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A "Youtube Cruise": Hitchcock, Perkins, Psycho...

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

Its interesting to go to YouTube sometimes. One can/will find old interviews and clips that one has seen before but -- it seems like 'the powers that upload" continually send something new and different onto the board.

I guess once one picks a Hitchcock/Psycho type clip, the algorhythms take you different similar places.

Here are some of the things I found:

ONE: Anthony Perkins getting interviewed at length, in Dallas, by a matronly woman who is rather forced to hold up her end of the bargain by a rather edgy, slightly angry(it seems) Perkins. He must have been in a bad mood that day. Perkins is promoting Psycho II (which, says the lady, "should have huge grosses" ) and they reach this point:

Lady: One thing I noticed is the that Psycho II is more violent than..
Perkins: Than WHAT? Than other Hitchcock movies? Than Frenzy? Than Torn Curtain? Those two were more violent that Psycho II..
Lady: Well, perhaps. But there's one scene in Psycho II -- I won't spoil it --
Perkins: GOOD.
Lady: But it was really violent.
Perkins: As violent as the murder of Martin Balsam in Psycho 1? That was pretty violent.

Whereupon Perkins goes into an oft-told tale of how the special effects guy on Psycho II showed Perkins that "he only used a half bottle of fake blood" on this movie. Usually uses four or five bottles.

The lady tries to move on. Perkins says: "Well, what do you think of THAT? You should have an opinion...."

So the lady says something.

I'll say this: Psycho II IS more violent than Psycho, Frenzy or Torn Curtain in one scene(I'm sure its the scene the woman meant): when Vera Miles gets a knife though the mouth and out the back of her head, gurgling away to her death. There is also the moment when Perkins grabs the knife blade with both hands and his palms and fingers bleed.

I suppose that the bloody violence in Psycho II is more "fun" (in the Psycho tradition) than the realistic killings(with no music) in Frenzy and Torn Curtain. And the rape angle of Frenzy is missing.

Still, a weird interview. Maybe Perkins was tired. MAYBE (as has often been declared) he was on drugs.

TWO: Hitchcock on the Ed Sullivan show, circa 1956. Its pretty amazing, how rather ugly Sullivan was and yet STILL allowed to host a major TV show. He had a great voice and manner though -- just like guest Alfred Hitchcock. Together, the two men side by side on the Sullivan stage summon up "an era," an American past that some of us still mourn.

Hitchcock in 1956 wasn't thin, but he was pretty damn trim -- his shape is that of a tall man with a bit of girth -- I CAN see Hitchcock pulling off affairs with Grace Kelly and/or Ingrid Bergman when he looked like this(the wealth, the power, the WIT.)

And this, most of all: Hitchcock finally plugs his new movie, "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and he elects to linger on the main murder scene in the movie: when Louis Bernard gets a knife in the back(brutally pushed in by hand, not thrown ala NWNW. Hitchcock has Sullivan stand with him to re-enact the stabbing and Hitchcock elaborates:

"The knife entered about HERE -- the fourth vertebrae or so. I'd say it went into the back about four inches. Did it hit all meat, or just gristle? I don't know. The victim didn't even realize he HAD been stabbed till he felt all the blood in his boots..."

Sullivan laughs and Hitchcock leaves the stage after Sullivan requests "the biggest applause you've ever gotten."

But to me, the interesting thing is: here is Alfred Hitchcock on an "early evening family TV show on a Sunday night" going into the grisly details of a knife stab to the back.

I wonder if he came back for Psycho...

(Sidebar: the way Louis Bernard keeps grabbing for the knife in his back reminds me of Stephen King's description of a similar stabbed victim in one of his books: "Reaching behind to try to scratch that one itch you just can't reach.")

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

THREE: A Hitchcock Presents episode(less than 30 minutes) in which a husband who wants to divorce his wife is urged by a lawyer to hire a private investigator to tail her for signs of her own infidelity.

The private investigator comes to meet the man. The private investigator's name is ....Bates. And all through the episode(which aired about two years before Psycho), the employer says, "Ah...Bates."

Bates is played by a dead serious Arte Johnson(about a decade away from comedy on Laugh In, for those who remember.) He has this line to his new employer:

"I wish to point out that I am a private investigator. I am NOT a 'private eye." That is a construct of television. I do my job professionally...."

Hmm..Arbogast always calls himself a "private investigator." Did Hitchcock and screenwriter Joe Stefano remember this episode and "Private investigator Bates?"

FOUR: Speaking of interviews, I found another one with the late Joe Stefano on a "series" called Dark Dreamers. As usual, he gets into Psycho and The Outer Limits(his two claims to fame, within three years of each other 1960-1963...and then he had to survive for more working decades in Hollywood.)

Much of it is the same old same old but he reveals this: around the time of Psycho's 1960 release, Stefano was in a barber shop when the barber told another customer: "This is the man who wrote Psycho." The other customer got up in a rage, entered Stefano's booth, and grabbed him by the neck, yelling: "How could you write something like THAT?" Scary, eh?

He also goes on in more detail about "demanding' that Hitchcock show Norman walking off to the corner of the motel when Arbogast returns. "Otherwise," said Stefano, "he just walks out of the frame and we guess: where did he go? Up to the house?" Stefano takes great pride in that part of the script.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

FOUR: A very brief interview -- less than two minutes -- with Vera Miles promoting Psycho II back in '83. To me, it is noteable for her decided "uncomfortable" and stilted manner -- as if to give up any answers to the interviewer is like having her teeth pulled. She speaks very slowly and considers each answer carefully, and a little fearfully, but we get this:

"Anthony and I didn't really have a chance to become friends on Psycho I because I think we are both very shy people(this interview proves it for Miles: YES) and the set didn't lend itself to that kind of interaction...its been much better on Psycho II."

Note in passing: its just a personal thing, but it bugs me that both Perkins and Miles keep referring to the original as "Psycho I" and that Perkins talks of "the Psycho series." I think I know why: the sequels were making them money NOW, the original simply wasn't a paying job anymore. But there is NO Psycho I. Nor a Godfather I. These are stand alone classics(and not even Best Picture winner Godfather II earned half as much as The Godfather.)

At least Alien 2 had the good sense to be called "Aliens." Now, nobody talks of Alien 1.