Hitch on the Hump: Psycho (1960)- Part 1: We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes

“We all go a little mad sometimes.” is not only a quote from arguably Hitchcock’s finest film; it’s also one of the universal truths. Delving into a subject like Psycho, I felt like I was going a bit mad. Psycho belongs in the short list of films that have received literally millions of words from film scholars, critics, and rabid amateurs, like me, over the years. Attempting to take in as much as I could, I have immersed myself in the film. I have read countless critiques, poured over biographical information, and enough film theory to build a life size model of the Bates motel from paper mache (including a hundred page shot-by-shot breakdown of the film that made me have to take a long nap after its conclusion). Still, as I sit here to add my 2 cents, I have barely scratched the surface of the printed word on the subject. I hope that I can share some of the interesting things I‘ve learned and add something original of my own to the discussion of this great film.

Like many folks, I have a personal connection to the film. I can’t recall what age I was, but this was the first Hitchcock film I ever saw. I know I was young enough to be caught unaware of the secrets that the film contains, which I will spoil here shortly. If you don’t know what happens, I hope you’re as young as I was because you’ll get bored reading this fairly quickly. I, like the audience in 1960, was thrown off completely when Janet Leigh bit it at the halfway point in the film, and I thought Norman Bates, all stutters and nervousness, was being terrorized by a mother who would win Joan Crawford an award for good parenting. I can never get back to that pure experience, the first viewing of the shower scene, the first time the detective falls back down the stairs, or the first time the chair spins around slowly to reveal Mrs. Bates, but Hitchcock’s film never ceases to entertain or reveal layers upon layers built into its deceptively simple narrative. I started Hitch on the Hump for two reasons, to fill in a gap in my movie knowledge and to use what I learned to be able to explore Psycho further.

As usual with these reviews, I feel compelled to take the kernel of the idea back to the start. In 1957, Robert Bloch lived only 35 miles from Ed Gein. Gein went about the business of grave robbing and tanning the skins of recently deceased women in order to become closer to his dearly departed mother. (He also liked to cover chairs with skin, put skulls on his bedposts, plus when police raided his house they found “Pieces of salted genitalia in a box.”) Bloch had long been a fan of creepy stories, and was a particular fan of H.P Lovecraft who Bloch became friends when as a teenager. The same year Gein was arrested for his crimes, Bloch penned a split personality story called “The Real Bad Friend” which became the prototype for what would come. Two years later, he published his seventh novel, Psycho. He based the events of the book loosely on the Gein case, but not specifically on the murderer himself (similarly The Silence of the Lambs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and many more would plumb the depths of Gein mythology for their stories). Years later, he was surprised to learn “how closely the imaginary character I'd created resembled the real Ed Gein both in overt act and apparent motivation."

The novel garnered both good and bad reviews, but it came to the attention of the Master of Suspense in April of 1959 when the NY Times crime book reviewer called the novel “chillingly effective”. (Patricia Hitchcock’s biography of her mother, Alma, attributes the novel being brought to Hitch’s attention by his assistant Peggy Robertson.) Block was surprised when his agent approached him with a “blind bid”, one made anonymously, for the film rights. Bloch was paid between $9000 dollars reportedly for the rights, and he accepted though he had no idea where his novel was ending up. He was not too pleased when he learned that the buyer was MGM, purchasing the property for Hitchcock, and felt his fee was insultingly low. Indeed it was. Psycho would go on to become the most profitable of Hitchcock’s films returning many times over on its meager budget

Before he could bring his most well known film to the screen, he had to find the proper screenwriter. Hitchcock first approached James Cavanagh, an Alfred Hitchcock Presents writer and Emmy winner. Hitchcock gave Cavanagh a copy of Bloch’s novel and, as Steven Robello stated in his book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, eight pages of notes “in which the director laid out precise camera movements and sound cues for certain key sequences.” Cavanagh had the whole summer to work on the script, but when Hitchcock read the writer’s final script, he got as far as a scene that deviated from his instructions, read no further, and immediately discharged the writer from service. Though Cavanagh would not receive any screen credit, several key scenes in his draft would end up in the final film nearly intact.

