Psycho (Collector's Edition)

Thank you so much I have wanted this movie forever and now I got it. Thanks a million.

- This review pertains to the Psycho: Special Edition DVD-

WARNING: This review may contain spoilers!

Perhaps the greatest thriller of them all was released in June of 1960. Psycho, which was directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Hitchcock shot the film in exhilarating black and white, but he only did so because he wanted to make a horror film on a small budget. Using much of his crew from his television series, Hitchcock was able to hire competent and highly skilled people without having to spend a fortune. He re-teamed with Bernard Herrmann, the brilliant composer, who had done the scores on many of Hitchcock's films. This score, in particular, became so iconic, so famous that it's impossible to separate the music from the movie. Utilizing an all-strings orchestra, Bernard Herrmann's score heightened the suspense so much that many scenes of the film were unbearably tense for audiences at the time. But that was Hitchcock's goal, to unnerve audiences to the best of his ability. Aiding Hitchcock with this fiendish task was ingenious graphic designer Saul bass, who not only created the opening title sequence but also played an integral part in the planning of the notorious "shower scene".
The film's screenplay was written by Joseph Stefano and was loosely based upon the novel by Robert Bloch. However, the film's screenplay is far superior to the novel, which is not only contrived but also shallow and manipulative.
Starring a superb cast headed by Janet Leigh as Marion Crane and Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, the film also featured Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire, and Pat Hitchcock (Alfred's daughter). Perkins' performance as Bates is electrifying in its intensity and Leigh is wonderful as the desperate Marion Crane.
Anyone who's ever seen Psycho will find it damn-near impossible to forget the level of tension that's created by the combined talents of the director, cast, and crew.
Upon its release Psycho was a huge hit, in part because of Alfred Hitchcock's clever marketing gimmicks. He specifically told theatre managers not to allow audience members into the movie theatres once the film had begun and he insisted that audiences didn't reveal the plot twists of the film. By doing this Hitchcock intentionally created a media buzz about Psycho, which only brought audiences to theatres in droves. Although given mixed reviews by critics, Psycho was received very well by filmgoers who had never seen anything quite like it. Not only has Psycho become Hitchcock's most commercially successful film, it also ushered in the age of the modern thriller.

The story follows Marion Crane, a financially struggling secretary at a real estate firm, who steals $40,000 in cash in order to marry the man she's having an affair with. As Marion leaves town, her guilt and her paranoia take a tremendous toll on her nerves. She begins to act suspiciously and attracts the attention of a police officer and a used car salesman, but she continues her travels troubled by her conscience. She imagines the reactions of her boss, the firm's clients, her relatives, the police officer, and the car salesman. During an intense rainstorm she decides to top at a small motel. The Bates Motel seems pleasant enough. The manager, Norman bates, seems like a decent fellow, though he has an odd relationship with his demanding mother. He and Marion have a discussion about the trials and tribulations of life and the feeling of being trapped by your position in society. Norman's humility and honesty are disarming, and Marion is weighed down by the burden of her guilty conscience. She decides to return the stolen money and then takes a shower to cleanse herself, symbolically, of her sins. But then the silhouette of an old woman with a butcher's knife appears through the shower curtain. Marion is brutally murdered, and dutiful son Norman is forced to dispose of her body and her car. After Marion's bizarre disappearance her lover, Sam and her sister, Lila along with a private investigator named Arbogast, begin a search for her. But are they prepared for what they'll discover at... the Bates Motel?

This psychotically good DVD includes an audio commentary with film historian and Hitchcock expert Stephen Rebello, The Making of Psycho feature-length documentary, In the Master's Shadow: Hitchcock's Legacy documentary, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Lamb to the Slaughter episode, Alfred Hitchcock / Francois Truffaut interview, Newsreel Footage: The Release of Psycho, The Shower Scene: With and Without Music, The Shower Sequence: Storyboards by Saul Bass, The Psycho Archives image gallery, Posters and Psycho Ads image gallery, Lobby Cards image gallery, Behind the Scenes image gallery, Production Photographs image gallery, production notes, and trailers.

