where younger folks flame.)

One of my "anchor posts" was about "the big lie" -- that Hitchcock wanted to surprise people with the shower murder. Wrong -- he made a 1960 trailer for Psycho that essentially had him saying "come see my new movie about a shower murder."

Another of the "anchor posts" was to take on the infamous "psychiatrist scene," so hated by many, so loved by a few(including me.)

Comes now the most personal of posts...but i actually offer it to leave behind -- for somebody , somewhere - an actual oral history of how movies were (once upon a time) made, released, re-released and shown on TV -- long before cable, VHS, DVDs or streaming existed.

But its also meant to suggest that --for anyone I suppose -- there's that one movie that means something in a certain way that no movie ever will again because...you grow up, you can't go back, etc.

My Psycho is not your Psycho.

A confrontation: I read posts on these boards from people who were (often) "kids in the 80s." Maybe that's the "dead center age" of posters around here. Some were kids in the 90's. I suppose the youngest set were kids in the 00s.

But I was a kid in the 1960s and the key confrontation with Psycho is this: it is a movie from my childhood. And when I view it here, I am often STILL seeing it through a child's eyes -- granted a child of an older, pre-teen age eventually, but still...a child.

But the magic of Psycho is this: perhaps it was a movie pitched TO children(or at least teenagers) in 1960 (no, really -- kids snuck in and teenagers flocked to it) but as one grows up, Psycho grows up with you. Its themes and psychological explorations are VERY adult even if the movie -- surprise! -- isn't.

The story of Psycho thorugh a child's eyes in 1960 is also the story of how one particular movie went from being "the sickest movie ever made" (Ernest Callenbach) or "the most terrifying movie ever made"(Robin Wood) to...being pretty much PG material.

My Psycho is not Your Psycho is also...how could it not be? ...a view into my once precocious mind as a young Hitchcock fan. I became a young Hitchcock fan for several quite identifiable reasons:

He was "all around" my childhood. A TV show where he was the host. Short story books for adults ("Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV") and for children("Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful.") The Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. A hipper 60's version of the Hardy Boys called "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators."

But it was in the years 1966, 1967, and 1968 that the Hitchocck jones hit hard. He put only one movie out in THEATERS during that time -- 1966 Torn Curtain. But on network TV, all his biggest work of the 50s hit: Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest...plus his two early 60's hits: The Birds(scoring the highest ratings to date on network TV to that time) and...Psycho.

About which... now I can begin.

March 16, 1965: I looked this up later on microfiche, but that is the day that Psycho -- a 1960 Paramount release filmed on Universal's backlot and soundstages -- was re-released to theaters. That is the day that Psycho came into my life -- at a single digit age. I lived in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Times(I later learned) had more movie ads in its pages than any paper other than the New York Times. I liked movie ads -- they pushed "the new" -- and for a young kid, that's where you could often see a monster movie advertised, or a horror movie, or a movie with a sexy woman not wearing very much.

On that March day, I opened up the movie ads and saw the Psycho re-release ad, and it truly mystified me. I couldn't pronounce the title (PUH-SY- CHOW?) I think I kinda sorta recognized Hitchcock in the ad...but what really grabbed my attention was this: "Psycho is back, with its blonde, its blood and its shower bath scene."

I recall the word "shower bath" seeming oddly specific. Not just a shower? A shower BATH? And I pictured blood. And I put two and two together.

Now it was out to the neighborhood to mix with other kids and their parents and sure enough, Psycho was being talked about. It was so SCARY. It was so BLOODY. It was so HORRIFIC.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I got the gist. It happened at a motel. I much disliked rural motels and I had to stay at them a lot with my family on vacations. So "the shower bath" and the isolated motel immediate stuck and scared me...in my mind. And then I found out about the "creepy old house." And this: in my mind, these were a REAL motel (somewhere on a distant highway, not on a backlot) and a REAL house. Child development was still going on, I could not quite get a "fake" fix on Psycho -- there was something real about its terrifying nature in my mind.

In retrospect, it was the words of someone's older brother that set my path on "being scared of Psycho." He said there was a part where the killer cut off the woman's head in the shower and then stuffed the headless corpse in a hamper along WITH the head.

Now, this may sound bad enough right here...but to a single digit kid, it was the worst. And here's the thing: some years later, I read Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of Psycho and -- indeed, that's EXACTLY what happened. The killer(Mother) DID chop off Marion's (Mary's) head and DID stuff the headline corpse in a hamper and DID plop the head on top before stuffing the hamper down. But that doesn't happen in the movie...I had the WRONG(worse) version of the Psycho shower scene planted in my young mind from the get go.

Note in passing: Bloch's novel turns the beheading into a chapter ending one-liner:

"It was the knife that, in a moment, cut off Mary's scream."
"And her head."

Some critics wrongly thought that "novel Mother" ONLY beheaded Mary(Marion) but no: later in the book, Norman contemplates the woman's body as slashed to pieces. The beheading was likely a "coup de grace" and it is begged -- could that knife just cut the head off in one quick slice -- or was more work involved?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Horrible thoughts ...about a scene Hitchcock would never DREAM to try to film in 1960, or likely thereafter. And yet, STILL, HIS version of that shower murder(no beheading) would make movie history as quite bad enough on its own, thank you.

As I gathered input from kids and parents in the neighborhood, I finally came back to the knowledgeable source of ..my OWN mother ...to give me her take on Psycho. She was a buff of both mystery books and mystery movies and she rather grudgingly told me Psycho which proved -- way back there in 1965 -- easy to tell. The girl. The theft. The shower murder. The detective -- of whom, my mother said "Well, he goes up to the house and...well, you just never see HIM again." The fruit cellar. The twist.

So on top of Psycho entering my consciousness through movie ads, kids, and parents...I got the whole plot in a few minutes.

I got the whole story...from my mother.

And thus, the twist was only withheld from me for a few minutes, and "Anthony Perkins" or "Tony Perkins" entered my consciousness immediately as somebody creepy, horrible, and sick. I never got to experience the "nice" Tony Perkins of Friendly Persuasion, The Matchmaker, or Tall Story.

And there was no way the parents were going to take us to the March 1965 re-release of Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

SUMMER, 1965

Psycho's March 1965 re-release had ended, but it wasn't gone entirely. I spent much of the summer at the beach, and when not at the beach, there was a nice movie theater to visit.. not just for Disney movies, but to see things like Thunderball(which is SET near the beach.)

One afternoon I was at that theater and it was intermission between movies. And a trailer came up for a thriller called "Mirage" with Gregory Peck. This was a second run theater, I had actually seen Mirage with a parent earlier in 1965. THAT thriller had been allowed me, but actually its quite tense and nightmarish and some innocent people get killed(but not in a gory manner.) I HAD been disturbed enough by Mirage; perhaps I saw that too soon too(with Charade on the double bill.)

Anyway, the Mirage trailer ended and a second trailer came on the screen for a second black and white movie.

