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telegonus's Replies
I agree as regards Ruth Roman's "butch" quality, noticed it the first time I saw the movie. This may just be a matter of our observations. Even Nancy Kelly, no one's idea of a beauty, was better looking; and yes, even in [b]The Bad Seed[/b]. She was an attractive, decidedly feminine woman, and sister of actor Jack Kelly, of Maverick fame. Jack had the charm, and some flair as an actor, Nancy had more the acting chops. She was quite good in her one Thriller episode, The Storm, in which she moves into hysterical mode again, as a married woman, alone in a country house, menaced by either extremely bad weather or a mad killer (or maybe both). Miss Kelly's career was undercut at Fox when the studio hired on beautiful Gene Tierney, who got the better parts that Nancy deserved, as her career faded soon afterwards.
Once again, I digress.
In real life, of course, however in "movie life", perhaps not.
It's not like Hitch wrapped the plot points up at the end, as he would later do on his TV show, as host, leaving the viewer in the dark where [b]Strangers On A Train[/b] is concerned.
EC: I remember those shots and angles for the shots of the Bates house in the movie. It's a joy to watch for the skill, the detail, that Hitchcock and his crew put into it. What we see of Norman, rushing down the steps in the rain, is sheer perfection; and in some ways the daylight shots of Arbogast climbing the hill to the house are even more impressive, not a second too long or short, and in this they nearly define the gloom of the film as a whole; a movie with Gothic frills, yet also one rooted in day to day life, with living in the real world, of paying bills and meeting deadlines, even as we actually see rather little of all this in the film itself. To pull back further from these scenes, to the earlier ones in Phoenix, with Marion and the various men in her life; then later, more ominously, her long drive west, her meeting with the highway cop. This really frames the movie as a whole, as it ends in a perfectly ordinary police station.
I wish you the best in getting what issues you've had with the admins in using your screen name on these boards. They should welcome you back, not make your return to the boards difficult.
I agree with everything you said in your post, Otter. The quality of the Bates house, its design and detail, is indeed remarkable for a backlot, any backlot, of [b]Psycho[/b]'s vintage. Your backstory for the house is intriguing. It would have been a good fit the the "biggest house in a small, poor town". Fancy in its way, with some good things in its design, yet likely already [i]ersatz[/i], or borderline, even when it was new.
It was also, almost surely, a house for an introvert, or a couple that was introverted. Uninviting, because the new owners wouldn't be inclined to host many parties or events, even if they had children; and unlikely a large family if they did. One can see from what's shown of the second floor that there simply wasn't the space for that, nor enough rooms. Yet it was a place that likely never felt cramped, even in relatively small spaces. Older houses of that vintage were like that.
I agree, EC (and good to see you return, whatever name you use) regarding the Bates family. They likely, I suspect, had some "old money", much as many east coast folk did, true, surely when and where I grew up, in which big old homes, complete with barns (not yet wholly "converted" into garages), front porches, cobwebs in many of the windows, and often an elderly lady or two living alone inside. They looked grander than they truly were.
My mother hated that style. She called all those big old suburban homes barns, and had grown up in one herself, albeit in a city, north of Boston. To her, those houses were a royal pain to maintain, cost a fortune to heat, had bad plumbing and were always drafty. Nothing cozy about them. I was the one who thought they were the cat's whiskers, as I and a good friend loved to take walking tours of those old streets, looking wide-eyed at those houses, and dreaming of becoming architects.
To me, they were romantic, and just walking around those quaint old streets was as cool and fun as walking around a museum. The houses were the paintings; and the fences and yards were rather their frames, as it were (it was the houses that dazzled me, not the oaks and maples, nor the hollyhocks,--gardens didn't do it for me,--go figure). Anyway, to wind this post up, I have, visually, spatially and, obviously, emotionally, a connection to Psycho that has nothing to do with crime or murder. I do have to admit that I and many other neighborhood kids liked to view those homes as having "dark" histories, complete with arsenic poisoning and the occasional axe murder. None of us had seen Psycho, or not yet anyway. We got our imaginations fired up by books, hardcover, paperback and the (so-called) comic kind, and, of course, TV and the movies.
