What took this movie from a shift in Hitchcock's filmography to "All time horror classic?"
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The horror and thriller genres have always struggled to earn respect. There are always exceptions, but for a very long time in the movie business, horror was a B-movie genre you dabbled in if you couldn't hack it in the studio system, or if you lived to push the boundaries of good taste. So to have Alfred Hitchcock, a four-time Academy Award nominated director dive into said genre, right after the success of his spy thriller with Cary Grant North by Northwest, was a surprise. What was even more surprising, was that he also decided to make a stripped down, black and white horror picture, with a mid-movie twist so startling and infamous that "no late admittance" was allowed during screenings. But what took this movie from a shift in Hitchcock's filmography to "All time horror classic?" Let's dive in.
The Setup
The film follows Janet Leigh's Marion Crane, who has just taken off with $40,000 from her employer. Looking to avoid detection, Crane stops at a roadside hotel run by the soft-spoken Norman Bates. But as the night progresses, the police may be the last of Marion's worries...
Why Is Psycho A Classic?
Psycho is a movie so ebiquitous with horror movies that it's hard to imagine the genre without it, including a number of filming and storytelling techniques that remain popular to this day. So much so, that you may not even know why this movie shocked audiences upon its release.
A Rug Pull on the Initial Audience
Based on its image in popular culture, you might be surprised to learn that the first half of Psycho isn't about a derangd murderer. It's about Janet Leigh's Marion Crane embezzling money and going on the run. And that's how it was advertised. It's Leigh's image on almost all of the posters with the possible addition of Anthony Perkins' awkward Norman Bates and on one of the most famous ones, Cranes love interest shirtless.
This was very deliberate on Hitchcock's part who wanted to avoid the movie being spoiled in previews and reviews. Pretty smart idea. Suck people in with an air of mystery of "what's happening at the Bates otel" and then lead word of mouth do the trick for you once you've shocked the audience by...*spoiler alert I guess* killing off your bombshell actress (maybe the first blonde lead actress Hithcock killed on screen ever by the by).
So the initial and oft-imitated murder scene was a genuine shock to the audience who both didn't know they came to see a horror movie and could never expect that Janet Leigh would be killed before the film's end.
That was enough to make this movie a box office smash in its day. Where it made over $50 million on less than $1 million budget and earned four Academy Award nominations. So why did it stay in the public consciousness?
Horror Movie Techniques
The "shower scene" in Pyscho is one of the most analyzed scenes in film history. Hell there's even an entire documentary dedicated to it called 78/52 which is pretty good. And there's good reason for that. Almost every slasher you've ever seen, be it an italian giallo flick or Halloween can be traced back to this scene.
The slow build up. The figure that the audience can't make out. And then the murder itself featuring the shrill strings screeching as images of Leigh's body, the knife, and blood are interspersed in frenetic fashion until Marion Crane is dead and her blood comes down the drain.
What's kind of wild is how impactful the scene still is despite not having a lot of the things people thinks it does. For instance, there's no actual nudity in this scene. There's images and shots of Leigh's stomach, shoulders, arms and face, but you don't see any part of her anatomy. At most you see her sillouette as the killer apporaches and her midriff once the violence starts.
There's also no shots of a knife piercing skin (there's brief images of it glancing) or as much blood and gore as you'd expect.
There's also no shots of a knife piercing skin (there's brief images of it glancing) or as much blood and gore as you'd expect.
It doesn't feel tame, even if it is by modern horror standards.
And this is a big reason why this movie is considerd so important in the genre. Not only did in reinforce the idea that elements like the score could have a massive impact on the audience, it also demonstrated that the horror genre was more than a genre of cheap thrills. The staircase stabbing required a ton of techincal craft from Hitchcock and team. The fact that the audience feels empathy for Anthony Perkins Norman Bates (at least at first) only works because Hitchcock is a great visual storyteller. Hitchcock had demonstrated his skill as a filmmaker making this movie and the American horror genre, started to expand after this.
Roger Corman started making waves with a series of collaborations with Vincent Price including Masque of the Red Death. Three years later Hitchcock himself would expand his horror to the full blown societal chaos of The Birds in the same year Robert Wise's The Haunting revitalized the haunted house genre. And five years after that, in 1968, Paramount took a giant swing with a thriller director to make Rosemary's Baby while George Romero and company kicked off zombies as we know them in Pennsylvania.
The techniques of the genre and the genre itself were never the same. And it's very easy to see the surge of new directors trying horror before expanding into other projects starting here.