Also recommended:
Psycho by Robert Bloch
Shadow of a Doubt
Rear Window
Vertigo
North By Northwest
The Birds
Frenzy
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season One
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Two
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Three

Perhaps no movie in history has been copied more than PSYCHO. Often considered the original "slasher", that title doesn't do it justice. Saying simply that PSYCHO is "slasher" film alone puts a tag on it that says teenagers with low IQs, having sex, using drugs and alcohol, and are either baby sitting or going camping are going to get slaughtered the whole movie. Basically putting this masterpiece in the same sentence as HALLOWEEN or FRIDAY THE 13th alone is certainly a put down to the movie that the American Film Institute ranked as it's number one thriller of all time.

Now, I am not knocking the movies mentioned above. I LOVE THEM!! But no movie in history has shocked and awed as this movie did on opening night. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE would possibly rival PSYCHO in that aspect. But even TCM is based on the same person that PSYCHO was, Ed Gein. Loosely based that is. With that said, TCM was a slight copy of PSYCHO. Before PSYCHO, there hadn't been a movie like it really. The ever brilliant HITCHCOCK kept a tight lid on the storyline leading up to the opening. Even during the making of the movie, the actors were given only a small portion of the script at any given time. This was HITCHCOCK'S idea in order to keep the storyline from leaking to the public therefore ruining the integrity of the movie.

Recently I purchased this blockbuster DVD and viewed it at home and realized how amazing this movie is, again. I hadn't seen the movie in years, and I was certainly not disappointed. Of the nearly 400 movies I have on DVD(many purchased from Amazon.com!), this ranks near the top as one that I am most proud to have. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The brilliant directing job by ALFRED HITCHCOCK and the uniquely innocent performance by ANTHONY PERKINS that some how seemed to mix melancholy and madness.

I wish that movies today could be made like this movie was made. It opened our eyes to a genre that still wouldn't catch on for another nearly 20 years. At the very least giving us a glimpse of the future of horror and thriller movies. A truly American classic. See it, own it, BUY IT!!!

After his 1958 masterpiece "Vertigo" and the chase thriller "North By Northwest", director Alfred Hitchcock wanted to see if he could make an inexpensive Black and White movie that would scare the pants off of the audience. Apparently at this time period, low-budget, but poorly done, scary movies were doing quite well at the box office. Hitchcock wanted to make a low-budget scarefest that was well done. He apparently found the plot of "Psycho" (based on a pulp novel by Robert Bloch; and inspired by the gruesome exploits of serial killer Ed Gein; who subsequently also "inspired" the original "Texas Chainsaw Masacre" and "The Silence Of The Lambs") quite humorous. Paramount Studios, however, wanted nothing to do with it. So, Hitchcock paid for "Psycho" out of his own pocket, and used the film crew from his TV series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Although initially perceived by disgruntled critics as an ultimate sick joke, "Psycho" succeeded in scaring the pants off of the audience beyond Hitchcock's wildest dreams; by entering into our nightmares.
Watching "Psycho" again after all these years, I have to say it holds up extremely well. It is still a profoundly disturbing and unsettling film. It holds up because Hitchcock cleverly and continually deceives the audience; always keeping us off balance just when we might be feeling momentarily safe. Bernard Herrmann's music score helps tremendously. Saul Bass' title credits are cracked in half; instantly foreshadowing the fractured psyche of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and also perhaps the psyche of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). Thus, the audience is thrown off balance before the film's plot has even begun.
We begin by thinking the plot is going to be about Marion, who steals $40,000 from her boss to help solve her disasterous love affair with Sam Loomis (John Gavin). That is Hitchcock's biggest "red herring", but he throws in a few others as well. After driving through a rainstorm, Marion experiences the original "motel hell" when she winds up at the Bates motel and meets manager Norman Bates.
In Bloch's novel, Norman is forty-something, fat, balding, alcoholic and unsympathetic. Another masterstroke of Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano is transforming Norman into the image of actor Anthony Perkins, then age 27. Anthony Perkins gives an amazingly subtle performance. Norman is a loner. He's shy, but attractive. He stammers and smiles; all his boyish charms hiding deeper levels of secrets and deception, of course. He tells Marion, "We're all in our private traps. Clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out." Clearly, Perkins was deeply invested in the character of Norman (and later, unfairly trapped by him). One can only guess at how well Perkins understood about "Private Traps." Marion has overheard Norman's mother, Mrs. Bates, being very cruel to him. But he defends her: "It's not as if she were a maniac-- a raving thing. She just goes a little mad some times. Haven't you?" Norman is trapped by his mother on several levels, and Marion is soon a victim of the Norman/Mother trap. In the "Making Of" Documentary, Joseph Stefano reveals he was in Freudian therapy for his own "Mother Issues" while writing the "Psycho" script; and that puts yet another spin on the film's many twists and turns.
Marion is brutally murdered in the shower; in what is probably still the most terrifying 45 second sequence in cinema history. This infamous, brilliantly edited, sequence is also another example of Hitchcock throwing the audience off balance. Marion has been our sympathetic protagonist; and we have seen things through her point of view. When she is murdered approximately 49 minutes into the film, her "point of view" ends. The "point of view" now shifts to Norman, and he becomes the "protagonist", as a dogged detective (Martin Balsam), Sam and Lila, Marion's spunky and spirited sister, (Vera Miles) all eventually arrive at the Bates Motel--and it all works brillantly. At the end, when the secrets of Norman and Mother are revealed, a psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) explains it all rather glibly. But Hitchcock felt the psychiatrist's speech was necessary in getting the entire film past the strict censors.
"Psycho" is and always will be very much a "Hitchcock picture." But, in addition, the film ultimately belongs to Anthony Perkins. We are terribly sad and disturbed by Marion's horrid murder, but we also feel sorry for Norman. That may be the slickest of "Psycho's" bag of tricks, but it is also a tremendous tribute to Anthony Perkins' riviting performance. "Psycho" has often been imitated (Anthony Perkins returned for the much later "Psycho II", "Psycho III" (Perkins directed), and the intriquing "Psycho IV: The Beginning), but it will most definitely never be surpassed.
DVD EXTRAS: A fun Featurette shows how Hitchcock "sold" "Psycho" to audiences, and how he kept its "secrets." "The Making Of Psycho": Wonderful feature-length Documentary includes interviews with Janet Leigh, Joseph Stefano, etc. Documentary: "In The Shadows Of Hitchcock: Hitchcock's Legacy", (25 minutes), and an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" titled "Lamb To The Slaughter" with Barbara Bel Geddes (from "Vertigo") and much more.

