Cycle was released in 1960 as one of Alfred Hitchcock's
greatest triumphs, a low budget experiment that became an all
time classic. The film is the story of Marion
Crane $40,000 In the fateful Mortal, she checks into one
stormy California night. My name is John, and the guys
who wouldn't even harm a family are Matt.
Let's put it this way, she might have fooled me, but she didn't
fool my mother. And Westie.
Her son is a poor substitute for a lover.
It's Fairfield, CA and the ATRM are checking in to talk toilets,
showers and the Bates Motel. 12 cabins, 12 vacancies.
What could possibly go wrong? Hello and welcome to all the
right movies where we all go a little mad sometimes as we tell
the story of Hollywood one film at a time and this time out it
is an absolute all timer. Isn't it?
Certainly is. Hitchcock screeching strings.
The madness of Mother. Strap in, we're telling you the
story behind Psycho. Massive.
Yeah. Huge.
Before we pull off the highway, though, should we talk about our
own little roadside operation? Let's do that, yes?
Not quite as creepy, hopefully. It's.
Perfectly safe. I mean, the way you've described
it is, let's be honest. Little roadside operation.
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Yes you can. A better investment than $40,000
in an envelope even. Oh yeah, that's much better.
So back to today though, it is psycho.
You put this one up, Matt. So why are we talking about it?
I mean, first of all, this is only the second time we've
covered Hitchcock, so if we're going to cover them again, where
else would we go but Psycho? Because how many films can you
genuinely say it just completely ripped up the real book of what
to expect? Because this is certainly one of
them for so many reasons. We'll get into cinema was just
never the same after this one. And it's a film where even if
you haven't seen it, you have seen it because it influences
everywhere. The music, the shower scene,
Norman Bates, we all know about this one.
And ultimately, John, to be honest, we don't even need the
section why we talked about Psycho, because it's Psycho.
Yeah, well, I'll just skip it then, should I?
Yeah. Yeah, skip it.
That miles easier. Just three 10s.
That's it. Wrap it up.
You'll find out. Sure, just whatever.
Yeah, I mean, this is one of those films that probably, like
a lot of people, I knew Lords about before I ever saw it, knew
about Norman Bates, his mother, the motel, the shower,
obviously. And when I did first watch it,
like in my 20s, I think it kind of felt like watching a museum
piece in some ways. All these images that I knew
that were just like burned in the popular culture.
I've also read the source material as well, the original
novel. But it's the movie that everyone
knows, obviously. And I mean, in terms of status
of a film, they say it's about as big as it gets.
One of Hollywood's most legendary directors at the peak
of his powers, possibly his most acclaimed film, massively
influential. One of the most famous single
scenes to ever come out of Hollywood and plenty of others
in there as well. And one of the most famous
villains. And for us, a great one to go
behind the scenes on because how Hitchcock came to be involved
and then the craft behind what he did.
It's all fascinating and I've no doubt we're going to have some
huge opinions on this as well, so if all that's your thing,
stick around for it. Definitely.
And Westie, how about you and Psycho?
Very similar to you guys. I'm just going to echo the
statements to be totally fair. I mean, it was huge film.
I watched this one when I was about 9 or 10 I think.
Wow, get this on cycles on right.
Great. And I had just remember vividly
just trying to guess what was going on, guess who, who was
going to be the psycho. And it was just like a really
exciting film for us to watch at that age.
I'd seen like Night of the Living Dead, I think around
about the same time. So I was like the black and
white films and that kind of old feel to it.
But I mean, it is so influential.
It is so brilliant. It is so accomplished.
It is so confident. I mean, Hitchcock's known for
his suspense in his horror work. This is his first horror film.
It's just a real RIP roar of a ride.
It's two films in one, if you're into that.
It's it's just it's got everything.
It's absolutely fantastic piece of work.
So Psycho was produced by Chamelee Productions,
distributed by Paramount Pictures, and released on
September the 8th, 1960. Filmed at Universal Studios and
on location around California and Phoenix, AZ.
It was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by Joseph
Stefano, based on Robert Block's novel of the same name, and
stars Janet Lee as Marion Crane, Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates,
Vera Miles as Lila Crane, John Governors, Sam Loomis and Martin
Balsam as Milton Arborgast. Arbo, Gassed, as I'll be calling
him. Arbo, Yeah.
I love that sheriff, he's great. Yeah, he's amazing.
Let's get checked in then, shall we?
Let's do it. Let's do it.
It's a Friday afternoon in Phoenix and $40,000 is about to
go missing. It's the beginning of Psycho.
The beginning. Psycho opens with one of the
most famous first acts in cinema.
We're going to be talking about the base motel and our
introduction to its proprietor, Norman.
But first, it's the heroine side of the story.
