Psycho, Jaws and "The Zone of Danger"

Horror movies are so gory now that movies like Psycho and Jaws -- made 15 years apart, and Jaws IS more gory -- seem quaint now.

But they were both summer blockbusters and part of the reason was all the time that gore and death was NOT happening in those two brilliant films.

What each film created, I think, was a "zone of danger" that created immediate and constant suspense...the audience was tense and wary ALL the time, and occasionally somebody went into the zone of danger and they DID get killed. And that make the screams all the larger.

Though Psycho scared its audience first and most with the shower murder of Janet Leigh, from then on, any time anybody came to the Bates Motel, they were in "the zone of danger" and that zone only got worse when they went up and into the house. The detective went up there first and got horribly killed by "Mrs. Bates" with her big butcher knife -- people screamed a LOT -- and then the sister went up there later(for about 15 minutes exploring the house) and the audience was in maximum terror. When the sister jumped at her own reflection in the mother's bedroom...huge screams. And when the sister went down into the fruit cellar to meet "Mother" -- wall-to-wall non-stop screams that continued into the next scene: the shrink scene. People were still screaming and no one could HEAR the shrink for awhile.

15 years later, Jaws (even as a PG film) could be more gory than Psycho, and rather had to be, but it still relied on the "Zone of Danger" idea. In Psycho, the first big killing(of only two) was the shower murder, at 47 minutes into the movie. Jaws OPENS with the first killing(and as in Psycho, a pretty naked woman and water is involved -- and big teeth replace the big knife.)

And from the moment Chrissy dies in that ocean...the OCEAN is the zone of danger. You have the later death scenes(the Kintner boy, the lifeguard...Quint as the gore-packed finale) but you have all sorts of "near misses"(the fisherman with the meat, Hooper exploring the boat underwater, Brody chumming food into the ocean) that the audience is tense and screaming all the time. Even a close-up of feet slipping alongside the edge of the Orca while its at sea: terror.

Because they DO need a bigger boat, and the idea is: if you fall into that water, into that "Zone of Danger" -- you're dead. And soon the shark starts trying to sink the boat...

Psycho "only" had two murders, but audiences didn't know that. They were in terror from the shower scene on -- characters were in danger when they turned a corner at the Bates Motel, or bent down look at a safe in the motel office, or walked up into the house. The "Zone of Danger" lasted for the whole movie with only one murder left after the shower.

Jaws had more murders(well, "eatings") but relied, like Psycho did, on minutes and minutes of suspense in the "Zone of Danger."

In the water...