The Opening Scene in the Garage

Experiment in Terror came out in 1962, two years after Psycho and its famous shower murder sequence of Janet Leigh.

Experiment in Terror elected not to go for the then-graphic gore of the shower scene, but in its own way, created a fairly classic , similar device: making a place of familiarity a sudden , terrifying danger zone.

After the visually moody credits of bank teller Lee Remick driving across the Bay Bridge towards San Francisco and her house up in the hills(accompanied by Mancini's VERY spooky, nerve-tingling low key score)...Remick drives her car into her garage and closes the door behind her with a control.

It is late night. The garage is dark, with just a bit of light among the shadows. And then "someone" -- a man, with a heavy, wheezing voice and frog-like lips, grabs her from behind and pulls her into the shadows with him.

I expect that 1962 audiences were terrified. Rape? Murder? Implied as possible but no...the wheezing voice starts telling Remick of her role in his plan for her to embezzle funds from her bank...or else. Remick's life is at stake now...as is that of her teenage sister.

This is perhaps too "plotty" a scene to rank with the shower scene and its bloody sudden death terror.

But it was plenty scary. And this: just like everybody takes a shower sometime, a LOT of people have a garage attached to their home, and take the risk of being out there -- in the dark -- before they can turn on a light and enter the safety of their home.

And so..people could RELATE to the terror of this scene. An intruder, grabbing you in your garage. So near and yet so far to safety.

I knew a grown man who said that Experiment in Terror had scared him about driving into HIS garage at night -- because the garage was SEPARATE from his home and he had to walk from one building to the other.

Back to the movie: the victim is a woman, not a man. The movie poster overdid the female victim as bosomy in a low cut dress, but in the film, there is sexual terror enough in the imagery of Lee Remick grabbed from behind and held for such a long, long time by such a hideous-voiced, heavy breathing man. He has one hand over her mouth but the other hand -- where is it? The imagination chills to the bone.

There is a little more terror once the man finally lets Remick go. He tells her to stand still and we get her mirrored look at the man -- as a full body -- leaving her garage. Leaving her alone.

So she goes in the house and calls the FBI.

But the man has followed her in and knocks her out, leaving the phone hanging.

She wasn't safe after all. The terror continues...