The next candidate for Psycho’s script came from a background far outside of the norm for Hollywood screen scribes. Joseph Stefano had begun his career as a songwriter penning tunes for the likes of Sammy Davis Jr and Edie Gorme. He decided to take a stab writing a script based loosely off a family story, and he sold it quite quickly. That first script became the film The Black Orchid with Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren, and his agent used the film to try to push his client into the Psycho writing job. When Hitchcock was first considering writers, he screened The Black Orchid, but turned it off after a few minutes, deciding instead to go with Cavanagh. Now, with his first choice a washout, Hitchcock was prepared to give Stefano a chance and set up a meeting with the songsmith turned screenwriter. Stefano recounted his ideas for adapting the novel, and Hitchcock was delighted when Stefano described Marion “shacking up” with her beau. Stefano would later recall “the phrase "shacking up'' just kind of delighted him. I am not sure he had ever heard it.” He also thought that those two words “got me the job.” (Quite the good interview with Stefano at NYU can be found HERE and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the roots of the author and this film.)

Hitchcock gave Stefano with specific instructions as the director flew to Paris to promote the opening of North by Northwest. While Hitch was away, the director tasked Stefano to pen the opening scene in the hotel room which would set the tone for everything to come. When Hitchcock returned, he took the pages home with him where he and wife Alma read them. The next day Stefano was given one of the highest compliments in the world of Hitchcock, “Alma loved it.” Stefano later told in Pat Hitchcock for her book, “I was quite touched, because obviously, he liked it too. He was a sentimental man, but he wouldn’t show it.” Stefano continued his writing fearlessly, and penned many scenes that would be fodder for the censors to pick over. From the opening scene of a mid-day tryst, his daring to make a toilet flushing a integral part of the story, and the scandalous themes of voyeurism, murder, and oedipal insanity, Stefano’s script took chances in a way that a Hollywood author, penned in from years of working under the production code, may not have been brave enough to make. In November of 1959, Stefano and Hitchcock had lunch at the director’s home complete with a bottle of champagne on the rocks (Biographer John Russell Taylor quotes Hitchcock apologizing for “such a terrible solecism merely because they had no champagne properly chilled.”) Stefano and Hitchcock spent the rest of the afternoon going over the shooting script, and then, as Stefano recalled, the director began to look quite sullen and remarked, “The picture’s over. Now I have to go and put it on film.”

There was one last hurdle to overcome before Psycho could become the film that Hitchcock had envisioned, the studio. Hitchcock was under contract with Paramount, and studio head Y. Frank Freeman was aghast at the scandalous scenes that would have to be included to bring Psycho to fruition. It would be a major hurdle to get the film past the censors, of which Freeman was one, having accepted the job as the head of the MPAA. After a flurry or lawyers were thrown into the mix, a deal was finally made. Hitchcock would produce the film independently as an Alfred J. Hitchcock production with Paramount providing a shoestring budget of $800,000 dollars. The director would forgo his $250,000 salary in exchange for sixty percent of the profits from the film minus an agreed upon cut for the studio. After the studio recouped its investment, the film would revert to the director’s ownership, a decision that would lose Paramount quite a pretty penny in the long run. They also suggested that Hitchcock shoot Psycho on the Universal Studios lot to further distance Paramount from the movie. This would also be a mistake as Universal would rake in cash for years to come by being able to provide tours that showed off the Bates Motel and the house that loomed above it. It still stands at Universal Studios California and has been used for Psycho II, III, “Bates Motel” a failed TV pilot, and the 1998 remake.

