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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.
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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.
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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.
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Still, a "snowy Psycho" (perhaps in American Midwest or Northwest state) might provide a different kind of experience.
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I got through your whole post before I remembered....Fargo! And The Thing, if we're counting creature features.
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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.
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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).
Eight Normas a-bowing. This cellist has videos of her versions of themes from modern video games and TV shows like Mario Kart, Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, etc., so seeing a movie theme from 1960 really shows Psycho's durability. I like how she dressed up as Mama Bates. Also interesting was her version of Batman; she covers the 60s TV show theme rather than Danny Elfman's movie theme.
I enjoy this YouTube genre of one performer recording multiple layers of harmony, one at a time, and then editing it so all layers are onscreen at the same time. My favorite is the guy who records Beatles harmonies and I've even seen another cellist with a similar channel doing covers. Thanks for the link.
I saw the article, and from what I gather, the violinist in question is in her twenties, yet she's making a Psycho reference and expecting her readers to get it.
The shower scene still stands as an iconic depiction of a young woman helplessly trapped in a prolonged, agonizing nightmare, in this case, the very relatable feeling of performance anxiety. She even writes about tasting “the sour green smack of vomit” as she steps onstage. And she herself is providing the soundtrack to her own horror through her instrument. Hitchcock could've filmed it.
<blockquote>So now, Robert Forster has played a Simon Oakland role in a remake(Psycho) and Corey Stoll has played a Simon Oakland role in another remake(WSS.)</blockquote>
I wonder who will play the Simon Oakland role in Spielberg's upcoming Bullitt film (although it's not a remake so there might be all different characters):
https://deadline.com/2022/02/steven-spielbert-bullitt-at-warner-bros-and-amblin-1234960542/
Some interesting casting choices for Frank Bullitt in the comments, including Daniel Craig, Matt Damon, and, of course, Damian Lewis, who played McQueen in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollwood. Sounds exciting, but, as another commenter pointed out, Speilberg projects often get announced without getting made.
Sir Roger strikes me as a bit lesser than Connery and Caine as a star (and unlike the other two, he won no Oscars).
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Moore was knighted in 2003 for his humanitarian work with UNICEF, and yes, a charming fellow, like Caine, probably great fun to hang out with. Maybe not so much with Sir Sean.
<blockquote>Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Roger Moore joined to give one out(Two Bonds and a Caine.)</blockquote>
Or just Three Sirs (knighted in 2000, 2000, and 2003 respectively)
Thanks for the link. It was genuinely moving to see stories of New York piano bars filling up with people, singing his songs in tribute. And in an odd sort-of Psycho connection, his #25 pick, Night Must Fall, about a nice guy serial killer, was a part he connected with:
"In an interview last year, Sondheim claimed that he was an adept actor since his early years and always wanted to play dark characters. According to the late legend, he always had a penchant for playing mentally disturbed characters and was obsessed with one particular figure from the play Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams.
“I was good in college,” Sondheim claimed. “They always cast me, every play they did, if there was a very neurotic, self-destructive, gloomy, ‘Get Sondheim!’ I played every misfit. But there was one part I always wanted to play, which was Danny in Night Must Fall. It was about a serial killer, which is a play I had loved since I first read it when I was 12 years old. And once I played that part, I retired.” https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stephen-sondheim-40-favourite-films-of-all-time/
Robert Montgomery (also in Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith) played Danny in the film adaptation.
An interesting list by Stephen Sondheim of his 40 favorite films re-emerged after his passing last week:
1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Alfred L. Werker, 1939)
2. Bang the Drum Slowly (John D. Hancock, 1973)
3. The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand, 2003)
4. They Were Five (Julien Duvivier, 1936)
5. Character (Mike van Diem, 1997)
6. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
7. The Clock (Vincente Minnelli, 1945)
8. The Contract (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1980)
9. Dance of Life (Julien Duvivier, 1937)
10. Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden and Charles Crichton, 1945)
11. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
12. The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
13. Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)
14. Fresh (Boaz Yakin, 1994)
15. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
16. Hangover Square (John Brahm, 1945)
17. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
18. Henry Fool (Hal Hartley, 1997)
19. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
20. Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996)
21. A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
22. The Mind Reader (Roy Del Ruth, 1933)
23. The More, the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943)
24. The Nasty Girl (Michael Verhoeven, 1990)
25. Night Must Fall (Richard Thorpe, 1937)
26. The Oak (Lucian Pintilie, 1992)
27. The Official Story (Luis Puenzo, 1985)
28. The Organiser (Mario Monicelli, 1963)
29. Out of the Fog (Anatole Litvak, 1941)
30. Panique (Julien Duvivier, 1946)
31. Pygmalion (Leslie Howard and Anthony Asquith, 1938)
32. Adam’s Rib (Vyacheslav Kristofovich, 1990)
33. The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz, 1941)
34. A Slave of Love (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1976)
35. Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)
36. The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Zoltan Korda, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan and William Cameron Menzies, 1940)
37. This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
38. To the Ends of the Earth (Robert Stevenson, 1948)
39. Torchy Blane in Chinatown (William Beaudine, 1939)
40. War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1966-67)
<blockquote>Norman Bates makes it to the comic book movie (if not quite the Marvel universe yet.)</blockquote>
Psycho is not referenced in the Marvel Universe, but another Hitchcock movie is.
Suicide Squad Writer-Director James Gunn likes his Hitchcock Easter Eggs. Here's Gunn explaining one in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (which he directed and co-wrote, and is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyyOecwd_Sc
Another trope from Suicide Squad [SPOILERS AHEAD], pioneered by Psycho, is the unexpected early death of a major character, or in this case, group of characters. This joke seems lifted from Deadpool, where a group of fighters is introduced, one by one, Dirty Dozen style, each with their own quirks and goofy nicknames and backstories, as if they'll be with us for the whole movie mission, only to be all killed off in the first few moments of their first battle. The difference with Psycho being that they are never referenced again. Just completely expendable.
Another Psycho crossover: A mother-dominated polka-dot throwing guy who can't kill people unless he imagines they're his mother. At one point his face starts breaking out in polka-dots and John Cena says, "Norman Bates, if that...is contagious, we need to know."