PSYCHO Hitchcock USA 1960

"My main satisfaction is that the film had an effect on the audiences;...[it] made the audience scream. I feel it's tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion. And with PSYCHO we most definitely achieved this. It wasn't a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance or their enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film ."

That's Alfred Hitchcock talking to Francois Truffaut about PSYCHO, in the latter's book-length interview with the British-turned-American director. Hitchcock is famously dubbed "the Master of Suspense." Fair enough. But it would be a more accurate label to add "and Manipulation."

Hitchcock had developed a style of manipulating audiences, but never to the degree he did in PSYCHO.

"I was directing the viewers," the director told Truffaut. "You might say I was playing them, like an organ."

It was, in 1960, the most shocking film its original audiences had ever seen. I know. I was in one of those audiences. My parents were Hitchcock fans, having seen "North by Northwest", "Rear Window" and "Vertigo."

On a very cold Sunday afternoon, after church and Sunday dinner, they were going to see PSYCHO. Like millions of other Americans, they had no idea that it was probably not what you would or should take a 10-year-old to see. But I already loved movies, I wanted to go and they didn't refuse my request.

Fortunately--because it was so cold on that Tennessee Sunday--I was wearing a car-coat as millions of kids did in those days. Luckily for me, the hood had a drawstring. When PSYCHO's violins began to shriek during the infamous shower scene, I pulled the hood almost shut, leaving myself just enough peephole to see the center of the screen. If things got worse, I could always pull the hood completely shut--or close my eyes altogether, which, by the way, I never did. (Fascinated by film even at that age, I knew I was in the presence of something remarkable. I just didn't know what. And even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to express it.)

( SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW KEY PLOT DEVELOPMENTS, STOP...READING... NOW !)

Good grief! I couldn't believe what was happening to this poor woman. Yes, she had stolen $40,000 from the bank where she worked. But hadn't she made up her mind to return the money the next day? But even if she hadn't, nobody deserves to be sliced to death in a shower--or anywhere--like a cantaloupe!

Hitchcock intentionally made PSYCHO look like a cheap exploitation film. He shot it not with his usual expensive crew (which had just finished the expensive "North by Northwest"). Instead he used the crew that filmed his weekly television show. Even by 1960 standards, his budget was cheap--a mere $800,000. The Bates Motel and aging Victorian-style Bates house on the hill behind it were built on Universal's back lot. Also, to give it that quickie, exploitation look, he shot in black-and-white. This was not going to be--nor was it supposed to be--another elegant Hitchcock thriller a la "Rear Window" or "Vertigo."

