Directed
by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring
Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John
McIntire, Simon Oakland
R
for unspecified reasons (dated; PG-13 would be more suitable for some intense
scenes of terror/violence, thematic material and brief sensuality/partial
nudity).
SCAREmeter: 5.5/10
GOREmeter: 4/10
OVERALL: 4 out of 4 stars
Alfred Hitchcock famously guarded the
plot points of PSYCHO with an incredibly jealous zeal, refusing to allow his
stars to do publicity for the film, refusing to allow early screenings for film
critics and appearing on marketing materials pointing to a wristwatch and advertising his policy
that no patrons be admitted after the film had started. He even bought out all the copies that he could
find of the book that his new film was based upon, all in order to create the
most potent shocks that anyone had ever seen in a movie. But except in the most incredible cases of
cultural illiteracy, those secrets are no longer secrets, but are now some of
the most well known revelations in cinematic history. Even if, through the most extreme of cases,
someone had no knowledge of the plot of PSYCHO, the startling impact of the
film can never ever be replicated as it was in 1960, due to changing cultural
circumstances of multiple types. Plus, since everyone else does, I'm going to be writing about the film without regard for secret-keeping, so that's your fair warning.
The film's second half involves Marion's sister, Lila (Vera Miles), who teams up with Sam in trying to locate Marion's whereabouts, while Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam), a private detective hired by the obnoxious oil baron who was spending the $40,000 to buy a house as a wedding present for his daughter, also looks for Marion. Arboghast traces her to the Bates Motel, and Norman gets awfully nervous under the questioning, but never yields, and when Arbogast starts snooping around in the affairs of Norman's mother, he winds up dead and in the swamp, too. Finally, Lila and Sam show up at the motel to see for themselves about Norman Bates and his mother.
In the second big twist of the movie, Lila finds Mrs. Bates sitting in the Bates home fruit cellar, and when she puts her hand on her shoulder, Mrs. Bates twists around to reveal a skeleton, tightly wrapped in leathery, preserved skin, and as the famous screeching violins play, Lila turns around to see Norman, dressed in drag with a wig, wielding the knife just before Sam takes him down from behind.
This is not quite the ending yet though, and the ending itself is a major point of controversy for film scholars, with many holding it in disdain. The final scene of Norman in the holding cell accompanied by a Mrs. Bates voice-over is brilliant of course ("They'll see and they'll know, and they'll say, "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly..."), but the scene just before that, in which a psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) gives a lengthy explanation of Norman's psychosis with pulp psychology, is a scene with few defenders. The film is an undisputed major classic, and deservingly so, but this scene, explaining that Norman murdered his mother and her lover then split his personality between himself and his mother, and the mother has now taken over, is as maligned as THE PHANTOM MENACE. It suggests an insult to the intelligence of audiences, by having provided just enough to get by throughout the film as a whole, but then beating it all in with a long-winded and heavy-handed monologue as if the audience couldn't piece it together themselves. Certainly the film would be better served without the scene, but it doesn't ruin it for me, it just seems like an extended corny joke that Hitchcock for some reason could not resist. Simon Oakland's Dr. Richmond is like the inexplicably informed genius who comes in at the end of a Scooby-Doo-style mystery to divulge all the information about what just happened, just in case you were a little too scared.
The stories of the making of PSYCHO are some of the most legendary of Hollywood stories. Books like the intensively research Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (1990) have detailed every possible aspect of the film's production, and in 2013, a film adapted from that book, HITCHCOCK, was released starring Anthony Hopkins as the titular director (the critical response was overall positive but lukewarm; I, however, thoroughly enjoyed it, even if it favored the story of his marriage of the events during production, while also taking some significant liberties).
It's status as one of the most prominent landmarks in the history of cinema, not to mention 20th Century art, is practically infallible, bringing modern art into a coming of age with sex and violence, introduced themes of serial killers and psychosis as prominent figures in the horror genre in ways that they had not been used before, effectively inventing the 'slasher' sub-genre. It threw away the chains of old plot conventions by killing off a main character in the first half of the film and with a mind-blowing reveal at the finale, but what's important is that it worked. Any movie can do things different, but only if it does things differently successfully does it really matter in the grand scheme.
