Well, this worked out weird. I started this year-long challenge with the idea I’d do two films a week, one post on Tuesdays and one on Thursdays. There have been weeks since when those were my only posts, but I’ve kept at it. I didn’t look ahead on what days of the week certain holidays and the like fell or what films would go live when. And yet, somehow, despite it all, I ended up getting an actual horror film, arguably one of the earliest and greatest of the slasher genre, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, on Halloween. I didn’t plan for that. It was really just a weird coincidence.
That’s actually all I plan to say about that coincidence.
So, here’s the thing: I have two more Hitchcock films to go through, and while both are suspenseful in their own way (and one of them toys with a supernatural theme before basically blowing it off), I think it’s interesting that Psycho, and to a lesser extent The Birds, is the one that basically gets Hitchcock thought of as a horror director. To be fair, Psycho is a hell of a horror film to have on anyone’s resume, and I can even be somewhat understanding of Gus Van Sant’s decision to do a shot-for-shot remake. I mean, plays are revived all the time. Why not a film with the same script? I mean, I have no desire to see Van Sant’s Psycho, but I actually somewhat get why he did it. Instead, why did this film more than any other in Hitchcock’s filmography seem to set the standard for what kind of a director he was?
I mean, for my high school class trip, we went to Orlando and visited various amusement parks and the like down there. That included a trip to Universal Studios which had rides that were basically more like how stuff was made and shaky seats in enclosed places. Given the time I arrived and the length of the lines, I didn’t personally see much, but I did see the Hitchcock ride, and there’s a moment in there when the audience was told to don 3D glasses to see a scene from, I think, Dial M for Murder that was originally intended to be shown in 3D. During the showing, suddenly the screen “ripped” and birds flew right at the audience while stage equipment in the background started exploding in sparks and things broke. It was meant to spook the audience a bit as the ride’s focus was on how suspenseful and creepy Hitchcock’s films were with lots of murder and the like. From there was a demonstration on how exactly Hitchcock made Psycho‘s shower scene (complete with a pre-recorded Tony Perkins on a screen to walk the audience through it, even pointing out he wasn’t the guy in the shoot because he was performing a play at the time and the real killer in that scene was just some stuntman). Then there was a demonstration on how Hitchcock showed a guy plummeting to his death. Really, it played up the murder and mayhem of Hitchcock’s filmography, and having seen a lot of his work, it just doesn’t feel like a fair representation.
But it’s also in-line with Hitchcock’s reputation. Just off the top of my head, there are great suspenseful scenes in many of his films, but the form it takes depends on the film. The murder in Rope happens in the opening minutes, and after that, what suspense there is is whether or not the dinner guests will realize their hosts have a dead body stashed away in the room they’re all socializing in. Marnie is more about whether or not a thief can stop thieving from what I remember. Rear Window tries to puzzle out whether or not Raymond Burr murdered his wife and then how to prove it. Again, the murder happens off-screen. Hitchcock’s one R-rated film, Frenzy, probably would make more of a splash given the sex and violence that studio censorship probably kept out of his earlier work was there, and it may qualify as pretty close to a horror film in its own right. Vertigo plays out as more of a love story in a way. Many of his films deal with espionage or just an ordinary person caught in something they don’t understand and then dealing with it in a variety of ways. But somehow, Psycho is the one that sets the tone.
It’s not hard to see why either. I don’t think Hitchcock ever did better than Psycho just for ratcheting up the suspense. It’s almost a relief when Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane takes that fateful shower. Her general nervousness, a wonderful combination of Leigh’s performance, Hitchcock’s direction, and Bernard Herrmann’s score would, for the uninitiated, make it seem that she may be the “psycho” of the title. Norman Bates, when he finally shows up, seems more awkward than anything else. He isn’t, but that’s what it looks like. Marion stole $40,000 from her employer’s safe, and she keeps expecting to get caught. She just doesn’t expect anything from the weirdo running the motel.
Now, much has been made of the shower scene and the subsequent shift in tone and style from that point on. That’s a good point. A newcomer to the film would probably not expect to see what looks like the protagonist die suddenly and violently at the halfway point, and from there, the film transforms into something like a murder mystery where, until the end of the film, it does look like Norman’s elderly mother is killing people. Setting aside for a moment that there are only two deaths onscreen, namely Marion and Martin Balsam’s detective character, it’s probably worth noting that all the Marion material beforehand is entirely why Norman Bates is caught at the end. The film’s conclusion has Marion’s boyfriend and sister asking the local sheriff if there have been other disappearances in the area, and the answer is yes, all young women. Marion was not Norman’s first victim, and I am not counting his actual mother when I say that.
But Marion’s disappearance is what gets Norman caught. Neither Sam nor especially Lila would have gone looking for Norman if Marion hadn’t disappeared. Her theft of the $40,000 would not have had Balsam’s Milton Arbogast looking for her either. Marion’s theft is the only reason she’s even out that way, and Norman may be a lot of things, but he arguably is not a criminal mastermind. Neither is Marion. It’s those two things combined that get Norman sent away.
You know, I have heard good things about Psycho 2, seeing as Perkins revived the role and it was set years after the fact when Norman finally got out of the mental hospital and went back to the hotel. I should probably check it out someday. I mean, it’s probably not as good as Hitchcock’s original, but as long as I understand that, I may end up liking it the same way I did the years-later sequel to The Shining. I didn’t expect Mike Flanagan to do as well as Stanley Kubrick, but Doctor Sleep was a good film in its own right in large part because the director didn’t try to make another Kubrick but just told his own story. For all I know, director Richard Franklin accomplished more or less the same thing with Psycho 2.
But as far as the original goes, it does fit very well into Hitchcock’s wheelhouse. The horror elements arguably don’t happen until Marion gets to the Bates Motel, and even then, this isn’t the same sort of film as most horror. Yes, the Bates house is creepy, but the second murder happens in broad daylight, and it’s really more about suspense than scares. It just so happens the scares are very, very good.
NEXT: Psycho is a horror film without anything supernatural. Next up is another great director, Hayao Miyazaki, showing supernatural elements that, while scary to the main character at first, end up being more delightful than frightening. Be back soon for 2001’s Spirited Away.
0 Comments