They showed it at my university and we payed two bucks to get in - Hitchcock version with an appropriately scratchy reel. I was pumped. I’ve heard nothing but good things about this movie. It’s one of my mother’s favorites and she watches it every time it’s on TV. It’s one of Hitchcock’s best, a classic of horror cinema, etc., etc.
It was CRAP! Not the least bit scary (although I did already know about the shower scene), only a little bit disconcerting when Norman and Marion were talking in the parlor (I kept expecting him to lunge at her after she set him off or something… nope, never happened). The music was the only thing adding a sense of fear, and it was more annoying than scary (my boy remarked, “If it weren’t for the music, this would be a comedy!”). The “explanation” of Norman’s disorder at the end was pure schlock - I HATE it when movies “explain” things at the end instead of leaving the viewer to figure it out for themselves. The only thing that kept me from throwing popcorn at the screen was the look on Norman’s face at the end - pure evil genius, yummy!
Maybe in its day, it was a masterfully done psychological thriller, showing a woman breaking free of a nasty love affair and paying for it, while injecting a bit of Freudian overtones for the pop psychologists in the audience to get their jollies from. But it sucks now, sucks, sucks, SUCKS.
Does anyone here absolutely love this movie, and can show me the error of my ways?
First off, you’ve lost the historic context. PSYCHO was ground-breaking in its day – even the blood swirling down the drain was more graphic violence than most earlier movies. Killing off the main character midway through the film was a shocker. The fact is that the standards for graphic violence (and horror) have evolved since then, and so from that perspective, PSYCHO is not as scary to a modern audience as one of the lame FRIDAY 13TH movies, say.
Second, you went into the movie already knowing the surprises – you were “waiting” for Norman to attack Marion? You already knew all the twists and turns? Like reading an Agatha Christie when you know the ending, you say, “What’s so puzzling about this?” Heck, you find the scariest movie you know and tell me all the scarey bits and I bet when I watch it, it won’t scare me. (There are some exceptions, like the first version of THE THING, from 1951 – when they open the door, I still jump, even though I’ve seen the flick a dozen times.)
I will grant you that the psychologist’s explanation at the end is weak.
But otherwise, I suggest you find Robin Wood’s book HITCHCOCK’S MOVIES and read the chapter on PSYCHO. Basically, it’s about the human condition: how supposed normalcy can lead to neurosis and to deeper, deadly psychosis. It’s about how the past can have a stranglehold on the present. It’s about existence – that our normal, quiet, stable lives exist on a knife’s edge; chaos, destruction, and death lurk just beneath our superficial reality.
That was a skull superimposed over his face, by the way.
So you weren’t creeped out by Vera Miles’ little stroll through the Bates house? The zoom on the bronze hands? The “jump” scene with the mirror? The oddly grim teddy bear and the Eroica symphony on the kiddie turntable? You didn’t wonder what that book was she picked up, and which is never explained?
I first saw this film in college, too, after having seen the shower scene excerpted a million times in television documentaries. But the attack on Arbogast…no one ever mentions THAT scene, and that freaked me out good and proper!
PSYCHO most emphatically IS a horror movie. The imagery and structure is lifted straight from the classic formula; it’s just transplanted into (what was then) a modern day setting, with a more “believable” explanation for the “monster” (psychosis instead of the supernatural).
Like many horror films, if you go into it just wanting to get off on some shock effects and jump-and-grab scares, you’re probably going to be disappointed. There are only a few overt shock scenes in the movie. The horror entertainment value actually comes from the atmosphere and the characters, trapped in their lives, trying to do the best the can with the cards they’ve been delt, and coming to horrible ends. The shower scene works not just because it has fast cuts and shrieking music, but because the plot has been structured to make us identify with Marion Crane as the protagonist. Then our identification is forced to switch to Norman, who seems to be this shy, nervous boy just trying to cover up for his mother.
Ultimately, PSYCHO is a great movie because the story works, which is to say that the surprise twist ending does not undermine all the came before. You can go back and watch it again, knowing the truth about Norman and Mother, and the film still makes sense. A lot of this is due to Anthony Perkins performance: you can read him as an innocent, or you can see the underlying threat of madness lurking somewhere inside.
NOTE: I would say there are SPOILERS in my post if my point wasn’t that Psycho has been spoiled for everyone already…
Psycho is one of many great works of art that have been ruined by their own greatness. Because they’re so famous, people are constantly making references to them, and because people constantly make references to them, no one ever gets the chance to experience the work fresh for the first time. Since all the “good parts” that made the work famous are already known beforehand, the work can’t help but feel a bit stale when you actually experience it. (Other examples would be Hamlet, Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth symphonies, the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, and Citizen Kane.)
By the way, having Norman lunge at Marion in the parlor wouldn’t fit either the plot or Norman’s character. It wouldn’t fit the plot because at that point the original audience still thought Norman’s mother was the killer, not Norman. (You already knew different, of course.) It wouldn’t fit Norman’s character because he’s incapable of confronting women directly–he can only do it in the guise of his mother.