It is. So we begin in a hotel room with
real estate office worker Marian Crane on her lunch break with
boyfriend Sam Loomis. Marian steals $40,000 from her
boss as you do, hits the highway, is tailed by a cop and
buys a new motor. Yeah, an eventful opening for
Miss Crane, Matt. So let's start at the start,
should we? Let's do it.
I mean, yeah. I mean, first of all, that
credit sequence, it's like you're being assaulted by the
music straight away. And those visuals, that credit
sequence, you're just pummeled into the back of your signal.
Like, where is this going straight away at this pace?
And then you just follow that up with that elaborate camera, move
into the hotel room where we see Marian and Sam have been having
some afternoon delight. And I mean, Marian, she can lick
my stamps every day of the week. That's absolutely.
Fine. Didn't know where that was going
there. It's a.
Good job. He said it really quickly.
Just in case you have to put it out.
Yeah. But so you see, this would have
been so shocking for a 1960s audience.
I mean, that is practically full nudity by those standards back
then, Like in the having an extramarital affair.
Even if Sam is technically not with his wife.
This is scandalous stuff. And then considering the film's
title, it just leaves so many possibilities of where this
could go. I mean, Psycho, is that going to
be the wife? Is it Sam?
So much intrigue already. And considering the day that
comes up on screen, Friday, December 11th, is this
technically a Christmas film? I know.
Yeah. I think it could be.
Yeah. I mean, it's a stunning opening
shot, that Phoenix cityscape. The book actually starts with
Norman reading a book, getting shouted at by his mother.
But different medium, obviously. And Hitchcock does what he does
all the way through. He makes it cinematic with that
wide shot. But, yeah, the opening scene
between Marion and Sam in 1960, Right, Mark?
This had to be one of the sexiest openers ever, surely?
It's sizzling. But then narratively, it's all
about setting up Marion's motivations.
I think because Sam's broke, he can't marry her.
He only meets her in cheap hotels on lunch breaks.
Sleazy fella. So when the $40,000 turns up
later, you kind of get why she do what she does.
And when that happens back at the office, Tom Cassidy, the guy
with the 40K, now he's a sleazy fella.
Stinks. Marion's got no time for his
shit. No, none at all.
She goes to say Larry, your boss to tell him she's poorly and
going home. And Tom, just like, interrupts
Larry and says, yeah, she can go.
What's it got to do with him? Yeah.
I'm taking him out drinking, he owns the place.
The only thing is what Marian says.
I'm going to spend this weekend in bed.
I can't believe Tom doesn't make some sleazeball comments about
it. She doesn't give them time to
straight out the door. But it's all great set up.
In 2 scenes we get Marian's love life, her professional life, a
situation and a motivation for taking the money.
It's great, like tight writing and always engaging as well.
And she's miserable everywhere. Nobody knows.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And those animated opening
credit sequence that was created by Saul Bass, the legendary
Hollywood graphic designer. He'd already worked with
Hitchcock and done the credit sequences for Vertigo and North
by Northwest. And on Psycho.
Bass created the titles to animate in and out with what he
called a shredding effect, which he said was to represent a
stabbing knife. And also Norman split
personality. Brilliant that.
How great. All those credits.
It's often like a black screen. The first thing we hear are the
screeching strings on the score. I'm on edge before I've ever
even seen anything. Yeah.
And the titles by Boss. It's just music, words and some
fairly simple animations. But somehow it's like,
terrifying. Just brilliant work from Boss.
We'll come back to him quite a bit in this episode.
They couldn't get rid of him. He does a bit, yeah.
Direct loads, isn't he? Yeah, apparently.
Hitchcock originally wanted the opening shot to be a sweeping
helicopter shot flying over Phoenix.
It would zoom in from above the streets, through an open window
and right into the bedroom where Marion and Sam are on the bed.
The technology didn't exist at the time, though, so Hitchcock
and his Day P John L Russell had the idea to shooting in a series
of dissolves getting closer to the hotel, which was the
Jefferson Hotel in Phoenix. Yeah, still works well, doesn't
it? Of course it does.
Incredible. It's a bit jittery, but I mean,
I'm not going to say anything about that.
It's 1960. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it is a bit,
although Gus Van Zandt pulled off in his 1998 remake, so
better. Obviously only thing he did pull
off in the remake. Also, on that opening shot, I
love the title cards of location and date, like sliding in and
out. Yeah.
And then the pan and zoom into the hotel window.
Surely that's inspired by the opening of last weekend by Billy
Wilder. It was so similar.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and one of Hitchcock's famous trademarks as a director
was that he usually appeared somewhere in his films in the
small cameo. And as Camio, he comes at the
start of the scene in Marion's office.
We've mentioned when Marion walks in, we see Hitchcock
through the window, standing on the pavement outside.
We do. He's wearing a cowboy hat like
he does. Yeah, ludicrous.
In there. That's great, isn't he?
Yeah. But so an interview with
Hitchcock where he said by this point in his career, people were
always looking for the cameo, so he'd always do it early just to
get it out of the way and stop distracting people from, like,
the narrative. Fair enough.