It was Psycho. Hitchocck standing in front of the Bates Motel and then walking towards the house. A panic filled me. THIS was the movie with the shower stabbing and the beheading and the hamper. I turned to my young relative and said "let's get out of here. To the lobby!" We still had a second feature to watch, so we couldn't leave the theater.

I made a mistake. I didn't know how LONG the Psycho trailer was, so I walked us back into the theater just in time to see Hitchcock raise a toilet lid ("A clue was found...down there....') which was unsettling enough, but then the screaming lady in the shower. Chills and hairs raised. The trailer ended.

And I didn't return to that theater to see Mirage and Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

SUMMER 1966

A year passed. Another summer -- the beach again. And one morning watching the usual game shows, a commercial came on for "The CBS Thursday and Friday Night Movie" -- coming in the fall!

There was no cable in 1966, nor VHS. Old movies and B movies played on local channels -- but the "big" movies played on one of the networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS. And folks really WANTED to see those big movies when they hit the big networks in the fall and rest of the TV season.

During the summer, each network would run commericals with 'the biggest movies coming" in the fall. Often only two were chosen to preview.

And on that summer morning of 1966 on the commercial, the CBS Thursday and Friday Night movie commercial featured clips from two movies: The Music Man(1962) that sassy, fun musical with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones and -- Psycho! The image switched from Preston strutting and dancing away with his band in Technicolor to -- the shower scene. I remember the shot vividly: it was that first low angle shot of Mother's first stab towards Marion. Again, a chill up the spine and hairs on end. And more: a quick view of that "famous" grotty and darkened shower . I could IMAGINE that shower being in a lonely isolated motel like so many I'd been in as a travelling child.

Like many, I have a pretty good memory for childhood events and as I recall -- they NEVER showed that clip from the shower scene again for the CBS movie commercials. The Music Man clip stayed the same -- but Psycho got a shot of Norman's eye at the peephole. No more shower scene clips. Somebody must have complained about showing it in the morning.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Irony: also during that summer of 1966, I saw Hitchcock's Torn Curtain. I still didn't quite know his responsibility for the movie, and I didn't consider it a bad movie. What WAS memorable was this: the long , slow and sometimes bloody killing of the enemy spy Gromek by star Paul Newman(helped by a "farmer's wife" who was really a spy.) In Torn Curtain, the knife IS shown puncturing flesh (and the blade breaks off in the chest of the victim.) Gromek's death is long, slow, brutal and lingering.

And I got to see it. Which would make things ironic when Psycho was later forbidden to me.
But then I figure my parents thought Torn Curtain was a spy movie, not a horror movie.

SEPTEMBER OF 1966

The "new Tv season" (1966-1967) had arrived. Psycho was announced for a Friday night in September on the CBS Friday Night movie...

CONT

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 2 years ago

Awesome lookback at your youth. It's always so cool to me that a movie like Psycho could so thoroughly affect people. I envy that experience.

I chuckled at your comment about Perkins-- he's most famous for Psycho now. In 1960, it was perverse seeing an actor with a boy next door image playing such a scary guy, but now it's perverse watching him in Friendly Persuasion or Fear Strikes Out, because Norman lingers so in the memory.

It's funny how a movie's reputation can change over time like that. Psycho was once considered depraved and horrific, and now it's grimy reputation has been sanitized by the "classic" label and the shocks are dulled by our familiarity with those iconic scenes.

And yet I still find Psycho far more engrossing and affecting than so many horror movies that followed in its wake. Just the other day, I was home alone and showering-- and I suddenly got quite nervous in the shower, thinking of that movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Awesome lookback at your youth. It's always so cool to me that a movie like Psycho could so thoroughly affect people. I envy that experience.

--

I'm going to try to play it out here in a short number of posts, spaced out so as not to overrun. (I did this with a collection of 1960 Psycho reviews.)

I've said some of it before. I don't intend to say ever again after and -- I'm going to add some things I've never said. I think they all tell the story of a different time and place and if I sacrifice a little privacy from my youth...its in a good cause.

This irony remains: I was around in 1960, but so young then I don't remember Psycho's initial release or lines around the block. It all begins with the re-release in 1965 -- and the "re-release" is pretty much gone from movie distribution. Movies went to VHS, then DVD, now streaming. THAT said, I do notice that varous US multiplex chains show "an old movie" each month on the big screen. I've seen Psycho that way as recently as 2020. I was at the Cineplex this weekend and the "old movie" coming is The Fifth Element with Bruce Willis.

Here's something I have NEVER said before. Given how Psycho comes up in my mind thanks to this board, its only recently that I realized this: I was around on this earth BEFORE Psycho was made and released; I have a few "little bitty" memories from 1958 and 1959 (Xmas mornings, a bad tricycle accident) and memories of records of The King and I and Around the World in 80 Days being played in the house. Memory from one's childhood is often stronger than from a few years ago. So I "pre-date" Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I chuckled at your comment about Perkins-- he's most famous for Psycho now. In 1960, it was perverse seeing an actor with a boy next door image playing such a scary guy, but now it's perverse watching him in Friendly Persuasion or Fear Strikes Out, because Norman lingers so in the memory.

---

Its a weird effect, isn't it? Its hard to take Perkins seriously in those pre-Psycho roles because one sees and hears Norman Bates. Indeed, Hitchcock rather saved Perkins career because in those earlier movies, he's handsome and boyish but something is OFF..he's weird. Norman fit Perkins like a glove and allowed his handsome looks to be used in the correct manner.

Tall Story -- a college romance with Perkins and Jane Fonda -- came out in 1960 right ahead of Psycho, and except for a short "jock's buzzcut"(basketball), Perkins looks and sounds and moves so much like Norman that it is like Norman is playing the role. The movie ends with Perkins and Fonda married and...in a shower together. (In a trailer being hauled down a highway -- to Phoenix?_

----
CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

It's funny how a movie's reputation can change over time like that. Psycho was once considered depraved and horrific, and now it's grimy reputation has been sanitized by the "classic" label and the shocks are dulled by our familiarity with those iconic scenes.

---

All true. I saw Psycho a few years ago at a theater, and when Mother ran out at Arbogast the audience reaction was ...nothing. Not even a murmured "oh!"(which usually happened even when nobody screamed anymore.). Just...nothing. It was like all the power had finally been drained out of the movie.

But it will never be a movie that is totally "toothless" in my estimation. The shower scene is too long and detailed and brutal for that. And the concept of a naked, defenseless woman being stabbed to death in a shower will never be...a mild or acceptable thing to contemplate. (That the killer is, first, a terrifyingly too-strong old woman, and, later, found to be a young man in drag...remains terrifying too.)

---

And yet I still find Psycho far more engrossing and affecting than so many horror movies that followed in its wake.

--

That is the "magic" of the film, and it remains worth study to this day in somewhat fruitless attempts to figure out why that is so. One film scholar called it "perhaps the most perfectly made film of all time." It is so "compact" and tight, each scene runs the perfect amount of time(even the psychiatrist scene.)