Filming began on November 30, 1959 with a crew partially pulled from his TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, an idea that had come to him when he first entertained the notion of Psycho. He would carry some of his regular cohorts over to Universal for the film, and he enlisted Editor George Tomasini, veteran of six Hitchcock productions, Saul Bass, the innovative title designer of Vertigo and North by Northwest, and composer Bernard Herrmann. From the TV series, he enlisted cameraman John L. Russell, who had shot Sam Fuller’s 1952 film Park Row and every installment of the TV show that Hitchcock directed; and Assistant Director Hilton A. Green, who would go on to produce the Psycho sequels and less impressively Pauly Shore’s Encino Man and Son in Law. In a 1974 interview with Andy Warhol, Hitchcock noted his choice of crew was intentional. “"I made the picture Psycho with a TV crew because they're adjusted to this fast work. Nine minutes a day” Working at this pace, Hitchcock and the crew shot as much as they could each day, and they only slowed down for one important scene in the hotel shower.

For more on Psycho jump on over to Part 2:Mother! Oh God, Mother! Blood! Blood! and Part 3:We're All In Our Private Traps

Hitch on the Hump: Psycho (1960)- Part 2: Mother! Oh, God, Mother! Blood! Blood!

(Don't Miss Psycho-Part 1:We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes) Following Saul Bass’ title sequence, Psycho opens with a helicopter shot, and across the screen, it proclaims that we are looking at Phoenix, Arizona, Friday December 11th, Two Forty-Three P.M. The camera descends gradually into the window of a hotel and the aftermath of an afternoon delight between Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and Sam (John Gavin). This scene, the most important derivation that screenwriter Joseph Stefano made from the novel, would set the tone for the film allowing for the viewer to be instantly thrust into the role of peeping tom which never wanes throughout the film. The reality of the situation, Marion in her brassiere, Sam shirtless, the time, date and locale all laid out before the audience instantly gives the picture a feeling of real life. As William Rothman noted in his book Hitchcock- the Murderous Gaze, "Psycho's fiction is that its world is real.”

After a tiff with her lover Sam, Marion returns to work as a secretary at a real estate office. Incidentally, she passes Hitchcock on her way into the building and the director gives her a sidelong glance from under the ten-gallon hat perched on his head. She complains of a headache to her co-worker, played by Pat Hitchcock, who offers Marion some tranquilizers left over from her wedding night (a batch of lines that must have delighted the director and his bawdy sense of humor, even if they were coming out of his daughter’s mouth). Then the pivotal character in Marion’s life shows up, the rich, arrogant cowboy Tom Cassidy (Frank Albertson). He flirts with Marion and tries to impress her with the $40,000 dollars cash that he is paying for his soon to be wed daughter’s new home. Marion’s boss asks her to take the cash to the safe deposit box, and she asks if she can go home after to recover from her headache. At what point she makes her decision is impossible to say, but after she leaves we cut to her in her apartment as she packs her bags, the money peeking out of an envelope tossed casually on her bed.

Cassidy had bragged that he could “buy off unhappiness”, and the question is, is Marion merely taking his advice to the extreme? Her boyfriend is in a dead end job, fraught with debt and alimony payments. She is reduced to trysts with him in a hotel room, and then going home to live with her sister. Perhaps she is seeking revenge on men like Cassidy who feel like they can have anything they want, including her, if enough money is thrown around. Whatever reason for it, Marion takes off in her car, heading out of town, only to be spotted by her boss as he casually crosses the street. She takes off across the Arizona desert and crosses into California before she has to stop and sleep in her car for a while. She is awoken by a Highway patrolman in a set of dark glasses unrivaled until Cool Hand Luke, and the fear he instills in her mirrors Hitchcock’s lifelong phobia of policemen.

She travels though the California countryside ending up caught in a torrential rainstorm, though her wipers are working furiously her vision partially obscured by the downpour. (As William Rothman noted, “in retrospect we may recognize the rain and the vision of the [wiper] blade as prophetic of her fate".) Finally, off the main highway, she pulls into the parking lot of the Bates Motel that lurks in the shadow of a “California Gingerbread” home above it. A man comes down from the house, introducing himself as Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). She signs into the hotel under an assumed name, but agrees to have a bite of dinner with Mr. Bates. As she settles into her room, she overhears an argument between Norman and his mother in the house, perhaps something Norman intended to hear when he opened the window in her room to make it less stuffy. When he returns, they retire to his parlor behind the office for sandwiches and milk. They talk. She learns that Norman does taxidermy for a hobby, that a boy’s mother is his best friend, and that sometimes we all fall into personal traps. Marion knows she is in one, and decides to return to Phoenix to face her fate, whatever that would be.

