# Was "Psycho" spoilled for you? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 20, 2015, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946 "2015-12-20T20:17:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/21 "2015-12-22T01:58:47Z")
_Witness for the Prosecution_ (1957), by Billy Wilder, was just on TCM. At the start it says (quoting IMDB): > [@](#): > > Before the film begins, a message appears onscreen saying that to avoid ruining the effect of the surprise ending, patrons should not take their seats during the last few minutes of the movie. At the closing credits it says: > [@](#): > > As the end credits appear on screen, an announcer’s voice is heard: “The management of this theater suggests that for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending of Witness for the Prosecution.” This might be where Hitchcock got the idea for the publicity about not giving away the ending; it could have been a Hitchcock film. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/22 "2015-12-22T02:01:26Z")
Even if you know Janet Leigh is going to be killed in the shower, it’s still a tense and exciting scene. Hitchcock was great at that. The perfect example for me was in _North by Northwest_. I was visiting my aunt and stopped in a library to look around. There was a book about Hitchcock which had a shot-by-shot analysis of the crop duster scene. I figured I’d probably never see it (this was in the early 70s, before VCR), so I read the analysis and saw every shot in the scene. After I finished, I went back to my aunt’s house and turned on the TV. Yup, they were showing _North by Northwest_. And, yup, I turned it on just as the crop dusting scene began. Even though I had seen a drawing of every shot in the scene, it was still gripping to watch. ---
**Author:** ![Shearer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/57b2e6/32.png) [@Shearer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shearer)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2015, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/23 "2015-12-23T06:39:42Z")
Proof that spoilers can’t spoil a great film. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2015, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/24 "2015-12-23T12:55:10Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Some of that was undoubtedly simple marketing hype (anyone who had read the novel knew what would happen), but some of it was undoubetdly legitimately not wanting to spoil a good thriller. There’s no doubt there was a marketing hype angle – it’s Hollywood after all – but Hitch went to the effort of buying up all the loose copies of the novel he could find to limit that route of spoiling it. When people would complaint to Robert Bloch (the novelist) about being leery of taking a shower after seeing the movie he’d just grin and tell them in the first draft, she was murdered on the toilet. I saw it first-run as a kid so it was not spoiled. The two murders scared the bejeebus out of me, but the undercurrents of the Norman/mother thing went clear over my little head. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2015, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/25 "2015-12-23T13:37:29Z")
Yes. I got interested in horror movies very young, after seeing the original _King Kong_ when I was in second grade or so. But in those days, before VCRs and such, there was no easy way to see a particular movie when you wanted to–you had to rely on them being shown on TV or at a revival theater (of which there were none in my hometown). So in lieu of seeing them, I read everything I could get my hands on about horror films. This was the 1970s, and there were a surprising number of books aimed at kids about horror and monster movies. None of them paid much attention to what we would call “spoilers” today, so they tended to give complete plot descriptions, complete with revealing the endings, of the films they were talking about. The result was that, not just for _Psycho_, but for almost all of the classic horror movies, I knew the plots, and often the significant cinematic moments, for years before I finally saw any of them. I suspect that this accounts for my rather lackadaisical attitude about spoilers. I just don’t care that much about being “spoiled,” and never have. Oh, I don’t particularly seek out spoilers, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid them, either. As I’ve said before, I’ve always felt that if simply knowing the plot can truly _spoil_ a movie, then it’s probably not much of a movie. The experience of seeing a film is (or should be) so much more than simply following the plotline from A to B to C. As **RealityChuck** says, even if you know what’s going to happen to Janet Leigh beforehand, the scene still works. That’s because Hitchcock was a great director, and was doing more than simply throwing a “shocking twist” at the audience. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/26 "2015-12-23T17:19:55Z")
I was born in 1965, and I didn’t see the movie (on TV) until the mid to late 70’s. My grandma spoiled the shower scene a little, so the murder was not a surprise. My grandma was actually merely trying to communicate the idea that this movie, for her, was scary because of it’s more gritty, realistic depiction of violence than she was used to seeing up to that point. Compared to _Jaws_, though (for me, a near contemporary in my personal viewing timeline), the idea of blood swirling around a drain strainer didn’t have the same impact for me. But I was totally caught off guard by the Norman/mother plot twist, though! That was not spoiled. That little smirk Norman does into the camera at the end of the movie, is still a simple, yet effective scene, for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2015, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/27 "2015-12-23T22:54:57Z")
When I first saw it as a teenager on TV in the early Eighties, I’m 99% sure that I knew about the significance of the shower scene. That was surely what the film was largely famous for by that point: killing off the female lead so unexpectedly. Abrogast’s death I didn’t know about. Yet while I think it’s brilliantly done, I don’t quite remember being _shocked_ by it on that first viewing. Nor did I know about the ending. I can say that with some confidence, because I figured out where the hints were leading to as I watched it. For, seeing it in the company of my brothers, neither of them (also seeing it for the first time) objected that that was just common knowledge when I suggested halfway through that “he’s taxidermied his mother”. That was as new a suggestion to them as it was to me. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2015, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946/28 "2015-12-24T06:21:56Z")
> [@Mudshark](#): > > I was about 8 when I saw Psycho on video for the first time, so no. I don’t have any recollection of having previous knowledge. Yeah, I saw it when I was only nine or ten and didn’t have a lot of foreknowledge about it. I do believe I’d heard that the guy was nutty about his mom, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-psycho-spoilled-for-you/740946.md?page=1)