--

Just the other day, I was home alone and showering-- and I suddenly got quite nervous in the shower, thinking of that movie.

--

I like the Arbogast murder(from the walk up the hill on) better but -- there can be no doubt. Its the shower murder that made history and rightfully stands as a famous movie scene. "Everybody takes a shower sometime." First Robert Bloch, then Alfred Hitchcock, committed that place ( a shower) to history as the scene of a horrific knife murder and....no one has ever been able to shake it , in a shower, since.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

A return to the timeline:

SEPTEMBER 1966

An issue of TV Guide first put out the word(with a print ad of Vera Miles screaming) that Psycho would be one of the first "CBS Friday Night Movies" of the 1966-1967 TV season. "At 9:00 pm...right after Hogan's Heroes."

TV Guide would take up half a page on a given night for a "Close Up" look at the night's biggest broadcast event, and it was Psycho. This is where the movie took greater shape in my mind. There was a photo -- made grainy --of Anthony Perkins in his gray jacket clutching himself; the words "Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho" and these paragraphs(from memory):

"In Alfred Hitchcock's shocker, called 'the blackest of black comedies' by one critic, withdrawn and nervous Norman Bates(Anthony Perkins) runs an isolated rundown motel down the hill from his Mother's aging American Gothic mansion. The Bates Motel doesn't get many customers, so the arrival of attractive Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) -- who has just stolen $40,000 -- prompts Norman to talk to her about his lonlieness and his aging, possessive mother.

The 1960 film was nominated for four Oscars, for Hitchcock, Janet Leigh, and Art Direction and Cinematography. Screenplay by Joseph Stefano. Music by Bernard Herrmann. (Cast.)

There was a lot of information in that "close up." (Which began with" 9:00 PM -- Movie -- Suspense.") It was here that I first conjured with the name "Norman Bates" and the concept (already scary to me) of The Bates Motel. I tried to picture an American Gothic mansion "up the hill" from the motel. I had to ask my parents what "a black comedy" is -- Psycho is a comedy? -- and I still don't know if I know. I pictured this Marion Crane as more of a crook than she really is, in the movie. With the movie called "a shocker," I was further scared by it.

It was very educational to learn that Psycho was from "1960." I honestly hadn't thought of when it came out before then. In 1966 at my age...1960 was a long time ago.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Most of all, I think, I was most stunned to read that Psycho had been "nominated for four Academy Awards." I was old enough to see the Academy Awards as a "prestige thing" for those serious movies I didn't much care to see -- Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, Exodus -- how the heck did this "most sick movie ever made" merit Oscar consideration? It was a very weird detail.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper ran a "close up" on the CBS Psycho showing that I also recall: "Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 tale of grisly murders at a rundown motel." MurderS? I wondered about that. At this time, I thought only the shower murder happened. I also had to look up the word "grisly" and also, that motel just seemed scarier all the time. (I would start having issues when our family WENT to motels.)

That Friday night I had a "fair" shot at watching Psycho on CBS. Since it started at nine on a Friday night, bedtime wasn't an issue. And I had my own TV in my own bedroom. So I cautiously turned on the set and awaited...destiny. Psycho.

And what came on was "the program previously announced for this time will not be shown." And a movie called Kings Go Forth (with Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood) came on.

"What happened?"

Newspaper articles the next day laid it out. CBS pulled Psycho because the teenage daughter of a US Senate candidate -- Charles Percy of Illinois -- had been stabbed to death at the family home. "Too close for comfort" evidently -- and Psycho got pulled. I don't believe they ever found the killer -- though Percy DID become a Senator.

Thus began (for me) the very weird and frustrating saga of Psycho as "forbidden fruit" -- to horrible for TV. At least network TV. And it disappeared and I had no idea when it would turn up again(back then, you were at the mercy of programmers to show these movies -- you never had much more than a week's notice.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

"Research after the fact" (newsapers and Variety) have demonstrated that there was a lot more going on than just the Percy killing to kill off the CBS broadcast.

It turns out that a number of "local city affiliates" were already refusing to show Psycho and were going to show local programming instead. I found a quote from the boss of KPIX TV -- San Francisco(home of Vertigo!) saying "we do not believe that Psycho is appropriate for showing to the general TV audience."

It also turns out that CBS showed "Psycho" via closed circuit TV -- as edited by CBS -- to ALL of its affiliates before the broadcast for exactly that purpose: would they all show the movie? No, as it turned out, not all of them (this, again BEFORE the Percy murder.)

It also turns out that the CBS version of Psycho had NINE MINUTES CUT OUT. Nine minutes. So even if CBS had shown Psycho...it would not have been Psycho. Parlor game: what 9 minutes were cut? The murdering part of the two murders is less than 3 minutes. But I will bet that both murders were trimmed. Less of the shower carnage; perhaps none of the attack on Arbogast. (Just show him go in the house and hear him scream.)

I will bet that most of the opening hotel room tryst was cut. In 1970, NBC cut ALL of the opening tryst between Paul Newman and JUlie Andrews in Torn Curtain(as it is suggested that they are having sex under blankets while talking.) You would have to keep some of the Sam/Marion dialogue -- maybe the part with their clothes on -- to establish the plot, but maybe all of it went and they figured it would get explained later when Arbogast first meets Sam and LIla ("Your girlfriend stole 40,000 dollars.")

I bet they cut a lot of Norman's clean-up of Marion's body. I bet they cut a lot of the psychiatrist scene(the transvestite material.)

And, said the articles, CBS was going to "turn down the sound" on the screeching violins."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

So: Psycho wasn't shown on CBS in 1966, but even if it WAS shown...it would not have REALLY been Psycho.

CBS made attempts to show Psycho at later dates (announced only to the press) but gave up. The network had paid something like $800,000 (the budget OF Psycho) for two showings. I wonder if they got the money back? Probably not. And a lot of that money went to Hitchcock.

This historic "non-showing" of Psycho by a network never repeated, to my memory. Something rather worse evolved once, in 1968, movies were made with M, R, and X, ratings, and cussing and nudity and sex became the norm.

Many of these post 1968 movies WERE shown on network TV - -but always "edited for content." Some of the first X rated movies like Secret Ceremony with Liz Taylor, Mia Farrow, and Robert Mitchum had "alternate scenes filmed" for TV versions. Cussing wasn't "bleeped" -- it just went silent.

The most bizarre editing of movies on TV was of violence. I saw a lot of these violent movies in the theaters, and it was downright weird how they were cut for TV. For instance, the NBC version of Torn Curtain cut down the killing of Gromek so much (no knife in his chest, no final suffocation in the gas oven) that you couldn't even tell HOW he died. Paul Newman and the farmer's wife just backed away and looked at the unseen body.