Yet, to this day--almost half a century after it was made--no other Hitchcock film has had a greater impact, on moviegoers or on filmmakers, than PSYCHO.

First, Hitchcock sets up the movie in such a way that we root for Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) to successfully get away with theft. We want to see her wind up with the man she loves, Sam Loomis (John Gavin). We root for her when a policeman stops her on her way to her lover's hometown. We pray that he won't see the envelope full of stolen money by her side in the front seat.

Hitchcock has thus made her sympathetic. When she pulls off the road in a heavy rainstorm to spend the night at the off-the-beaten-path Bates Motel, then begins her association with Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).


Norman brings her supper, which she eats in his motel office. Their late-night conversation makes them both sympathetic characters. We think their relationship will be developed during the remainder of the two-hour film.

But no. Less than forty minutes into PSYCHO, Hitchcock throws a curve-ball at the audience, something you simply don't see coming: he kills off his heroine. Hitchcock not only kills her off, he does so in what was--and remains today--the granddaddy of all slasher-movie sequences. Movie directors have tried to top it, but no amount of gore, of up-close-and-in-your-face graphic detail has ever come close. Hitchcock doesn't use gore. (He filmed in black-and-white, thinking audiences would be too squeamish to withstand so much blood in color.) The era, of course, would not have allowed it. But this master filmmaker didn't need gore. He used artistry to make us "think" we were seeing more than he was actually showing us.

We never see the knifepoint pierce the skin * --although people will swear they do. That's the power of montage: with quick-cut editing--and Bernard Hermann's shrieking violins--our mind "completes" what is merely suggested. Is Hitchcock making us see what perhaps we want to see? (Again, "manipulation.")

Once Marion Crane is dead, Hitchcock shifts our sympathy. Right before our eyes, he shifts our sympathies for her to sympathy for Norman, whom Hitchcock has already established as a kind, if a bit odd, young man. We've sensed from the beginning there is something not quite right about Norman . But during the motel office conversation, when he elicits the sympathy of Marion--with whom we have already identified--he elicits ours as well.

Employing a sort of bait-and-switch sleight of hand, Hitchcock has now transferred our attention--and sympathy--from Marion to Norman . So--when Norman starts mopping up the blood from the murder, we feel sorry for him now having to protect his mother who, at this point, we think is the killer.

With no one else to care about, we pull for Norman. We root for him to mop up all the blood (actually, chocolate syrup), to leave no trace of evidence. When he puts Marion's corpse in the trunk of her car, we pray it will sink into the pond. For a moment, the sinking car stops, half of it still above water. Our hearts stop. We're as nervous as Norman as he nervously chews on candy-corn (a nice piece of business Perkins himself suggested and which Hitchcock allowed the actor to incorporate into his performance.) Finally--thankfully--the car sinks below the pond's surface. Whew! Norman is safe.


Once again, we've been manipulated.


All this manipulation, of course, has a single purpose: Hitchcock wants to shock us again. And he does when it is ultimately revealed that Marion Crane's killer wasn't Norman's mother, but Norman himself; that Norman is a matricidal maniac who not only killed his mother but has kept her corpse stuffed like one of the taxidermied birds mounted on his motel office walls.

Hitchcock, indeed, played us "like an organ." I remember adults literally screaming--"Oh, no!", "Oh, God"--during the brutal shower sequence. I never screamed. But I sure as heck stayed hunkered down in that car-coat every time those violins began to screech.

In theaters across 1960 America, Hitchcock reduced us to our last nerves and wickedly sawed away on those nerves like a violin bow scraping--staccato--on a very taut string. ---Hoyt Harris

* The popular "myth" about the PSYCHO shower scene is that the knife is never seen to penetrate the flesh. This is not true. A frame-by-frame examination of the shower scene shows that the knife point disappears against the actress' torso just below her navel for the last three frames of one eight-frame sequence. But In order to see the penetration, the movie must be run in slow-motion, but it actually happens, albeit only once and briefly. Because film runs at 24 frames-per-second, a mere three frames (one-eighth of a second) is brief, indeed. ----H.H.