Ah, you want to check in? Very good. We don’t get many people wanting to stay now that the new freeway’s gone through – diverts all our customers away. Say, you look tired, why don’t you take Cabin One, it has a nice big shower in it- Yes, you go unwind with a nice hot soak. The plumbing here is very old- just ignore any noises from the shower that sound like staccato violins. Shout out if you need me I’ll be right here sharpening the cutlery and reviewing Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (Wednesday May 13, Fox Classics, 6:30pm).
Unless you’ve spend the intervening 4 decades down in the fruit cellar, you probably already know about Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror masterpiece. Those of you with no shame might also recall the atrocious, Gus Van Sant-helmed remake in 1998, which was, bizarrely, a shot-for-shot remake using the unchanged 1960 script that therefore added nothing but colour to proceedings (okay, it also gave us some nice shots of Viggo Mortensen’s butt, so at least it wasn’t a *total* fershlugina). But the original 1960 Hitchcock film is one of only a handful of movies that actually made a huge cultural impact in the audiences who saw it (THE EXORCIST, STAR WARS, JAWS…). PSYCHO is regarded as the father (or should that be mother?!) of all modern Slasher films- without it, there would be no HALLOWEEN, no FRIDAY THE 13TH, no NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and countless people worldwide would be able to take a shower late at night without turning on every light in the house and leaving the bathroom door wide open. Unthinkable!
PSYCHO, for the benefit of the taxidermied, is the story of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary who makes a spontaneous decision to steal $40,000 from her employer. Fleeing and guilt-ridden, she stops for the night at a decrepit-looking but quiet motel run by the shyly friendly Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and his bed-ridden, over-bearing mother. Marion talks with Norman and decides to take the money back and face the consequences. Much relieved, she goes to her room for a welcome, baptismal shower- and meets Mrs. Bates, who is not only surprisingly spry for her age and condition, but plays a mean game of pin the blade on the secretary.
PSYCHO is an amazing, ground-breaking work. Hitchcock’s film (based on the book of the same name by Robert Bloch, published in 1959, which was itself based on the real-life case of Wisconsin madman Ed Gein). It introduced gob-smacked audiences to such themes as Incest, Matricide, Necrophilia, Human Taxidermy, Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka ‘Split Personality’) and Transvestitism in a cinematic decade more used to films like THE SOUND OF MUSIC- only this time, the hills were alive with the sound of Bernard Herrmann’s terrifying staccato violins. The scrape of the strings even freaked Hitchcock out when he first heard it (originally, the shower scene was to have no music track at all). In addition, PSYCHO had the audacity to kill off its heroine half-way through the picture, and if that didn’t tip an audience off balance, it’s also on record as the first film ever to show a toilet flush onscreen. No wonder people were fleeing the cinema (‘Auuugh! I can handle the homicidal cross-dressing, but the sound of that crapper flushing will haunt me forever!’)
The cast is mostly phenomenal. Janet Leigh is great as Marion; in-love with a married man and on the run with a small fortune (which probably wouldn’t have covered the catering budget for the 1998 remake), it’s a credit to Leigh that she makes Marion very sympathetic before Hitch pulls the bathroom rug out from under her (and then wraps her corpse in it and chucks it in the swamp). Gay actor Anthony Perkins is quite simply astonishing as Norman Bates- alternately sweet, naïve, awkward and terrifying- he was so wonderful in the part that it followed him around like a poorly-stuffed relative for the rest of his career- but, asked in the late Eighties whether he would have taken the part if he’d realized the type-casting that was to follow, he didn’t hesitate to reply ‘Yes.’
Things to look out for – Hitchcock’s trademark cameo (watch for him at the 7 minute mark wearing a cowboy hat by a window); the use of shadows and reflections to impart vital information, the persistence of birds in the movie (Norman stuffs birds as a hobby and Marion’s last name is ‘Crane’), the sneaky moments of misdirection (just before the shower scene, Hitch includes a shot of Norman running away from the motel and up to the house) and the sly moments of dark humour (‘Mother’s not feeling herself today’).
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