There was this weird "choppy" effect to any edited scenes of violence on the networks. In 1973, CBS showed a version of The Wild Bunch - -THE WILD BUNCH! -- with all the blood and bullet hits edited out. It is said that director Sam Peckinpah watched this broadcast and drank himself into a stupor. But then, he did that a lot.

Hitchcock's post Psycho movies got edits on TV. Torn Curtain lost the opening love/sex scene and most of Gromek's murder. In the key Frenzy rape-murder, the rape part became only a struggle and the scene ended on a freeze-frame of Brenda Blaney screaming "My God! The tie!") (The lingering strangulation was cut.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

With the Family Plot NBC broadcast (in 1977, barely a year after the film's 1976 release) they changed the cussing so that Bruce Dern's "For Christ's sake, Blanche!" became "For rice cakes, Blanche")

---

So perhaps Psycho's pulling by CBS ended up being a "once in a lifetime event." (Like Psycho itself.)
Had the movie been broadcast on network around 1970 or so, they would have likely shown that version with the 9 minutes cut out, and it would have been just like how Torn Curtain and Frenzy were butchered for TV -- why even SHOW those movies on TV, I always wondered? (for the bucks -- Frenzy sold to ABC for 2 million.)

In the years after Psycho wasn't shown on network, three Hitchcock films - Rear Window, Vertigo, and The Man Who Knew Too Much '56 -- were shown on ALL THREE networks in different years: NBC, CBS, and ABC. During those years, I kept my eyes out for a possible network broadcast of Psycho, but it never happened. Psycho was evidently consigned to "local syndication" for the 70s and 80;s.

In 1991, the Showtime CABLE network hired Janet Leigh to host a Saturday night double feature -- the "premiere" of the risible Psycho IV: The Beginning(which did not get theatrical distribution in the US) AND a showing of Psycho. Announced Janet Leigh: "tonight will be the first time that Psycho has ever been shown on network TV." Nice try Janet. Showtime cable wasn't really network TV.

But it mattered enough -- the history of the CBS cancellation of 1966 -- to make a point of that in 1991.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Before leaving 1966, a couple of points about the Psycho re-release of 1965:

ONE: I found an old Variety from 1965 and they modified the re-release ad to say this:

"Psycho is back...with its blonde, its blood, its shower bath..and all that BOX OFFICE!"

The ad -- for theater owners only -- also said "The shower bath scene occurs 47 minutes into Psycho." Why tell them that? Oh well, it is a historic time check today.

TWO: In the 1980s, a VHS documentary -- not DVD yet -- was issued called "Coming Soon." It was a collection of Universal horror movie trailers hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis. She appeared before the Psycho house and said "My mother had some trouble here." And they showed(for the first time on video) Hitchocck's 1960 tour guide trailer.

But they also showed the re-release trailers and the one for 1965 said:

"If you were too young, or too scared...or the lines were too long..here's your chance to see Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of adult horror...PSYCHO is back!")

That would never be a "sales issue" once VHS came along. Movies didn't "go away for a few years." You could ALWAYS rent them or buy them.

THREE: At least one of the 1965 re-release trailers airbrushed a knife into Anthony Perkins hand -- I guess they figured "the twist was known." Now Perkins would BE the psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

SUMMER 1967

Another year had passed since the "CBS Psycho shutdown of 1966." In my own young life, Psycho disappeared from thought; I had other things to do at that age with my life.

CBS ran summer commercials about "the big movies coming this fall on the CBS Thursday and Friday Night movie." Whereas in '66, "the big two" were The Music Man and Psycho, or 1967, the "big two" were ...Viva Las Vegas and North by Northwest. So you can see, Hitchcock was a big deal movie-wise on TV around this time. HIS movies got the spotlight all summer long for fall broadcast.

(Interesting : Viva Las Vegas was an Elvis movie, and one realizes that Elvis and Hitchcock were icons over much of the same years -- with Family Plot as Hitchcock's final film in 1976 and Elvis dying in 1977.)

North by Northwest aired on the CBS Friday Night movie in September of 1967. I was still a few years away from going on with friends to football on Friday nights; we all stayed home and watched NXNW as a family.

To his credit, my movie-savvy father sort of "taught me Hitchcock" through the movie. Cary Grant gets kidnapped while ordering a telegram? "You see that, that's Hitchcock." Grant facing the farmer across the road for an uncomfortable and funny few seconds? "You see that, that's Hitchcock."

I came out of that CBS broadcast convinced that North by Northwest was now my favorite movie of all time(edging out How the West Was Won, Its a Mad World and...yes...The Music Man.) I think the "combo package" of Hitchcock, Saul Bass credits, Herrmann's music, Cary Grant...and that Mount Rushmore climax. The greatest "get them!" chase in movie history.
The crop duster scene was certainly funny and exciting and stylish. And I very much liked the matte shot cliff driving of the early drunken drive. Just the whole thing.

I sort of forgot about ...Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But about a month later, in October, I was with my parents at a gas station near our Los Angeles area home. It was night. Dark. And I looked up at a billboard above the gas station and there it was:

A billboard promoting: KABC-TV 7 LOS ANGELES TELEVISION DEBUT ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S PSYCHO, SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18

The billboard merged these 3 elements: (1) The terrifying and stylish slashed logo PSYCHO(which had been on the cover of Robert Bloch's novel; Hitch paid as much for the logo as for the novel!) (2) A still of Anthony Perkins with one hand over his mouth in terror and his other hand held forward, fingers splayed and (3) the production photo of the house in mottled daylight; Anthony Perkins in sillouhete looking like Frankensteins monster in front of it(or, if you squinted his pant legs into a blur -- he looked like MOTHER!

If there is one main thing that equals "My Psycho Isn't Your Psycho" -- it is that billboard(which became a two page spread in TV Guide ahead of the broadcast.) Psycho as it was presented in that billboard was truly terrifying to me. The slashed logo(once across the whole word, and then down the C.) Perkins' eyes above his hand, and his splayed fingers in the other hand.

But most of all...the house. That was the first time I ever SAW the house. Isn't it interesting that for both the 1960 release and the 1965 re-release posters NEVER showed the house. The sequels(II,III, IV) rightfully put the house front and center. But not the original posters.

Seeing the house, I now "felt the horror" of Psycho -- it was clearly an isolated house in a rural location and I think I IMAGINED the motel next to it even as the billboard didn't have the motel in it. And I imagined that horrific shower murder in the motel. And neither the house nor the motel seemed to be on the Universal backlot..they were really "out there, somewhere" on rural highway.

CONT

====

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

That "Psycho" billboard was all over Los Angeles for a few weeks before the TV broadcast.
I recall filing out of a football game from the LA Coliseum --hundreds of people flowing under Norman and his outstretched hand, the billboard was on the street outside the stadium.

That was it really, about Psycho. The "Los Angeles only" promotion allowed big bucks for billboards and a full ad in TV Guide. Network movies like Rear Window(in '66 launching NBC Saturday Night at the Movies), NXNW, and even The Birds were small thumb nails, quarter page buys.