After tallying up the money she has spent and flushing the torn up figures down the toilet, she undresses to take a shower. Little does she know that she is being watched by Norman as she undresses. The camera cuts back and forth between Marion and Norman’s watchful eye until she enters the shower. There she cleans herself, symbolically washing away her crime. She intends to emerge renewed, and after a good night’s sleep, do the right thing, but she never gets a chance. A figure of a woman appears as a shadow seen though the curtain. A hand grasps the shower curtain and pulls it back, and she screams as the knife slashes down. Marion falls. Reaching out for help that will not come or to try to save herself, she pulls the curtain down and falls to the floor. Her blood stains the walls, appears on the knife, and swirls down the drain.

This scene, set some forty-five minutes in, is the defining moment of the film. Undoubtedly, it is the most violent moment in the movie, and Hitchcock said as much many times noting, “the showing of the violent murder at the beginning was to instill in the minds of the audience a certain degree of fear of what is to come. Actually in the film, as it goes on, there's less and less violence because it has been transferred to the minds of the audience.” It’s a masterfully constructed piece of work that not only shows the skill of the director, but also of his chosen editor George Tomasini. There are thirty-four individual cuts that lead up to Marion’s death in the shower, but the sequence actually begins when she flushes the toilet and we are greeted with the swirling waters swirling down (the first time that such a thing had been seen on film). Almost everything after will be reflected in one way or another. Marion’s lifeless eye calls back to Norman’s staring through the wall. Both eyes are set in a tight shot, and while Norman sets the voyeuristic tone for the scene, Marion’s blank stare ends the action with a note of finality that could not be stronger.

The whole scene is built by setting up the audience as the ultimate voyeur. We shared the experience of Norman Bates as he peeped in on Marion, and now we are sharing her shower, but as the curtain opens, Marion disappears from the frame and the audience is left facing the knife-wielding killer. The scene takes us from being a voyeur to the intended victim. We even see the killer before Marion, and by the time she turns her screams are being drowned out by the shrieking violins of Bernard Herrmann’s score. As many times as I’ve seen it, I always know she screams, but I can’t ever remember hearing it.

The scene is shocking, and the audience in 1960, like me as a child, is left bewildered. Marion was our lead actress, and now with half of the movie left, she is dead. It is a credit to Hitchcock that the film is so compelling that we want to know what is going to happen next. Hitchcock noted that, "I was actually seven days on that little thing; it's only 45 seconds" Yet in those few seconds, Hitchcock turned cinematic convention on its ear while flouting censorship with the risqué scene. It’s interesting to see how people remember this scene, from a black and white film, as being enormously bloody. Little blood (or chocolate syrup as the case may be) is seen, the knife never pierces Marion’s body, and no blatant nudity is seen. There is nudity though. While Janet Leigh’s body was covered with strategically placed moleskin, Hitchcock also filmed the scene in slow motion with a body double. In his interview with Warhol, Hitchcock even went so far as to plainly state that “there was nudity in Psycho.”

Through a note being written by Marion’s lover, Sam Loomis, we are transported away from Norman Bates cleaning up the mess that his mother has made, and into the heart of the second act of the film. The structure is not unlike that of Vertigo, a film criticized for being built of two episodic parts. In Sam’s hardware store, we quickly meet the rest of the characters who will inhabit the final half of the film. Vera Miles appears as Lila Crane, Marion's distraught sister who wants to help her sister before it’s too late, and Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam), a detective hired by Cassidy to return his money shows up with questions for Lila and Sam. The meeting of the three of them forms the basis for the investigation into Marion’s disappearance, and Arbogast tracks her to the Bates motel.