It is also one of the most prominent examples of Hollywood films that marked the erosion of the Motion Picture Production Code's authority, which had kept an iron grip on what content was permissible in major motion pictures since 1934, when pressure from morality watchdog organizations and the threat of government-instituted censorship forced the major studios to enforce the Code previously instituted in 1930. In a case later overturned in 1952, the United States Supreme Court had unanimously ruled in Mutual Film Corporation vs. Industrial Commission of Ohio of 1915 that the right of free speech did not extend to motion pictures, so government authorities could ban films, and while conservative groups were clamoring about "morally questionable" behavior in the heavily Jewish populous of Hollywood leaking into their product, the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) (later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)) enlisted the former Postmaster General under the Harding Administration and Presbyterian elder William Hays as President of the MPPDA to rehabilitate Hollywood's image, including the institution of production code drafted by a couple of religious leaders and then slightly amended by the MPPDA. Under Hays, the Code was largely inconsequential, barely a Band-Aid solution to the threat of film censorship boards, but when Joseph Breen was made President of the MPPDA, the heavily religiously-influenced Production Code, popularly called the Hays Code, was rigidly enforced. Many of the elements in the code, specifically when contrasted with what was allowed is offensive by today's sensibilities, such as a stipulation prohibiting depiction of "white slavery" and another which prohibited "any inference of sexual perversion," was especially in reference to homosexual characters. Furthermore, subversive commentary was all but prohibited, and "ridicule of the clergy" and interracial relationships (namely, between "white and black races") were strictly prohibited. Many of these stipulations were listed as being ironclad, immovable without respect for context, and when the Code was not specific enough, it was up to the Breen Office to decide for themselves.
Anyway, Hitchcock, as well as many other filmmakers, were already veterans of finding ways through vague symbolism and loopholes to get their points across in film (Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS (1946) got past a three-second limit on kisses by breaking off every three seconds for two-and-a-half minutes), but PSYCHO proved to necessitate some special negotiating. It helped that Hitchcock was one of the most prominent filmmakers of his era (later of all time), but the film's subject matter, the infamous shower murder scene, the opening hotel tryst out of wedlock and a scene of a toilet flushing all ran up against the Breen Office like it was a brick wall. The themes of moral ambiguity, transvestism, as well as various innuendo-laden undercurrents were plenty enough to put the censors on edge, but probably the greatest point of consternation was the shower scene in which "Mrs. Bates" pulls the shower curtain aside and stabs nude Janet Leigh as Marion Crane to death, edited with quick cuts that snuck in unprecedented glimpses of female flesh, complete with the recorded audio of a knife going into a casaba melon to emulate the sound of flesh being skewered. It was a major plot point, and after the quick and menacing action, the serene and lingering shots that followed drove it home, with blood (reportedly filmed using Bosco Chocolate Syrup, which showed better on the black-and-white film) running down the bathtub drain. The scene was like nothing before, but after much debate, Hitchcock convinced the Breen Office to let him keep the shower scene in exchange for re-shooting the similarly controversial hotel room tryst in the opening scene with representatives from the office present on set, but when no showed on shooting day, the original scene remained. It also became the first major movie to show a toilet visibly flushed onscreen, when Marion flushes a torn-up note down the toilet, which has since become a more humorous aspect of the controversy.
While the film was eventually granted a "Seal of Approval" under the Production Code's pass/fail system, the Code was replaced with the first version of the MPAA rating system eight years later, including ratings of G (General), M (Mature), R (Restricted) and X (Adults Only), and PSYCHO was voluntarily retro-rated under the system, receiving an M rating, the then-equivalent of today's PG (although some G-rated films from that time would garner PG-13 ratings today, i.e. PLANET OF THE APES). The M rating was renamed 'GP' (General, Parental Guidance Suggested) in 1970, and then PG (Parental Guidance) in 1972 as the newly-formed system struggled to figure itself out, but PSYCHO kept the same basic M/GP/PG rating for 16 years. In 1984, during the conservative era of the Reagan Administration, there was a public outcry over what was perceived as excessive violence in PG-rated films, particularly Spielberg-involved blockbusters like INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984) and GREMLINS (1984), which eventually lead to the institution of the PG-13 rating, but not before the public concern led to PSYCHO, a film approved under the tyrannical restrictions of the Production Code, being re-rated with an R rating, making it perhaps the only R-rated film to have been approved under the Code. Were it resubmitted for rating today, it would undoubtedly make the PG-13 grade, but maybe because the film is familiar enough that it's considered unnecessary or because an R-rating may help its case with horror fans, Universal Studios (its current distributor) has stuck with the 1984 rating.
While PSYCHO works perfectly on a level of pop entertainment, it's also multi-layered in a way that's very engaging for the discerning viewer, making it a treasure hunt of clever subtexts and symbols. A popular point is the way the film opens with Marion in bed with her lover, and she's wearing a white brassiere, but later, after she has decided to steal the money, she's seen changing her clothes and is wearing a black brassiere, providing an obvious symbol of her new impurity. Later, after she she realizes the error of her ways, the shower is a baptism of sorts, emphasizing the water (including the famous shower-head shot). The hints of Norman's secrets are woven throughout his dialogue and other character elements as well, such as the disturbing and incestuous innuendo of the famous line, "A boy's best friend is his mother," and his time-filling obsession with taxidermy, almost exclusively with birds, Marion's surname (Crane), comments like, "You eat like a bird," and his mother's treated corpse all collide in similar revelations.