But Psycho was BIGGER than that. Sort of reflecting its blockbuster status. Sort of reflecting its forbidden status -- it was an event. A dark, ugly event.

Would it get shown in November or what?

As the broadcast date was only days away ...I recall two radio ads and one TV ad (local.)

Radio: A Boris Karloff imitator pushed Psycho as very scary and said..."Janet Leigh gets sent to the showers...and you'll never forget it."

Radio: Joseph Cotton (the psycho Uncle Charlie from Shadow of a Doubt) came on to intone: "Alfred Hitchcock tried to bury me alive once"(he was speaking of the TV episode Breakdown) And then HE talked about Psycho coming soon on TV.

My favorite was a quick KABC-TV TV ad -- no footage from the movie, not very long, just the billboard layout of Tony, the logo, and the house. The announcer said "This Saturday November 18 at 10:30 pm! SEE the movie that gave the nation nightmares! Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho!"

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I've always rather liked that phrase: "the movie that gave the nation nightmares." Given how much it was talked about everywhere I went...it sure FELT like that. Hitchcock himself said he felt that Psycho would scare people MORE "once they went home to their dark houses and their nighttimes" than seeing it. It was powerful, nation-wide stuff. I'd say that The Exorcist eventually played that role, but it was too sick to be seen by kids --

I'd say that Jaws was too much the blue sky adventure movie to play quite as "hauntingly scary" as Psycho to the nation. However, Jaws did mess with our beach swims...

===
Saturday night November 18 arrived. The family was home. Alas, the parents didn't go out that night. So...off to bed while they watched Psycho in the living room. (As it turned out, these two lifelong movie buffs had not seen Psycho on release -- they saw it as too sick and horrific to see.)

Sunday morning came. I asked for a report. My mother's is now famous to me and influential:

"The first half hour was the most boring movie I've ever seen. Everything after that was the most sick movie I've ever seen. And you cant see it until you are 18."

SPOILER: I got to see Psycho well before I was 18, but I honor my mother for at least TRYING to enforce against a movie. Alas -- she only whetted my appeitite to SEE it.

Her "critic's take" on the first half hour being boring is of some relevance, though. All that Marion Crane story and no horror in it.

BTW, my father's take was "well, I can certainly see why its a classic." So..some hope.

--

Monday at school came and Psycho took on its newest dimension for me.

The kids in my circle were split two ways: (1) Their parents DID let them watch Psycho or (2) their parents did NOT let them watch Psycho.

I recall about two to three days of "talks about Psycho" -- in the classroom, at lunch, on the running track. It was pretty powerful stuff.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I sought out(of course) kids who did see Psycho. I recall this conversation:

ME: So..did you get to see Psycho?
Other kid: Yes, I did. And I wish I DIDN'T. I couldn't sleep at all that night. It was so scary.
ME: So...tell me more.

Another kid was good for more detail, and gave me this historic information:

ME: So the shower murder is the only murder in it, right?
Him: NO. The DETECTIVE gets killed, too. And its WORSE than the shower murder.
ME: Really...tell me more.

(I realized that my mother had withheld the info on the detective's murder.)

The kid's description of the detective's murder embellished like kids do...or like his imagination did...."So he gets slashed in the FACE and blood pours all over his face from a gash down his head" and "then the WORST part is she jumps on him and stabs him over and over and you watch h I'm screaming."

All of this was "over-imaginative" but took Psycho to a whole new level: it scared me in my mind probably more powerfully than if I'd just seen the REAL movie, which is less violent than that.

And oh, various kids could describe the Arbogast murder i detail "(So there' a "birds eye view" of the mother running out at him; he tries to walk backwards down the stairs") but NOBODY could adequately describe the shower murder other than "she gets stabbed, man, like a 100 times!"

I was talking to one kid about Psycho at his home. His mother overheard us and she got upset, made the sign of the cross and said: "You must NEVER watch Psycho! Its about.....(pause) BAD PEOPLE."

Eventually, the "LA showing of Psycho in November of 1967" faded away as playground talk and I wondered: when would it come back? Would I ever get to see it?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

This is where Moviechat comes in.

I believe that the most recent DVD of Psycho has the "German version...Director's Cut" with the added seconds of censored footage(more of Marion's back and side breast as she takes off her bra; a longer take on the blood on Norman's hands; more stabs down on Arbogast.)

But here it the thing: the cover is a pretty good simulation of that 1967 KABC bill board. The logo(and "Alfred Hitchcock's"). Norman with his outstretched hand. The house and "Frankenstein Norman."

I daresay that somebody at Universal has read our discussions here -- found the old billboard/TV Guide ad in the LA Times archives -- and made the DVD cover out of it.

Now, they CHANGED it a bit -- the famous poster photo of Janet Leigh in her bra has been shoehorned into the 1967 billboard. But still...that's the billboard.

What a nice, macabre memory. My Psycho isn't your Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

https://moviechat.org/tt0054215/Psycho/623f5a4e45325b6bbb3fd65b/Psycho-and-the-KABC-Six-OClock-Movie

Above: To maintain a timeline, I've linked to the above.

Before Psycho was first shown on KABC 7 on Saturday night, November 18, 1967, one small clip was shown on the "6:00 KABC Movie" on Friday evening November 17.

It was the shower drainhole-into eyeball shot, and I saw it. So I had begun to "piece together" bits and pieces of Psycho with each passing year, working my way up to seeing the entire thing.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

JANUARY 1968

The 1967-1968 TV season had seen North by Northwest premiere nationally on CBS in September, and Psycho in Los Angeles in November. Came now the first half of 1968 and The Birds got an "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies" showing.

Interesting: this showing got little of the hype(nationally) that Psycho got locally. The "national" print ad in TV Guide took up just a fourth of one page; Psycho (local payout) got one entire page spashed across two pages. Psycho just SEEMED like a bigger deal -- in Los Angeles at least - with its billboards and radio commercials.

I do recall NBC s showing a commercial for The Birds that featured that great shot of the gulls floating over Bodega Bay and swooping down.

So 1967-1968 saw North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds come on in succession and..The Birds ended up getting the highest ratings of an NBC movie in history to that date. Hitchcock's CURRENT output may have been in decline, but the man OWNED that TV season. It is my belief that MY fandom created in that TV season extrapolated out to 1000s more young fans, some of whom would become "Hitchcock scholars," some of whom would become movie directors in the 70's.

Funny thing: unlike Psycho, The Birds just didn't generate much Monday talk on the playground. I just don't think any of us found it scary enough. In my case, I had SEEN The Birds first run (in 1963) and though my memories of it were vague, it didn't scare me except for one bit: the farmer with the pecked out eyes. But I had warning and closed my eyes and never saw that shot(series of shots) until years later.

The NBC "Birds" broadcast DID get one of those 'half page" "Close-Up" discussions in TV Guide as Psycho had in November. That raised The Birds in my estimation.