The detective questions Norman Bates who gets increasingly nervous. He denies Marion had been there, but then a slip of the tongue forces him to admit that she was. After informing Sam and Lila of his findings, Arbogast sneaks into the Bates’ home, intent on questioning Norman’s mother. After all, Norman said, “She might have fooled me, but she wouldn’t fool my mother.” This leads to the second stunning sequence in the film. The detective enters the house, and slowly he begins to climb the stairs. The camera follows him, but then it positions itself high above him. When he reaches the top, a woman with a knife attacks him from a doorway. With the camera so high above, we can’t see her face, but it’s not noticeable, something Hitchcock wanted to avoid so it didn’t feel like “cheating.” After he is attacked, Arbogast falls back down the steps in what must be considered one of the best and most seamless composite shots of Hitchcock’s career. As he falls, it feels like he is gliding down. His arms flail in front of him as the floor rises up behind him. While the shower scene is a lesson in editing, Arbogast’s death is a study in technique. Hitchcock combined a dolly shot going down the stairs with an overlay of Balsam’s fearful form to give the death a dreamlike (or nightmarish) quality.

Soon enough it falls to Lila and Sam to travel to the Bates motel and uncover what has happened to Arbogast. Though I assume that most folks have seen the film, I am going to refrain from describing the last act in detail. The sequence of revelations perfectly frames the film, and it encapsulates Hitchcock’s whole idea for the film. “It's no different than a man who designs a roller coaster. The man hammers the nails and the screws in seriously, but the result is going to be screaming.” Hitchcock did not see Psycho as some deadly serious affair. It was a thrill ride, and like all great rides, after the first big thrill, each subsequent shock is lesser because it is still feeding off the energy of the first. By the time the ride ends, it is a series of gentle scares meant to keep the blood pumping, but its ultimate goal is to let you off the ride easily and intact.

Hitchcock’s thrill ride would break attendance records all over the world, and by the end of the year the $800,000 film had made more than 15 million dollars in foreign and domestic sales. This made Psycho the second highest grossing film of the year behind Ben Hur, which had a budget of 11 million. Critical reaction was all over the map with Time magazine calling it “gruesome”, Esquire labeling it “a reflection of an unpleasant mind”, and the New York Daily News giving it four stars. Hitchcock knew his film would not please everyone, and in his interviews with Francois Truffaut he remarked, "People will say, 'It was a terrible film to make. The subject was horrible, the people were small, there were no characters in it.' I know all of this, but I also know that the construction of the story and the way in which it was told caused audiences all over the world to react and become emotional." This holds true even today. Even though most viewers know the plotting of the film, it is a perennial favorite that draws in fans of genre film and mainstream cinema alike.

Jump on back to Psycho-Part 1:We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes or keep on reading with Psycho:Part 3: We're All In Our Private Traps

Hitch on the Hump: Psycho (1960)-Part 3: We're All In Our Private Traps

(Don't forget to check out Part 1:We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes and Part 2: Mother! Oh, God, Mother! Blood! Blood!)If some people thought, as Hitchcock said, that “the people were small, there were no characters in it” then I’m not sure what film they were watching. While in Psycho none of the characters gets a laid out story arc exploring their emotional or psychological archetype, each of the actors owns their part. Even the minor characters, the cop, the car salesman, or Cassidy are all so real that it reinforces the film’s desire to make its cinematic world ring true. As with each of his films, Hitchcock was meticulous with casting, and though he ended up making some minor concessions, the choices he made were all actors who could handle the intense material that the film presented.

Even before Joseph Stefano was brought on to script the film; Hitchcock had already cast the lead role of Norman Bates. Anthony Perkins had the looks of a teen idol, and he had even recorded albums of pop music. Before Psycho, he shared the screen with Audrey Hepburn, Spenser Tracy, and Gray Cooper, but after he performed in Hitchcock’s film, he would be forever linked to the Norman Bates character. Though he performed in many other films, including Orson Welles’ excellent adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, he would never really escape the character, and eventually he would embrace it returning to play Norman three more times. When he and Hitchcock met, the director instantly liked the bright young man, and Perkins was up to the task of playing the murderous cross-dresser. He was also a homosexual, which was a well known Hollywood secret, and Hitchcock must have known that this would inform his performance as well as create buzz in the industry about the role.