Broken Boundaries
Despite being tame by most modern standards, Psycho was boundary pushing. The aforementioned shower scene was a big deal, because censors were adamant that Leigh's body couldn't be shown and that any image of knife diving into skin would be right out. Admittedly being shot in black and white helped its case. Harder to argue that the images in the shower scene are extra sensational when the blood isn't red. Still the voyeuristic vibe of the scene being punctuated by violence...that got people upset. Many viewed as a cheap trick or trashy by Hithcock's standards (apparently oblivious to the "train entering the tunnel gag" right before a sex scene would happen in North by Northwest or Hitchcock's proclivities for casting stunning blonde women he'd then put through the ringer on screen).
And while there's a lot to unpack in Psycho's problematic presentation of a number of things, any suggestion of queerness on screen during the Hays code era was boundary pushing. More on this in a bit.
Hell even showing a toilet flushing got noticed because...it hadn't been shown in a Hollywood movie yet. A weird boundary to break, but this movie did it. As it did with an awful lot of stated or unstated norms in the industry.
And while there's a lot to unpack in Psycho's problematic presentation of a number of things, any suggestion of queerness on screen during the Hays code era was boundary pushing. More on this in a bit.
Hell even showing a toilet flushing got noticed because...it hadn't been shown in a Hollywood movie yet. A weird boundary to break, but this movie did it. As it did with an awful lot of stated or unstated norms in the industry.
The Problematic Leftovers
Most of the time when I talk about a classic movie, I'm talking about positive steps forward or some random conicidence of history that makes a movie stand out in the pantheon. Unfortunately Psycho also comes with a ton of baggage that the horror genre and American society have failed to properly address ever since.
So let's dig into the big one. The final twist.
Another reason Psycho is considered a genre staple is due to its double twist. The first twist is Marion Crane being killed off early in the film. Completely unexpected if you knew nothing coming in and shifts the movie's entire focus. The audience also believes they know who did it. This was Norman Bates acid-spewing mother trying to kill off a "bad influence" on her boy. That's enough to unpack by itself and especially the combination of implied sexual immorality and violent punishment.
That is, until we get to the final twist. After a number of people arrive at the Bates Hotel to try to find Marion, it's revealed that our presumed murderer, whom Norman has been having shouting matches with, has been dead for some time with her corpse being found in the hotel basement. Not only that, but it's been Norman filling in the role of his mother, by dressing in her clothes and carrying out her alleged will, including killing anyone who might threaten Norman. And Norman seems completely unaware of this due to what we'd now called Disassociative Identity Disorder.
In the film, this reveal and explanation is presented in a very clinical fashion with Norman stuck in a paded cell as the doctors explain how Norman's mind woks/doesn't work using the psychological terminology that would've been used at the time. The doctor even refutes that Norman is a transvestite in this quote. But as you'll see this is pretty broad:
Ah, not exactly. A man who dresses in women's clothing in order to achieve a sexual change, or satisfaction, is a transvestite. But in Norman's case, he was simply doing everything possible to keep alive the illusion of his mother being alive. And when reality came too close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion - he dressed up, even to a cheap wig he bought.
Again very clinical but also not a definition of trans-ness that I think anyone would find acceptable today.
But the real problem is that the movie reinforces some ugly stereotypes about queerness, including Norman dressing up to look like his mother.
I could go into a long-winded explanation of how queerness, especially in men, has been presented as a villianous quality in a ton of American movies and media whether it's classic film noirs like The Maltese Falcon or similar trans-like reveals of villains in movies like Ace Ventura or Sleepaway Camp.
Instead I'll keep it simple. The movie is called Psycho. Which is named after our dangerous, murderous villain. That villain, and especially the version of him that commits murders, is a man in a dress. And in 1960 and even until today, you're playing on a prejudiced fear.
So that stinks. Just as it stinks that DID has been consistently portrayed in Hollywood films as something that makes you murderous, when the disorder itself seems to be hotly debated in pysch circles.
One of the unfortunately aspects of this movie and this genre is that it leans on the "other" as its villain, when the real villain is the monster who created Norman: his mother.
Legacy
While it may have mark its initial mark with shock value, Psycho is both important for understanding the tools of suspense and horror filmmaking and also film's ability to perpetuate incorrect or distorted images of other people.
It's a contradiction. One the one hand this is masterful bit of filmmaking from one of the best to ever get behind the camera with a well of empathy for characters that are usually easy to root against including a thief, an adulterer, and a guy whose mind has been overturned by his mother's influence. And it took a tawdry genre and made it more respectable.
But it's also an easy example combining sex and violence on film or how Hollywood has presented any semblance of oddity or queerness as a sign of danger. Which wouldn't be effective, if this movie wasn't scary.
But it's also an easy example combining sex and violence on film or how Hollywood has presented any semblance of oddity or queerness as a sign of danger. Which wouldn't be effective, if this movie wasn't scary.
More so than almost any other "classic" movie, Psycho comes with a lot of baggage the culture is still trying to work through.
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