And then came a Big Surprise:

FEBRUARY 17, 1968

KABC-TV showed Psycho AGAIN, only three months after their November 1967 showing. Again on a Saturday night, but this time at 11:30 pm rather than 10:30 pm.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I learned some things in retrospect. KABC TV had bought "Psycho" for two showings. November and February were the two main "sweeps months" for Broadcast TV to get the best ratings to set commercial ad prices. So - back then -- Broadcast TV showed the biggest movies they had in November and February --whether on network or local. Funny: neither NXNW or The Birds merited a sweeps month airing in 1967-1968 -- though CBS would show NXNW a second(and final) time in November 1968(1968-1969 TV season.)

And this: when KABC showed Psycho in November, they started it at 10:30 (pre-empting the network feed) so as to get "prime time ratings credit."

But they moved it to 11:30 pm in February . Which proved to be bad for me.

Because I got to WATCH Psycho on that Saturday night in February 1968.

Well, some of it. If it had started at 10:30 I might have seen an hour of the movie, including the shower scene.

But with the 11:30 start, I got to see about a half hour of the movie.

The situation was simple. My parents had been home on Saturday night the first time Psycho showed, so "no go." But they were out for the evening on that February night, so I cautiously fired up my bedroom TV, patiently waited til 11:30 pm and...there it was...for me to watch as long as I could:

Psycho.

It was a long time ago, but I have a few very clear memories of that watching(which felt a bit more forbidden than usual -- WHEN would the parents return?)

I recall the opening moments of the "Saturday Night Movie" framework: A certain weird, quiet music (for late night) over some clips FROM Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I recall these four clips the most:

ONE: Mother slowly turning in her chair(cut before the full reveal.)

TWO: The door opening slowly at the top of the stairs. Interesting: they cut away before showing Arbogast, and this drove me nuts because I wondered: who PLAYED Arbogast. For some reason, I thought Martin Balsam played Marion's boss, so I was wondering, who was Arbogast?: John McIntire? Simon Oakland? Mort Mills? (By the way, this means that NO clips of Martin Balsam were shown; I believe that the announcer announced Perkins, Leigh, Miles, and Gavin over clips of their faces.)

THREE: Norman walks down the back hall of his house to the kitchen and sits at the table. THIS shot haunted me then, and it has for decades since. It seemed to capture a lot about Psycho -- Norman's somewhat creepy gray jacket and slacks, his slumping gait, his handsomeness , and the "weblike lair" of that house.

FOUR: Norman running down the hill from the house to the motel after "Blood! Blood!" This shot proved to be very important, because after every commercial break, KABC would cut to this shot(silent) and the announcer would say "We now return to Psycho." I must have seen Norman run down that hill three times before I had to turn it off.

--

They started the movie AND:

ONE: The opening credits were CUT OFF. KABC did this with ALL of their broadcast movies back then. Somebody thought that the opening credits were needless baggage, so they cut them off and moved them to the end after the movie was over. That kind of tracks with todays "long end credits" but it rather ruined Psycho on its first viewing for me.

TWO: Worse: Over the sweeping opening camera move over Phoenix, KABC superimposed NAMES: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh...and in that kind of "upbeat squiggly mod" 1968 typeface(the bottom part of the "Y" in Psycho and Anthony made a curlicue). I still remember that today. It messed up Hitchcocks great shot.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The movie began in earnest.

KABC at 11:30 at night could leave in the entire Sam/Marion love scene. I liked it, but by then I'd seen a few Bond movies and it didn't much titillate me.

This: I remember noticing how "crystal clear and stereophonic" all the sound was for Psycho. This surprised me. I had been picturing the kind of tinny, cheapjack production of my usual Saturday horror movies and I noticed right AWAY: "No, Psycho sounds like a big budget movie." It was a surprise then, and nowadays, the Psycho sountrack STILL sounds like the sound is more expensive than the picture.

But here was the big thing: as the story moved from the office, to the cop stop and then to the car dealership scenes, I had had this very weird feeling:

"Hey, wait a minute. Is this REALLY Psycho? What the hell are all these boring scenes? She's buying a CAR? And we have to go through the whole purchase?"

Nobody on the playground had talked about these scenes. It was "So she steals some money from her boss and drives out to that motel."

The only way I could really believe I was REALLY seeing the REAL Psycho was how KABC at the commercial breaks would keep cutting to that shot of Norman running down the hill from that house.

But now, Marion was on the road again, and dusk came and scary music came, and dark came and rain came and..

My parents came. Home. The end.

In retrospect, I suppose I should have just kept Psycho on and sought mercy. I think they were more bugged I was up so late. And in less than a year, all censorship from them (less X movies) would end. I "self censored" and turned off Psycho and...

...man...could I have had to turn it off at a WORSE time?

I never even got to see the great long drive up the service road to the motel and the looming house.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

One wonders about the role of "providence" or coincidence, or whatever it is that makes something happen at some time. But I got to see Psycho right up to the point where it turned into a horror movie and...I had to turn it off. With all those tantalizing clips in my head, too!(The door slowly opening at the top of the stairs..)

And now, the story shifts a bit to an interesting reality of my young life:

Not two weeks after I turned off the forbidden Psycho at home, I GOT TO SEE...at the theater...the very bloody "Bonnie and Clyde." Now that took a little negotiating, but I read a lot of magazines and newspapers that wrote up its violence -- it was the "new" Psycho in terms of blood content -- and friends were talking about it and there was a novelty song on the radio about Bonnie and Clyde and it ended with a great "machine gun massacre" sound effect and...

...I got to see it.

And I remember this: all the shootouts were exciting and didn't both me at all. Just like other gangster movies, except a bit bloodier.

But these elements disturbed me:

I felt that Bonnie and Clyde and their gang were creepy, scary people and when they held as prisoners first a Texas Ranger and later a young couple(including Gene Wilder) , I was very scared for the hostages.

An elderly bank clerk jumps onto their getaway car(after a big laugh sequence about trying to get the car out of the space) and Clyde "accidentally on purpose" shoots the old man in the face; his dead head falls against the car window and he falls off.

That bugged me -- and as 1968 went on , that moment in Bonnie and Clyde would be tied TO Psycho in the press.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

As several more years went by without seeing Psycho(because it wasn't available on TV), I saw, in the theater:

Bonnie and Clyde
The Wild Bunch(with a throat getting slit and men being gunned down bloody and in slow motion by the score --- I loved it.)
MASH the movie(with a surgery paitent spurting a fountain of blood up from his carotid artery)

--

In short, I saw -- and got inured to -- a lot more bloodshed than was in Psycho.

But Psycho unseen(save that first half hour) kept haunting me.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

SUMMER 1968:

Sometimes, things happen out of nowhere and a "life jolt" occurs. (Movie-wise.)

I was in a bookstore with a parent, browsing(as I like to do to this very day.)

And there, stacked for display were copies of "Hitchcock/Truffaut."