Perkins embodied the character, and brought much of the nervous habits and tics that made Norman so memorable. The biggest addition Perkins made was Norman’s hesitating stutter that becomes more pronounced when he get’s nervous. This sense of hesitation about his whole being informs every decision that he makes. There are a hundred little things that be read into the slightest action such as when he pauses before deciding to hand Marion the key to cabin 1. Is it because she had lied to him by giving a fake name? , Or perhaps because she seems dismissive of him while he is clearly attracted to her. Does he know he is assigning her to murder? Or does he just plan to spy on her, oblivious of his "mother" side and what she may do.

It’s hard to say, and for the original viewers of the film, impossible. Norman Bates could have been a passing character like the car dealer or the cop, or perhaps a love interest that will seek to redeem another naughty Hitchcock blonde. I doubt many people expected he would get in granny drag and knife her down. When asked if there were clues to Norman’s predilection Hitchcock said, “the basic clue was the feminine nature of the character altogether.” Perkins performance is fantastic, and I am constantly amazed how sensitive and interesting he makes the character. (There’s a nice interview with Mr. Perkins on the whole series HERE.)

This is a film that challenges you to change loyalties, from Marion and hoping she won't get caught, to Norman at the whim of his murderous mother, and then finally to Vera Miles when we learn more about Norman's dark secret. The women of the film have the least amount of development, but all we need to know about Marion is that she has found a solution to the malaise in her life. Janet Leigh had appeared as the sexy wife of Charlton Heston in Orson Welles Touch of Evil in 1958, and her role in Psycho played up that sex appeal even further. The veteran actress has been on the screen since 1947, and she was a firmly established star. Yet that is only part of why Hitchcock cast her in the role. The shock of the major star getting off-ed at the halfway point would be shocking, but Hitch was interested in her because he wanted someone “who could actually look like she came from Phoenix”. Leigh remarked that he wanted someone with “vulnerability and softness.” As usual, Hitchcock was deeply involved in how her character looked, and all of her costuming, styles that a typical secretary would wear, were purchased off the rack. Even her bras came into question when the costume department wanted to make them custom. Hitchcock stated plainly, “That won’t work for the character. We want that underwear to be identifiable to many women all over the country.” It was another case of Hitchcock making sure that Psycho asserted its reality at every turn.

Vera Miles had originally been the director’s first choice for the lead in Vertigo, but when the actress became pregnant, he recast the role with Kim Novak. Hitchcock had been interested in making her into his next Grace Kelly, but after the pregnancy the director “couldn’t get the rhythm going with her again.” He did cast Miles as Lila Crane, but the role was mostly thankless. As the lead female in the end of the film, she was overshadowed by the mystery of the Bates Motel, and apart from the memorable scene where she encounters Mrs. Bates for the first time, she leaves little impression. Where the first half of the film is Marion’s, the second half belongs to Norman Bates and Mother. Miles must have known that though when she called the film “the weirdy of all times.”

The supporting male roles fade further into obscurity the deeper you get into the cast. John Gavin was not his choice for Sam Loomis, but the director halfheartedly said “I guess he’ll be alright.” Sam and Lila are meant to be stick figures to guide the audience through the last half of the film, and Hitch required little from their performances. Gavin does have the distinction of having worked for two of the great directors in the same year as he also showed up in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus as Julius Ceasar. For the role of the doomed detective, Arbogast, Hitchcock cast Martin Balsam after seeing his performance in Twelve Angry Men. In Sydney Lumet’s film, Balsam plays a massive jackass, and just as broadly, he made Arbogast so slimy you can practically feel the sleaze coming out of the screen. It makes his death scene all the more satisfying, and after the first character killed was one the audience was sympathetic to, it was probably a wise choice to make the second someone we could not wait to see killed.

