Happy Halloween, 2024

There is a theater chain in America that has, for the past few years, been showing Psycho regularly on Halloween night. They're doing it this year. I recall a photo from a recent showing, a few years ago, showing a young preppy family -- man and wife in their thirties, two boys around 10 and 12, standing under the famous poster --- with Janet Leigh in her bra and slip dominating the poster while Anthony Perkins is consigned to a tiny corner of the poster and "the greatest movie logo of all time" (slashed PSYCHO) is on the poster -- and this poster is right behind this "happy little family" as they pose in front of it.

It was good news and bad news. The good news is that Psycho still resonates as a Halloween attraction -- with full houses, right after trick or treating, or white haired people in the audience who saw it FIRST RUN in 1960(not me.)

The bad news is that Psycho had become a movie that parents could take two little boys to. Robin Wood called Psycho "possibly the most terrifying movie ever made" in a 1965 book (re-issued in 1970). Its less so anymore.

But face it: The Exorcist is too hard-R 1973 gross and profane for those little boys , and Jaws isn't REALLY in the Halloween tradition. It ain't got no haunted house. Psycho fits the classic bill.

Along with those one thousand, eight hundred and ninety OTHER horror movies that came out since Psycho (from Halloween to Scream to Saw to today)...and of course, the Golden Oldies from the 30s and 40s: Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Wolf Man. Take your pick. (Note in passing: one of MY parents told me how, as a child in the 1930s, he was simply forbidden from going to see any of the Universal horrors; his parents would not attend with him and he couldn't go with friends. The Psycho of their time.)

I am now of a generation that has two generations below me, and a little trick or treating is on the schedule.

Happy Halloween. Keep Psycho close. Its from a simpler time....