When PSYCHO first opened in theaters, its reception was a slow-burning one, initially dismissed by many critics as cheap and lurid, unfavorably comparing the low-budget horror film to Hitchcock's just-previous big budget action spectacle, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and some in the public were disgruntled by the strict "No Late Admissions" policy, but soon the lines outside theaters started to grow as the film became phenomenally popular, and many critics reevaluated their opinions. It was the most profitable film of Hitchcock's illustrious career (many have called him the greatest film director of all time), and the much-maligned psychoanalysis monologue notwithstanding, is now considered one of his top-tier films, alongside VERTIGO, REAR WINDOW and NOTORIOUS. It won none of the four Academy Award nominations it received, but was inducted into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1992 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" (undoubtedly all three), the third of six Hitchcock films to date (in order: VERTIGO, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, PSYCHO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, REAR WINDOW and NOTORIOUS). At #18, it was the highest-ranked Hitchcock film of four on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies in 1998 and was nudged up to #14 on the list in 2007.
Both artistically and historically, PSYCHO ranks today with the major landmarks of cinema, alongside THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937), THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), CITIZEN KANE (1941), JAWS (1975), STAR WARS (1977) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy (2001-2003). Whether or not it is the best horror movie ever made is entirely subjective, but it is arguably the most important and influential horror movie movie ever made.
On a Side Note:
In 1998, director Gus Van Sant, recently made prominent for directing Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's Academy Award-winning screenplay GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997), made one of the strangest remakes of all time when he remade PSYCHO. The 1998 remake of PSYCHO is essentially a $60 million experiment rather than a movie of any respectable sort, intentionally neither building upon or otherwise revising the original. In fact, it is, with only a few minor exceptions, a shot-for-shot reenactment of the 1960 film, using the same script written by Joseph Stefano for Hitchcock's film (only monetary amounts and some terminology has been altered to fit 1998 standards), and the same musical score written for Hitchcock's film by Bernard Hermann (re-recorded with minimal variation by Danny Elfman). Most of the camera angles and setups are strict replications of Hitchcock's, including any mistakes, and even the Hitchcock cameo from the original is there but with Van Sant instead. The only real deliberate changes are to bring it up to speed with modern R-rating standards, such as more graphic bloody detail and nudity (especially in the shower scene) and the addition of audio implying masturbation when Norman peeks at Marion through the peephole. Filmed in color and starring Anne Heche as Marion, Vince Vaughn as Norman (?!), Julianne Moore as Lila, Viggo Mortensen as Sam and William H. Macy as Arboghast, it's not an enjoyable movie, but it's an interesting one. How it ever got made is truly inexplicable and it is now the frequently-referenced far end of the remake spectrum between being too different and being too similar (obviously the latter). Heche and Vaughn are really dreadful in it.
In the second big twist of the movie, Lila finds Mrs. Bates sitting in the Bates home fruit cellar, and when she puts her hand on her shoulder, Mrs. Bates twists around to reveal a skeleton, tightly wrapped in leathery, preserved skin, and as the famous screeching violins play, Lila turns around to see Norman, dressed in drag with a wig, wielding the knife just before Sam takes him down from behind.
This is not quite the ending yet though, and the ending itself is a major point of controversy for film scholars, with many holding it in disdain. The final scene of Norman in the holding cell accompanied by a Mrs. Bates voice-over is brilliant of course ("They'll see and they'll know, and they'll say, "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly..."), but the scene just before that, in which a psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) gives a lengthy explanation of Norman's psychosis with pulp psychology, is a scene with few defenders. The film is an undisputed major classic, and deservingly so, but this scene, explaining that Norman murdered his mother and her lover then split his personality between himself and his mother, and the mother has now taken over, is as maligned as THE PHANTOM MENACE. It suggests an insult to the intelligence of audiences, by having provided just enough to get by throughout the film as a whole, but then beating it all in with a long-winded and heavy-handed monologue as if the audience couldn't piece it together themselves. Certainly the film would be better served without the scene, but it doesn't ruin it for me, it just seems like an extended corny joke that Hitchcock for some reason could not resist. Simon Oakland's Dr. Richmond is like the inexplicably informed genius who comes in at the end of a Scooby-Doo-style mystery to divulge all the information about what just happened, just in case you were a little too scared.
