"PSYCHO" 50 YEARS

One of the best films of cinema history was premiered a day like this in New York in 1960…

And across the ocean a better movie called Peeping Tom was getting ready for release….

I kid. Go Psycho!

—PolarisDiB

You did good, Fred. You did good.

Happy 50th.

ohh, i like that pictures. hehaw

It is still, after so many years, my all-time favorite.

Hitchcock is the master!

Too bad about that psychiatrist scene..

Hitch lost Les Diaboliques to Clouzet, he then made this perfect piece of cinema.
I’d really like to have seen Hitchcock do Les Diaboliques though….

I agree with you, Mattick. I think that movie would have been significantly better with Hitch in the director’s chair.

I recently experienced the shower scene again, presented separately from the movie.

I watched it several times to see just where the horror was coming from.

We all know that the knife never touches the body, she wore a body suit, etc., etc. ie., we know the lore surrounding its visuals.

But have you ever experienced the scene with your ears only?

To me, what you hear is where the horror comes from. Not only the famous strings, but the Ff-f-fft sound of the stabs, and, most horrifyingly, Janet Leigh’s vocalisings… More horrible than her actual screams, are her grunts of fatigue… like a pig on a farm who is growing tired of fighting, being murdered… Now that’s a ghastly sound… To use the French word “effrayant”.

@ USER DE FAUX-FUYANTS

“Too bad about that psychiatrist scene.”.

Yes, but they had to explain to us, the audience, that homosexuals are sick, diseased people who are murderers.

Well, it’s funny, regarding the psychiatrist scene because Hitchcock didn’t originally want to put it in. The screenwriter convinced him to do it because he felt that given what the audience had just seen, they would want an explaination. They had never seen such behavior and the screen before. I think it was a needed scene and I think it’s a very interesting. Of course, I’ve always had an interest in abnormal psychology.

I guess what is it you guys don’t like about it?

And, Brooks, why do you say Norman is a homosexual? He’s not. Nobody said he was. The psychiatrist doesn’t say he is. He is screwed up, sexually-wise, no doubt because of his mother’s influence. But, he is attracted to women. That we know.

Not the biggest of fans, but still, an awesome movie. Let’s raise our knives in celebration!

Yeah!

the psychiatrist scene was put obviously to explain the madness but also because those ideas were becoming quite fashionable at the time. Psychology was really making waves in the 50’s and 60s’. It had finally penetrated mainstream culture.

oh, and Psycho 2 is very underrated.

Psycho 2 IS underated. I agree.

Here’s Hoberman’s piece from the voice regarding the film and Sarris’s review of it (his first ever published in the Voice).