MilliCal, our ten year old daughter, loves scary movies. She’d heard about Psycho and we told her much about it (but didn’t spoil the ending). This weekend it was on Retro, so she wanted to watch it. We agreed.
She’s very clever and intelligent, with a highly retentive memory. It scares me sometimes – she’ll say something that involves a catchphrase from before she was born, and say that she heard it from Pepper Mill or from me, and she’ll work it into a joke or something. So I was curious to see what she’d do with Psycho.
She did better than I thought. "If that’s Norman Bates’ mother back at the house, " says the Sherriff, “Then who’s buried in the cemetary?”
So MilliCal says – “So is Norman pretending to be his mother? But why would he do that?”
“You’re not going to put me in that Fruit Celler. Am I just a piece of fruit?” complains Norman’s mom.
“I’ll carry you down, mother,” says Norman.
“Put me down! I can walk,” says Mrs. Bates.
“That doesn’t look like a real person,” says MilliCal, looking at that straight-from-overhead shot of Norman carrying Mom down the stairs. “A real person would be struggling more, and kicking their feet.”
So MilliCal maintains that she had it all figured out before the end.
Nevertheless, she put on all the lights when she was going to the bathroom before bed, something she NEVER does. And she slept with a coathanger by her side. And she got Pepper Mill up at 3 AM to take her to the bathroom.
Was she surprised by Janet Leigh getting sent to the showers so early in the flick? I understand that that really shocked people when the movie was first released. They all thought, “She’s the protagonist. She can’t die.”
Naah – we already told her about that. And she knew about the chocolate syrup. And how they spoofed this with newsprint in “Hifgh Anxiety”. Heck, they kept running a commercial parodying the shower scene throught the movie.
The Kid loves her PG-13 “I Know What You Did” type movies, reads scary books, though “Psycho” was cool, but “Rear Window” did give her pause.
However, she could not make it through “The Birds”. Totally freaked her out. I suppose it doesn’t help that we have a couple of crows that hand around our house caw-ing.
(I won’t even say how Stephen King’s “It” completely tweaked her out. She read the book and was okay. But the movie? I kept hearing her squeal so I told her to turn the channel. No, I want to watch it EEK! It was a looonnngggg night complete with nightlights, open doors, double checking all windows, stuffed animals and "What’s that noise Mom?!?!"s)
I think I was 13 when I first saw it, which would’ve been around 1966. I was utterly baffled until the big reveal ending…and contrary to most modern critics (including all Dopers) I really appreciated the psychiatric wrap-up, to explain what I’d just seen.
Hmm that’s an interesting point. I’ve always hated the ending because it feels like an add on. But I’m looking at it from someone who had heard enough about split personalities in movies (Having seen the film many years after its release) and so forth that I didn’t feel the need for the explainations.
Maybe it would have helped the audience of its day A) Understand what happened and B) unwind from teh tension they had felt.
Still My choice, had I been editor of that film, would have the last shot be the one of Norman in the nuthouse looking unhinged slow fade to black…silence Pause pause pause pause pause pause pause… Credits. Nothing like leaving a nervous audience in the dark for a while.
A sturdy wooden one with a heavy metal hook on it. Used properly, I think it could do a lot of damage. I told her not to use it on me if she called me in the night.
Yep.
She’s seen Poltergeist a few times, but not its sequels.
I’ve shown her bits of Aliens and The Thing (the Carpenter version), but she’s not that interested.
May I recommend to MilliCal two more good ones: Night of the Demon (1957) and The Haunting (1963), both available on DVD. Neither is violent, but both are scary.
