MovieChat Forums > jay440
jay440 (107)
Posts
VARIETY - The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time
"Our Man Arbogast" (TV series) - starring Marty Balsam!
View all posts >
Replies
No surprise that the novel has much more about the characters' pasts than the movie. Hitchcock and his writer are pretty relentless with the scissors.
Psycho offers just enough of Sam's backstory to forestall the question "Why doesn't Sam marry Marion?"
All we get about Sam is that he can't make any money until he pays off his father's debts, and that he has an ex-wife "living on the other side of the world." Presumably she met money (a Cassidy?) and is traveling the world living the high life on her Sugar Daddy's dime, yet still bleeding Sam dry in alimony payments. She was probably the high school beauty, like Cybil Shephard in The Last Picture Show.
From Sam's remark about sending sister off to the movies, it seems the Crane sisters live together, probably in the house they grew up in. I think Lila had to have felt betrayed and in disbelief over Marion's sudden abandonment of her. Their parents are gone, and like Norman and Mother, they only had each other (okay, Marion also had Sam, on the side). Then suddenly one Friday Marion bolts and goes missing, without leaving any note behind. Marion imagines a phone conversation between Lowery and Lila where we only hear Lowery's side, but Marion imagines him saying Lila is deeply worried about her. She knows what she is putting her sister through.
There is a lot for an actress here, her fearing for a loved one gone missing, her stunned realization that a family member has suddenly turned fugitive from justice, and maybe some self-reproach, too, about being disconnected from her sister enough to miss the signs of her desperation. And also the deep foreboding that Marion is, indeed, already dead.
I've read accounts of the scene with Karloff breaking into Mae Clarke's boudoir and stalking behind her briefly unseen caused audiences to audibly freak out.
-------------------------
Here's Karloff doing his scary stalking best in Howard Hawks' The Criminal Code (1931), released before Frankenstein:
https://youtu.be/ekuRkpu4g5c?t=3887
There was a late Billy Wilder black comedy, a stinker apparently (sigh), teaming up Walter Matthau as a hitman and Jack Lemmon as Jack Lemmon, and another (non-Wilder) film where they were paired as rival ice fishermen. Combine the two and it could be in the wheelhouse of The Ice Harvest. I like Cusak and Billy Bob, I hadn't heard of The Ice Harvest, it sounds like they are doing their own black comic Fargo.
In Buster Keaton's short, The Frozen North, he is on a frozen lake with his fishing line in an ice-hole and, after an apparent bite on the line, yanks on it hard, pulling another nearby fisherman into his own ice-hole. There's also a sled-dog racing scene (when one dog comes up lame, he pulls a spare dog out of the trunk of his dogsled), and there's a moment when he leans against the wall of an igloo only to fall right through the slush. Combined with the usual thriller hijinks, there might still be black comic gold there yet.
So the story is already set in winter -- sort of.
------------------
Winter, December, Christmas, play hardly any role in this film, visually or thematically, if not for an accidental background shot or two with some tinsel (including a crucial one where Marion and Lowery spot each other at an intersection). In all the offices, front desks, homes, shops, stores, parlors, backrooms, church entrances, etc., not a single Christmas wreath, paper snowflake, styrofoam snowman, Santa, candy cane, etc. is to be seen.
Psycho plays to me like a hot-time-summer-in-the-city movie, with Gavin and Leigh, half-dressed, steaming up the sheets by an open window ("It's Friday anyway, and hot"), and slobbering millionaire Cassidy providing local weather and color ("It's hot as fresh milk...get your boss to air condition you up."), like some big old sweaty Tennessee Williams' Big Daddy type.
------------------
Still, a "snowy Psycho" (perhaps in American Midwest or Northwest state) might provide a different kind of experience.
------------------
I got through your whole post before I remembered....Fargo! And The Thing, if we're counting creature features.
-----------------
With Norman having to DRIVE through the snow to deliver the bodies to the swamp. And what if that swamp was iced over? A scene of Norman having to literally "break the ice" to sink Marion's car might be interesting.
-----------------
I'm surprised the Coen Brothers haven't done this one. And then later, as in with Goodfellas, he has to retrieve the body and relocate it. How preserved would poor Marion be in the icy water? But now we're getting into EC Horror territory.
Oops, just rechecked and Frenzy was sweet #16, and not #12 (The Valachi Papers).
So Frenzy just beats out Shaft's Big Score but lags behind Pete'n'Tillie. Sorry Hitch.
The Godfather was not just a cultural milestone but the #1 box office grosser of 1972 (https://www.the-numbers.com/market/1972/top-grossing-movies).
I looked up box office results for 1972 to see what other golden 50th anniversaries were coming up, and lo and behold, Happy 50th Anniversary to Frenzy (#12), released June 21, 1972. I guess I missed the fanfare.
We've got The Poseidon Adventure (#2, Dec 13, '72), Deliverance (#4, Jul 21), and Last Tango in Paris (#9, Oct 14) to look forward to, but next up, Deep Throat (#5, Jun 30). Which reminds me, it's also the 50th Anniversary of the Watergate break-in (June 17).
View all replies >