It was a great time to grow up, and I feel somewhat bad for people too young to have been around then, too late to have had their imaginations shaped by older cultures, and older things generally, in a far more controlled environment.
That's spot on, Otter. The Bates house was standard issue middle class, Victorian era. It wasn't big at all, though it had height in its favor; however, its setting and, especially when it was new, isolation, would have made it, IMHO, a hard sell for a doctor or a banker. It wasn't truly "in the community" in any but a formal sense. There was something forbidding in its isolation, and I can't help but think this would have been so around the turn of the century, when it was fairly new, though considered as a style, a fashion, as on its way out as double breasted suits and men's hats were circa 1960, when [b]Psycho[/b] came out. Not ancient, but not the sort of place young couples were dreaming of moving into unless their last name was Addams.
My favorite movie with a Boston Strangler motif is the low budget 1964 Victor Buono vehicle (as it were) The Strangler. It was very well made, set safely in L.A., thus not having to be held "accountable" for mimicking the Boston case; and overall, it worked for me, and time had been kind to it. Buono's playing of the title role is Master Class.
If Allied Artists been able to find a better director for the film, which is, for what it is, quite well made, they might have had a cult classic on their hands, and Buono enjoyed a better than "novelty" career. The quality of the work he got declined in the second half of the 60s. My sense is that he did have star quality, and with careful handling enjoyed greater success as a character star.
Maybe temps, paid in cash, not regular, salaried people. The motel was basically a one man job. If business had picked up; unlikely, given its location and its drabness.--the market for places so out of it they're hip, thus funky, was still a few years down the road, and the motel had a forbidding quality thanks to its owner, and this would have continued, and likely worsened, as time passed and Norman hadn't been caught.
Truly, EC. A movie to cherish, yet largely unrealistic at the climax, even as it's so exciting. The first time I saw Strangers On A Train, on the late movie, senior year in high school, I was wholly charmed, totally involved in its story. The shooting into the carousel was the icing on the cake, although I did enjoy the comical bit on the train, with the minister, in the movie's final scene.
Not for nothing was Alfred Hitchcock called the Master.
This is a great movie, and it's often not only compelling but fun and exciting to watch. For all that, the business of the policeman shooting into a crowd,--a crowd on a fast moving carousel--strikes me as wholly unrealistic and, needless to say, unprofessional. It must surely be written in the policeman's manuel, or whatever their book of rules is called, that when pursuing a dangerous criminal, even a suspected murderer, one ought never to fire a gun into a crowd, as happened in the movie; to which it should be noted "especially when, if the crowd is riding on a merry-go-round,--absolutely forbidden". This is common sense. There was no rational excuse for what the officer did. I don't think it was mentioned in the film that his career would be over, though maybe this wasn't necessary. Even if Bruno was a serial killer, had murdered sixteen people, and all the witnesses were on hand, with the police, ready to identify him, this is no good reason to shoot into a crowd of innocent people, including many children, on a carnival ride. It's sheer madness! There were surely other ways to shut down the carousel without the ensuing trauma that occurred in the film.
You're welcome, EC, and the feelings are mutual. We are, neither of us, so active on the post-Apocalyptic IMDB boards 'round and about on the Web. MovieChat's as good as any, although I have a mild preference for Filmboards, not because it's better managed or anything but due to its being busier, more classic film oriented.
Moviechat has a similar style, and much of the new and older stuff parallels the other, though this one feels more contemporary, has an "official" air to it that Filmboards doesn't have. That one's more "open season" feeling. This one's a tad like the old IMDB, not by a lot, but I think you'll agree. I think I've seen your name on other sites, notably v.2, which has a ton of old-timers from the IMDB using their real names.
I watch the Hitchcock series semi-regularly now, though they've dropped the half-hours in favor of the hour long, just to shake things up a bit. You likely know where to find it, so it's scarcely worth mentioning, but if need be, don't hesitate. I trust you're in good health.