I want to mention a few small performances that make quite the impact on the film. Speaking of slimy, Frank Albertson’s braggart cowboy was practically asking for Marian to steal his money, and the small role which serves as a catalyst to the whole film should be applauded. Mort Mills was a TV character actor for more than twenty years, but his stone face captured the look that I think every highway patrolman tries to put on before he hits the road. Mills would return for another bit part in a Hitchcock film when he would portray the farmer in the Cold War potboiler Torn Curtain. John Anderson provides some comic relief in the middle of Marian’s tense sequence following her encounter with the cop. His car dealer seems very real, and he should. Hitchcock had a team go to Phoenix and photograph car salesmen so the look would be just right.

Perhaps the unsung hero of the film was Jeanette Nolan as the voice of Mrs. Bates. Nolan’s screen debut was in 1948 as Lady Macbeth in the Orson Welles’ version of the play (there seems to be a lot of Welles connection with this film), but her needling diatribes lambasting Norman Bates are surely her most memorable role. Unfortunately, no one knows who it was even though she has the last lines in the movies (“I wouldn’t kill a fly.”) Nolan should be given the respect she deserves. Would we have had a Mrs. Voorhees if not for Mrs. Bates? Maybe Norman and Jason should get together and compare notes sometime.

The other shining star in the film doesn’t make an onscreen appearance, but he didn’t have to go down in film history and pop culture. Even if someone is not very familiar with the film, if you ask the average person, they can probably imitate the “reeet reeet reeet” stabs of the violins that accompany the shower scene. Bernard Herrmann was told by Hitchcock that the shower scene would be silent, but Herrmann, in a stroke of genius, scored the scene anyway. As soon as Hitchcock heard the music, there was no doubt that the scene would have sound. The rest of the score in the film is equally as well composed, and from the opening titles, the score has as much to do as any camera angle or performance in making the film what it became.

Speaking of sound in the film, I want to share a story that has always stuck with me even though I could not find the tale recounted anywhere to quote from it. It is well known that the sound of the knife stabbing Marion is actually a blade piecing a Casaba melon, and the story I heard long ago has to do with how that particular melon was chosen. As I recall, the sound engineer called Hitchcock in to try out various sounds for him. The Master of Suspense sat in a chair with his back to the soundman and his eyes closed. One by one, a line of melons were stabbed with each one being announced for the director. After they were done, Hitchcock did not hesitate. He got out of his chair, said simply “Casaba”, and left the room. I have only my memory of a documentary viewed long ago to go on for that one, but I would surely like it to be true even it its not.

The last tale of Psycho I have for you has to with the influence that Alma Hitchcock had over the film. In Pat Hitchcock’s book about her mother, The Woman Behind the Man, she states that it was Alma who first looked at Hitch’s script for Psycho and suggested that he might be able to “get away with it if he shot it in black and white.” She also saved the film from containing a devastating goof. The film had been viewed by a series of editors, studio men, and Hitchcock many times, but when Alma watched the final print she had one minor problem. "It's great, but you can't ship the picture yet." Hitchcock asked "Why not?" trying to figure out what was wrong with it. And she replied, "Because when 'Janet Leigh is lying dead on the bathroom floor after she has been stabbed, you can see her swallow." so a few frames were cut and the shot goes from Marion lying dead to the shower head and back to Marion. A scene meant to make the audience swallow hard, and not the dearly departed leading lady.

There are thousands of little stories that stem from Psycho. I could literally go on forever recounting every little anecdote or deconstruction that I have encountered, but if you’ve managed to make it this far, then I feel like I should relent. Psycho is a film that gets better every time I see it, and my enthusiasm for the film has rarely if ever been rivaled. It’s hard to say that any film is perfect, but Psycho sure does a hell of a job getting close. While the film holds great surprises for the first time viewer, it never fails to amaze. I still pick up on things in it even after twenty years of seeing this film on a fairly regular basis. If for some reason you haven’t seen it, or it’s been a while, then take this time to revisit this classic. While Hitchcock is known for his crime and suspense stories, Psycho is why Hitchcock matters to horror fans, and there’s good reason for it. Now if you’ll excuse me, its time for me too have a seat and draw up a nice safe bath.

Bugg Rating