The stories of the making of PSYCHO are some of the most legendary of Hollywood stories. Books like the intensively research Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (1990) have detailed every possible aspect of the film's production, and in 2013, a film adapted from that book, HITCHCOCK, was released starring Anthony Hopkins as the titular director (the critical response was overall positive but lukewarm; I, however, thoroughly enjoyed it, even if it favored the story of his marriage of the events during production, while also taking some significant liberties).
It's status as one of the most prominent landmarks in the history of cinema, not to mention 20th Century art, is practically infallible, bringing modern art into a coming of age with sex and violence, introduced themes of serial killers and psychosis as prominent figures in the horror genre in ways that they had not been used before, effectively inventing the 'slasher' sub-genre. It threw away the chains of old plot conventions by killing off a main character in the first half of the film and with a mind-blowing reveal at the finale, but what's important is that it worked. Any movie can do things different, but only if it does things differently successfully does it really matter in the grand scheme.
It is also one of the most prominent examples of Hollywood films that marked the erosion of the Motion Picture Production Code's authority, which had kept an iron grip on what content was permissible in major motion pictures since 1934, when pressure from morality watchdog organizations and the threat of government-instituted censorship forced the major studios to enforce the Code previously instituted in 1930. In a case later overturned in 1952, the United States Supreme Court had unanimously ruled in Mutual Film Corporation vs. Industrial Commission of Ohio of 1915 that the right of free speech did not extend to motion pictures, so government authorities could ban films, and while conservative groups were clamoring about "morally questionable" behavior in the heavily Jewish populous of Hollywood leaking into their product, the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) (later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)) enlisted the former Postmaster General under the Harding Administration and Presbyterian elder William Hays as President of the MPPDA to rehabilitate Hollywood's image, including the institution of production code drafted by a couple of religious leaders and then slightly amended by the MPPDA. Under Hays, the Code was largely inconsequential, barely a Band-Aid solution to the threat of film censorship boards, but when Joseph Breen was made President of the MPPDA, the heavily religiously-influenced Production Code, popularly called the Hays Code, was rigidly enforced. Many of the elements in the code, specifically when contrasted with what was allowed is offensive by today's sensibilities, such as a stipulation prohibiting depiction of "white slavery" and another which prohibited "any inference of sexual perversion," was especially in reference to homosexual characters. Furthermore, subversive commentary was all but prohibited, and "ridicule of the clergy" and interracial relationships (namely, between "white and black races") were strictly prohibited. Many of these stipulations were listed as being ironclad, immovable without respect for context, and when the Code was not specific enough, it was up to the Breen Office to decide for themselves.
Anyway, Hitchcock, as well as many other filmmakers, were already veterans of finding ways through vague symbolism and loopholes to get their points across in film (Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS (1946) got past a three-second limit on kisses by breaking off every three seconds for two-and-a-half minutes), but PSYCHO proved to necessitate some special negotiating. It helped that Hitchcock was one of the most prominent filmmakers of his era (later of all time), but the film's subject matter, the infamous shower murder scene, the opening hotel tryst out of wedlock and a scene of a toilet flushing all ran up against the Breen Office like it was a brick wall. The themes of moral ambiguity, transvestism, as well as various innuendo-laden undercurrents were plenty enough to put the censors on edge, but probably the greatest point of consternation was the shower scene in which "Mrs. Bates" pulls the shower curtain aside and stabs nude Janet Leigh as Marion Crane to death, edited with quick cuts that snuck in unprecedented glimpses of female flesh, complete with the recorded audio of a knife going into a casaba melon to emulate the sound of flesh being skewered. It was a major plot point, and after the quick and menacing action, the serene and lingering shots that followed drove it home, with blood (reportedly filmed using Bosco Chocolate Syrup, which showed better on the black-and-white film) running down the bathtub drain. The scene was like nothing before, but after much debate, Hitchcock convinced the Breen Office to let him keep the shower scene in exchange for re-shooting the similarly controversial hotel room tryst in the opening scene with representatives from the office present on set, but when no showed on shooting day, the original scene remained. It also became the first major movie to show a toilet visibly flushed onscreen, when Marion flushes a torn-up note down the toilet, which has since become a more humorous aspect of the controversy.