Yes, and the title is something like Waxworks or The Waxworks. Fine cast, led by Oscar Homolka, with excellent support from Martin Kosleck and Antoinette Bower. While this is truly a Thriller, its story unfolds at a rather leisurely place (and yet menace lurks behind every door, and in every corner). Still, there are gruesome moments even early on; and the ending in a shocker. The most terrifying Thriller ep? No, not even close. Yet it has spooky charm to burn, and it's not a generic Thriller. There are small and large touches to it that make it rock and roll.
Don't let the minimalist production values fool you, or dampen your spirits. Waxworks is a winner, and it has much to offer a horror buff. It doesn't explain every damn thing that happens in the course of its running time. There's a chilling inexplicable quality to it that links it somewhat, thematically, to The Incredible Dr. Markesan, even as it tells a very different story, and deals with different themes. I believe that this waxworks entry is one of the most unsettling, if not most horrific entry in the entire Thriller series.
I doubt it. The guy didn't seem to care enough whether the younger man would live or die, escape from the prison or simply serve his time and get out. He said things that sounded good "in theory", but he was simply tormenting the younger men. All the Edd Byrnes character needed to do was play by the rules, do whatever the prison officials demanded of him, and get sprung. This sounds so prosaic, so unimaginative, yet sometimes it's best to go that route than try to beat the system.
Psycho inspires speculation in many of us. The discussions go off on all tangents sometimes, but some of us like that, maybe even love it. I've had as much fun, as good a time as any, on the IMDBPsycho boards, old and new, than anyplace else when discussing classic films. We've had some great posters heres, and lively discussions about all manner of things, mostly film-related, on these boards. For those who don't care for all the diversions, well, nobody's pointing a gun at your head and saying "go to the Psycho boards at once, read every post, even the tangential and seemingly irrelevant ones, and MAKE THEM RELEVANT you jackass". It's not there. Not anywhere on any Psycho boards I've visited and written on. Occasional complaints about OT stuff, but then, if you don't care for it, don't read stuff like that. It'll just raise your blood pressure, and we don't want that!
In doing that, it's almost like they were trying to "kill" it. TOL didn't stand a chance against Gleason. It was a marvelous show, and they should have treated it with more respect, although the changes in behind the scenes personnel, the creative people involved in it, caused a decline that likely alienated the show's most ardent viewers,--my take.
It was probably okay with Rod, although my sense is that it lacked his "social consciousness", with race, Holocaust and, more broadly, social and economic injustice not on the front burner, as they so often were on The Twilight Zone.
The Outer Limits was, in terms of the issues it dealt with, more purely cerebral, a Thinking Man's series, while the Zone, while it went there, was geared more toward the Common Man than the educated professional, or, where younger viewers, teens, for instance, were concerned, more "honors" student, Advanced Placement, than just plain average kids.
The only thing about the [i]Midnight[/i] episode that I like is that it feels like it was made for another series (it was), and that it doesn't have the usual Harry Lubin music cues (not in itself a virtue, just odd). Nor does it feature familiar players (though many [b]OSB[/b] eps didn't). None of these factors improve the quality of this pallid entry, however they do, or rather, on first viewing, did, keep me watching. I did miss John Newland's urbane presence and beautiful diction.
You may be right. I recall only the Johnny Cash opening from my childhood. Since then the musical openings seem to bounce about as to who the singer is, and lately it's been mostly Cash, second season thus far. The singer of the opening song matters to me (and I suspect most viewers) as of less importance than the quality of the episode it introduces. I like Frankie Laine, who owns Rawhide's opening, prefer Cash for The Rebel, a gloomier show than most; westerns, I mean. A wonderful, sensitive, well thought out TV series The Rebel was.
Excellent episode, and thanks for mentioning it. The fight at the end of the show was riveting. Ricardo Montalban, not one of my favorite actors, rose to the occasion, as actor as well as, in the episode itself, fighter, splendidly going at it with Marvin, who early on looked much bigger and stronger, and yet Montalban seemed to literally grow over time as he fought. Strong stuff back in the day, and even today, nothing to sneeze at.