Now I think that book has a 1967 publication date(Torn Curtain is the final film discussed and that interview was done AFTER the main 1962 interviewes of the book.) But I first saw it on display in 1968.

I opened the book and flicked through the pages. I watched as still frames of Hitchcock's silent films gave way to his 30s films and his 40's films(they all looked like "old movies" to me) and then onto the more "modern" 50s' films (b/w photos of color movies looked smooth.) Rear Window. Vertigo. North by Northwest(the crop duster.)

And I realized as I flipped the pages: hey, I'm heading towards Psycho.

And I got there.

First I saw a very (to me) erotic photo of Leigh and Gavin in the bedroom. Then a shot of the house and the motel -- in daylight, with Hitchcock and his crew on the backlot grounds.

I turned a page.

In that edition, the Arbogast murder photos came first.

And man did they terrify me.

I felt like I was FINALLY seeing something forbidden to me, "sneaking a look" in this book and bringing what had only been described to me...to life.

I made some snap judgments: OK, Arbogast WAS Martin Balsam. Whaddya know? And that fall -- OK, he's against a process screen(NOT ONE kid had seen that and told me, I guess I was a bit more sophisticated, but it was a GOOD process shot.)

And: it didn't MATTER if there was a process shot there. I "went into the moment" his bloody face, his open eyes and mouth, the overall creepiness and grayness of the staircase.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But mainly this: in the movie, the "scariest shots"(Arbogast's face first bloodied; mother jumping on him on the floor) last for only seconds(MILLI seconds on the floor.) On the page, these scary shots sat there "forever" -- you couldn't shake them once you saw them, and (in my case) I desired to LEAVE that page and those photos. I did not want to stay there.

The shower scene photos came next and though they were scary enough, they were as flurried and abstract as the scene had been described to me. But still scary . (I think the scariest shot there is the "close overhead shot" of the gray haired, gray dressed old woman invading the space of the naked woman's shower and leaning right into her with that knife in hand. UGH.)

My experience with Hitchcock/Truffaut that day was the "key Psycho scare moment" of my life with that movie. Its another part of a "too young" experience, I suppose, and yet I was seeing equally violent films in a course of two years. Something about that book felt as forbidden as the movie. I would not get the book as a gift for a few more years and I STILL found it a bit creepy in the Psycho pages. The still frames printed a bit more "dark and grainy" than the movie itself.

There's a bit more to impart here, but this review of "that time" in my movie life has educated me on something: Psycho was the LAST movie that truly frightened me in my entire life.

In some OTHER way, Psycho prepared me to never be scared by a movie again -- starting with Psycho itself when I finally did see in in full (1971 on TV, a mere year before I saw Frenzy first run.) Nope, when I finally saw Psycho it didn't scare me. But that's OK. It had scared me for 6 solid years BEFORE I saw it -- it had scared me in my mind, and at night, and in conversations with other kids. Not to mention in the fevered warning of that mother with her sign of the cross: "Don't see Psyhco! Its about BAD PEOPLE."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Exorcist didn't scare me(it disgusted me and rather angered me about what they did to that girl to make it). Jaws didn't scare me(it EXCITED me.) Halloween didn't scare me. The Shining didn't scare me(it amused me.) I rather quickly learned that these things were, indeed, "only a movie" and though I enjoyed hearing people scream all around me -- I did not scream.

--

I will say this: I remained vulnerable(if not "scared") to the "jump shock" effect in horror thrillers. The "dead man" jumping out in Wait Until Dark(an exciting thriller, not quite scary.) The head in the boat in Jaws. The rather tacked-on graveyard ending to Carrie. But I feel those effects were a bit of a cheat. And yes, when I sense jump shocks coming, I must admit that I still close my eyes a bit in anticipation. My age, my heart, you know? But that's different from being profoundly scared. Psycho achieved that goal.

CONT

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 2 years ago

The Exorcist didn't scare me(it disgusted me
--
Do you think a lot of later horror movies confused disgust with horror? They often rely on gore more than suspense or dread.

Though then again, Psycho did disgust some viewers. I recall a story about Hitchcock wanting to shoot a movie in Disneyland and Walt Disney saying he refused on the grounds of Psycho being "disgusting" or something like that.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Exorcist didn't scare me(it disgusted me
--
Do you think a lot of later horror movies confused disgust with horror? They often rely on gore more than suspense or dread.

--

Yes, I think so. I think it was Stephen King who wrote that horror movies eventually shifted from terrorizing the audience to "grossing them out."

Of course, it is a matter of degree. Many gross things are talked about or kept offscreen in Silence of the Lambs, so it could be a hit and win an Oscar. But OTHER horror movies go in hard to SHOW all that gore.

I have a bit of a theory about that.

I see Psycho, The Exorcist, and Jaws as the "three superthrillers" of movie history. Adjusted for inflation, they were ALL in that $100 million gross range that means everybody in America talked abou them, and a lot of people saw them. (And the rest of the world, too, though the US led screen back then.)

Over time, I believe, more horror movies were made, but they couldn't make those "superthriller grosses" because they were just TOO gross, a lot of adults would not go to them.

I am thinking of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre knockoffs, and Saw, and Hostel.
I saw the first Saw, and it was pretty gruesome. I saw Hostel and one scene took me by surprise before I could close my eyes and the act of torture I witnessed literally almost made me vomit.

That said, some "gross" horror movies are among my favorites, and i could watch them easily without adverse stomach issues. Alien and Carpenter's The Thing, for too. But I think The Thing was a flop on release, and Alien did NOT earn in the 100 million range.

Of the ghree "superthrillers," The Exorcist most fit todays "gross out" template(it was an R; Jaws was a PG, Psycho's rating kept changing.)

Something else seemed to drive those Exorcist crowds -- the "I gotta see it" syndrome? Wanting to see and hear the possessed girl? The religious-spiritual aspects?(hey, God enters into this movie in way not in the others.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Note in passing:

In the early 00s, the American Film Institute made its list of the 100 greatest thrillers. The top four sounded perfect to me.

Number One: Psycho (as it should be.)
Number Two: Jaws
Number Three: The Exorcist.

..and there you go. I'm redeemed. The Three Superthrillers.

And Number Four?

North by Northwest.

Perfect as well. "NXNW" begat Bond begat Indy Jones begat John McClane begat Neo...

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Though then again, Psycho did disgust some viewers.

---

Absolutely. "Everything's relative," and in 1960, Psycho was filled with elements that sickened some.

The Time magazine reviewer wrote of the film as "stomach churning" with the most nauseating murder in movie history(the shower) and then wrote "what follows is expertly Gothic, but the nausea remains."

The LA Times reviewer wrote of Psycho "the whole messy business climaxes in a scene lifted from The Phantom of the Opera(the fruit cellar scene.)

Gregory Peck in announcing production on his 1962 thriller Cape Fear promised a questioner reporter that the movie "would NOT have the gore of Psycho." (But hey, it was still a pretty sadistic thriller.)