While the film was eventually granted a "Seal of Approval" under the Production Code's pass/fail system, the Code was replaced with the first version of the MPAA rating system eight years later, including ratings of G (General), M (Mature), R (Restricted) and X (Adults Only), and PSYCHO was voluntarily retro-rated under the system, receiving an M rating, the then-equivalent of today's PG (although some G-rated films from that time would garner PG-13 ratings today, i.e. PLANET OF THE APES). The M rating was renamed 'GP' (General, Parental Guidance Suggested) in 1970, and then PG (Parental Guidance) in 1972 as the newly-formed system struggled to figure itself out, but PSYCHO kept the same basic M/GP/PG rating for 16 years. In 1984, during the conservative era of the Reagan Administration, there was a public outcry over what was perceived as excessive violence in PG-rated films, particularly Spielberg-involved blockbusters like INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984) and GREMLINS (1984), which eventually lead to the institution of the PG-13 rating, but not before the public concern led to PSYCHO, a film approved under the tyrannical restrictions of the Production Code, being re-rated with an R rating, making it perhaps the only R-rated film to have been approved under the Code. Were it resubmitted for rating today, it would undoubtedly make the PG-13 grade, but maybe because the film is familiar enough that it's considered unnecessary or because an R-rating may help its case with horror fans, Universal Studios (its current distributor) has stuck with the 1984 rating.
While PSYCHO works perfectly on a level of pop entertainment, it's also multi-layered in a way that's very engaging for the discerning viewer, making it a treasure hunt of clever subtexts and symbols. A popular point is the way the film opens with Marion in bed with her lover, and she's wearing a white brassiere, but later, after she has decided to steal the money, she's seen changing her clothes and is wearing a black brassiere, providing an obvious symbol of her new impurity. Later, after she she realizes the error of her ways, the shower is a baptism of sorts, emphasizing the water (including the famous shower-head shot). The hints of Norman's secrets are woven throughout his dialogue and other character elements as well, such as the disturbing and incestuous innuendo of the famous line, "A boy's best friend is his mother," and his time-filling obsession with taxidermy, almost exclusively with birds, Marion's surname (Crane), comments like, "You eat like a bird," and his mother's treated corpse all collide in similar revelations.When PSYCHO first opened in theaters, its reception was a slow-burning one, initially dismissed by many critics as cheap and lurid, unfavorably comparing the low-budget horror film to Hitchcock's just-previous big budget action spectacle, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and some in the public were disgruntled by the strict "No Late Admissions" policy, but soon the lines outside theaters started to grow as the film became phenomenally popular, and many critics reevaluated their opinions. It was the most profitable film of Hitchcock's illustrious career (many have called him the greatest film director of all time), and the much-maligned psychoanalysis monologue notwithstanding, is now considered one of his top-tier films, alongside VERTIGO, REAR WINDOW and NOTORIOUS. It won none of the four Academy Award nominations it received, but was inducted into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1992 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" (undoubtedly all three), the third of six Hitchcock films to date (in order: VERTIGO, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, PSYCHO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, REAR WINDOW and NOTORIOUS). At #18, it was the highest-ranked Hitchcock film of four on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies in 1998 and was nudged up to #14 on the list in 2007.
Both artistically and historically, PSYCHO ranks today with the major landmarks of cinema, alongside THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937), THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), CITIZEN KANE (1941), JAWS (1975), STAR WARS (1977) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy (2001-2003). Whether or not it is the best horror movie ever made is entirely subjective, but it is arguably the most important and influential horror movie movie ever made.
On a Side Note:
In 1998, director Gus Van Sant, recently made prominent for directing Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's Academy Award-winning screenplay GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997), made one of the strangest remakes of all time when he remade PSYCHO. The 1998 remake of PSYCHO is essentially a $60 million experiment rather than a movie of any respectable sort, intentionally neither building upon or otherwise revising the original. In fact, it is, with only a few minor exceptions, a shot-for-shot reenactment of the 1960 film, using the same script written by Joseph Stefano for Hitchcock's film (only monetary amounts and some terminology has been altered to fit 1998 standards), and the same musical score written for Hitchcock's film by Bernard Hermann (re-recorded with minimal variation by Danny Elfman). Most of the camera angles and setups are strict replications of Hitchcock's, including any mistakes, and even the Hitchcock cameo from the original is there but with Van Sant instead. The only real deliberate changes are to bring it up to speed with modern R-rating standards, such as more graphic bloody detail and nudity (especially in the shower scene) and the addition of audio implying masturbation when Norman peeks at Marion through the peephole. Filmed in color and starring Anne Heche as Marion, Vince Vaughn as Norman (?!), Julianne Moore as Lila, Viggo Mortensen as Sam and William H. Macy as Arboghast, it's not an enjoyable movie, but it's an interesting one. How it ever got made is truly inexplicable and it is now the frequently-referenced far end of the remake spectrum between being too different and being too similar (obviously the latter). Heche and Vaughn are really dreadful in it.
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