CK Dexter Haven is right to say that Psycho is not a horror film, at least not in a modern sense. Its purpose isn’t to make you go “Eeeew, gross” but rather to make the audience feel tense for the duration of the movie. (Hitch was known as the Master of Suspense, after all, not the Master of Horror.) He creates this tension in Psycho by forcing you to identify with some very unsavory people. We identify with Marion, even though she’s a thief, because we’re made to see everything through her eyes. When she dies, Hitch turns the tables on us by making us identify with Norman as he cleans up after his murder. One of the most brilliant bits of audience manipulation in movie history is when Norman sinks Marion’s car, and it doesn’t sink all the way…you’re on Norman’s side, rooting for the car, and all the murder evidence, to sink!
Additionally, I think the shower scene works for suspense no matter how many times you see it.
The problem is that audiences have less appreciation for horror – they’re used to gross out. Psycho was deliberately filmed to avoid grossing people out.
As for the “explanation” of Norman’s psychosis, no one – not even Hitchcock – considered that an explanation of anything. Hitchcock said he put it there so the less astute viewer wouldn’t go home and say “why was he doing that?” The expanation is for them, but smarter viewers understand that it barely scratches the surface about what was happening.
I saw it a long time ago… now this MAY be a false memory, but when he sank the car with the gal in the trunk, didn’t she start banging on the trunk. Here you, and Bates thought that she’s dead already, and then continues to suffer. If you ask me, that’s freaky! 21y/o and I still think about that movie being frightening. It was a psychological thriller like The Blair Witch, only Psychos characters weren’t all complete rejects to the point where you want them to die.
I saw “Psycho” knowing all of the surprises and still enjoyed it. Anthony Perkins’ performance was much better than I was hoping for. In tbe beginning, when he’s laying the boyish charm on real thick, you don’t see ANY of the madness – most actors in similar roles are so interested in foreshadowing all the evil stuff they’re going to do that they’re pretty much creepy from the start, and you don’t get that great jarring effect when they go from good to evil. But Perkins really pulled it off. I also enjoyed the extended wordless sequence in the middle of the film – how many films are sufficiently concerned with atmosphere that they’ll make everybody stop jabbering for a few minutes?
Anyway, now that that’s out of my system (i’m a really huge fan…), I guess I should just say that it’s your opinion and you can hold which ever one you want. I thought the movie was very good, but it didn’t scare me as I knew a lot of it (read the book, then saw the remake, then saw original).
I agree, Anthony Perkins gave a top notch performance (and goshdarnit, he’s so cute :)).
I first saw Psycho (on dvd) a few months ago and I thought it was brilliant. I’d already seen all the famous bits on tv but I was not at all disappointed. It most certainly did not suck. Maybe you were expecting Freddy Kruger or a guy in a hockey mask? Psycho isn’t about supernatural monsters and things that go bump in the night. It’s about how that perfectly normal guy next door might be a freaking lunatic and you wouldn’t even know it until he stabs you.
I loved the suspense throughout the film. Tony Perkins was excellent. What “scared” me the most about it was how normal Norman appeared. I envy people that were able to see it back then and had no idea what to expect. I can well imagine they’d be shocked when he appears at the bottom of the steps in a dress and wig with that knife. My reaction (even though I was expecting him) was “That guy’s fucking crazy!”
I worked with a woman who saw the movie, with no advance knowledge of it, when it came out. She and another female friend were travelling and they were staying in a motel off US 101 near Santa Barbara.
She said when they got back from the movie, they were scared to death about going back in to their rooms.
I sort of knew what was going on when I first saw the movie in its entirety, around 1983. I thought it was a masterpiece, even though it had John Gavin in it.
As with most Hitchcock movies, the production was flawless and the direction the first of its kind in many ways. The story is tame by today’s standards and you already know how it turns out. So of course you aren’t gripping your seat. It was the most frightening thing in its day until the Exorcist (or maybe Rosemary’s Baby). I’ve never cared for slasher movies, but if you want to see how Hitch worked, this is the one.
I still remember the scene in the motel office, with Norman being questioned by Marion’s boyfriend. Just the way they were positioned, with Norman flinching under the questions, with that stuffed animal’s head glaring at us.
And it was a shock to see your lead character get killed early in the movie. Still could be. Imagine seeing “Die Hard” only to find Bruce Willis cut in half with a shotgun at the end of the first reel? That’s when you say, “Whoa! What’s going to happen next?”
In addition to everybody’s comments (particularly on Bates’ remarkably subtle performance), let me add another deft Hitchcock touch to Wumpus’ one about the car in the pond.
After Marion’s murder, Hitchcock (IIRC) removes the camera from the bathroom and tracks across the room to…the money in the newspaper! Here we’ve seen one of the most vicious, cold-blooded murders on screen up to that time, and the director knows what his audience is really worried about, implicating us in the process! And that’s it! Nothing happens to the money, it plays no further part in the story (the ultimate McGuffin). Nobody learns about Marion’s change of heart, and her road to redemption is cut short in the most brutal of fashions.
It sounds like the OP was expecting something much different (and dare I say less sophisticated). Too bad.