And so forth and so on.

I expect that some audiences were sickened by shower murder...and the presence of Marion's corpse through the clean-up scene...and both the slashing of Arbogast's face and the finishing blows on the floor...and the reveal about Normans taxidermy on Mother but...hey, things got a lot WORSE on screen after that...

...including Hitchcock's own, lingering, realistic, music-free murders in Torn Curtain and Frenzy.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I recall a story about Hitchcock wanting to shoot a movie in Disneyland and Walt Disney saying he refused on the grounds of Psycho being "disgusting" or something like that.

--

Yep, Disney issued a press release or something accosting Hitchcock and Psyhco...and so we lost one of the great "possible movies" in history: a Hitchcock chase across Disneyland.

The film had the working title "The Blind Man." James Stewart(too old?) or David Niven were sought. A blind man gets an "eye transplant" from a murder victim with the killer's image intact in the eyes. Chase in Disneyland climax. Sounds a bit too supernatural for Hitch, but we will never know.

..but I read something ironic: some years after Disney banned Hitchcock from filming at Disneyland, Disney sent Hitch a letter recommending Disney star Susan Hampshire for "Marnie." I'll bet Hitchcock threw THAT letter in the trash.

CONT

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 2 years ago

Over time, I believe, more horror movies were made, but they couldn't make those "superthriller grosses" because they were just TOO gross, a lot of adults would not go to them.
--
A lot of them also seemed more geared for less discerning teen audiences. Psycho and The Exorcist are decidedly of a different caliber than Friday the 13th and its many sequels.
--
The film had the working title "The Blind Man." James Stewart(too old?) or David Niven were sought. A blind man gets an "eye transplant" from a murder victim with the killer's image intact in the eyes. Chase in Disneyland climax. Sounds a bit too supernatural for Hitch, but we will never know.
--
Oh my God, that sounds so interesting. It actually reminds me of a German silent film, The Hands of Orlac, in which a pianst with damaged hands has the hands of an executed murderer grafted to himself and then the hands yearn to strangle victims, driving him mad. Hitchcock did have a great deal of German influence in his early work, so maybe he had seen Orlac long ago.

Still hard to see a Hitchcock with that kind of supernatural edge... but then I think of the end of Family Plot, with Blanche seeming to possess psychic powers. You never know...

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Over time, I believe, more horror movies were made, but they couldn't make those "superthriller grosses" because they were just TOO gross, a lot of adults would not go to them.
--
A lot of them also seemed more geared for less discerning teen audiences. Psycho and The Exorcist are decidedly of a different caliber than Friday the 13th and its many sequels.
--

That's right. Much was made of the "low budget" on Psycho, but it was a "B movie made like an A movie." Hitchcock insisted on a top caliber script from Joe Stefano(working with him on it); Hitchcock cast really good actors(Perkins, Leigh and Balsam got Oscar attention in three separate films, only Leigh for Psycho.) And the film had great polish and care for a "cheapie" (the week spent filming the shower scene, the sheer seedy majesty of the Bates Mansion inside and out.)

Halloween was stylish, but Friday the 13th and other films were just quick exploitation slashers.

Unlike Psycho, The Exorcist came attached with the "prestige" that comes from adapting a "nationwide best seller" novel.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The film had the working title "The Blind Man." James Stewart(too old?) or David Niven were sought. A blind man gets an "eye transplant" from a murder victim with the killer's image intact in the eyes. Chase in Disneyland climax. Sounds a bit too supernatural for Hitch, but we will never know.
--
Oh my God, that sounds so interesting. It actually reminds me of a German silent film, The Hands of Orlac, in which a pianst with damaged hands has the hands of an executed murderer grafted to himself and then the hands yearn to strangle victims, driving him mad. Hitchcock did have a great deal of German influence in his early work, so maybe he had seen Orlac long ago.

--

I have heard of The Hands of Orlac and I think there was a knock off remake in the 50's that got on 60s TV.

Also relevant: the TV movie pilot of "Night Gallery" had Young Steven Spielberg direct Joan Crawford in a tale of a woman who pays big bucks to a poor man(Tom Bosley) to take his eyes away PERMANENTLY so that Crawford cans see for ONE NIGHT only. Very cruel. Good twist ending. Spielberg arrives, sort of.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Still hard to see a Hitchcock with that kind of supernatural edge... but then I think of the end of Family Plot, with Blanche seeming to possess psychic powers. You never know...

---

Well, I think Hitchcock "rigged" Family Plot to tell us that NO, she doesn't have psychic powers.

The print ads said "you must see this twice" and the reason was you could hear Devane while carrying Blanches' "unconscious" body saying "Let's go get another diamond for our chandelier."

Hence, Blanche found the diamond THAT way. Hence her wink at the end.

But Hitchcock always wanted to do a ghost story called "Mary Rose" that would have been supernatural(Lew Wasserman at Universal refused it)

And The Birds is kind of supernatural, yes? No reason given for the attacks and they have a villainy attached to them.
CONT

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 2 years ago

Hence, Blanche found the diamond THAT way. Hence her wink at the end.
--
Oh crap, I never noticed that!
--

And The Birds is kind of supernatural, yes? No reason given for the attacks and they have a villainy attached to them.
--
Yes, the birds almost seem demonic in their attacks on the human populace. It gives the movie that horror mystique, the idea that such creatures could become malicious.

You know, speaking of types of horror, in the last decade or so, there's two predominant modes of screen terror: the artsy, slow stuff (Hereditary, The Witch) and pure schlock (It parts 1 and 2, Don't Breathe, the Halloween reboot and its sequel). It's interesting to compare all that with Psycho, which had a popular appeal and very genre trappings while also functioning as art without feeling "Artsy."

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

You know, speaking of types of horror, in the last decade or so, there's two predominant modes of screen terror: the artsy, slow stuff (Hereditary, The Witch) and pure schlock (It parts 1 and 2, Don't Breathe, the Halloween reboot and its sequel).

---

Well, I suppose that horror develops its own forms over time. In some ways, horror is a "played out "genre, but in others it speaks to new young audiences every few years who likely don't even KNOW about Psycho or The Exorcist or Jaws.

---It's interesting to compare all that with Psycho, which had a popular appeal and very genre trappings while also functioning as art without feeling "Artsy."

---
Something really "clicked" with Psycho that has earned it the high honors. I rather think it is how the "modern"(for 1960) mixes in with the "historic Gothic" of the Frankenstein/Dracula era (The house, but also the swamp and Mama's skull face.) I always seem to boil it down to that shot of tough Arbogast in his suit and tie walking up into a Gothic netherword (the hill and the house.)

--

But , as someone somewhere wrote, Psycho DELIVERS. The shocks. It would be a shame to have that house and that motel -- the greatest arena for horror in movie history and NOT do something as "big"(at the time) as the shower murder, the staircase murder and the fruit cellar finale.

CONT