Yeah. Yeah.
So he's straight in. There's no way else he could
possibly fit in this film, let's be honest.
There's there's really no, no. Unless he's like buying a car or
something in the background. But then even at that point the
tensions up, isn't it? So yeah, yeah, it's the right
place. Yeah, it absolutely is.
And we see a second Hitchcock cameo in the same office scene,
but it's not Alfred this time. His daughter Patricia plays
Marion's Co worker Caroline. She does his only child and she
says about Tom. He was flirting with you.
I guess he must have known it as my wedding ring.
That's. Brilliant.
The confidence. Yeah, obviously I'm.
I'm gorgeous. Yeah, because I'm married.
You're not. Yeah.
That's amazing.
I love her confidence. She was also in Hitchcock, Stage
Fright and strangers are trained Patricia three of his films.
Yes, yeah. In the opening scene with Sam,
we see Marian is wearing a white bra, then gets dressed in an all
white outfit with a white handbag.
But after she steals the money, we see her at home getting ready
to leave and she's dressed in a black bra with darker outfit.
The costume supervisor was Helen Colbig and she said the colour
change was to signify Marian's shift from innocence to being a
criminal, which is brilliant. Love that.
Subtle, isn't it? George Lucas.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Black and white foam as well,
really subtle, no grey area. But that scene in Marion, how
good are the visuals? I mean, John Lee and I brought,
obviously, but we panned down from Marion to reveal the
$40,000 on the bed. So she's kept it and then away
to the left to show her packed suitcase.
So she's doing one. Love that in one shot.
Yeah, he does that all the way through the film, doesn't he?
He does. It's very similar one for that,
yeah, Yeah. So straight after that, she's
taking the money, she's on the run, and she's got to ditch this
car because there's a lovely moment when that cop turns up
and there's a little bit of back and forth.
But I love the kind of cat and mouse.
He's in the rearview mirror. He's following her.
She's got to get out of there. How it says Arizona on her
license plate, and he just turns off the road just at the right
time. Yeah, it's kind of tension
building. I love that.
But it's the back and forth here.
I mean, California, Charlie, what a boy.
What a name. He's some boys.
He just leans out of the office with his Bobo tire.
Who are you going to say? He's great?
Absolutely love him. But I love the way she gets the
newspaper she's reading that that's what's going to hide the
money in later on. So it's ramping up the paranoia.
That's really good. Do anything you have in mind.
You're a woman, you're going to it's like, well, come on, it's a
bit forward straight away, but she is in this hurry and it's
great because you've got the cop then turns up and he's standing
on the other side of the street. And when I watched this and I
was like 9 or 10 years old, I was like, that's him, that's the
psycho, that's the cop there. He's going to going to start
killing everybody. It's going to be like maniac
cop, which I've seen around the same time I think, which is
insane. It's great because you there is
this tension ramp domain. She does buy that car incredibly
quickly. I mean, she gets a new 1 + 700
dollars. Then it's just these like,
little questions that really work.
It's kind of, can you prove this car is yours?
Yes, I've got everything. And you just think, well, this
is obviously so suspicious, but she explains her way out of it
perfectly. Is it not all right to just be
in a hurry and get another car? Like what?
What's the problem? So yeah, but it's not normally
what would happen. Everything's just so guilty, but
there's just no evidence, which I think is really brilliant
about this scene because you can't stop her.
But at the same time, you know that something is definitely
wrong. We know it's definitely wrong
because all these three guys line up when the when the
mechanic puts a suitcase in, you've got the mechanic, you've
got California Charlie, and then you've got the the cop and they
stand as like 3 bad guys. They're just blaring down on her
and just want to just prove something.
Absolutely brilliant setup. And you just, you're on her
side. Even though she's done
everything wrong, you're still on her side.
And that's the setup from this, this scene.
It's it's great, great stuff. Yeah, there's some beautiful
motors at the car dealers, isn't there?
Oh, yeah. Unreal.
Yeah. But I love this whole stretch of
the film where Marion's got the money because it's all
narratively about Marion being, like, on the run.
Larry sees her in the car after she said she was ill and the
cops following her about she part exchanges the car.
I think what it's doing is building Marion's guilt and how
much like, eating away at her. And that's why the cops stalking
her. He doesn't know what she's done,
but she does, so he's like the personification of her guilt,
following it everywhere. Just like genius stuff.
Yeah, with the black eyes as well.
And there's no, there's no soul there.
Well, that's it. That close up with the cops face
when he finds Marion in the car. That's one of the creepiest
moments in the film. Those like mirrored sunglasses.
Yeah. And he sees to her plenty of
motels in the area just to be safe.
Worst advice ever in the film that surely?
It's up there, yeah. Definitely, yeah.
And the car dealership Marion visits is called California
Charlie's, as we've said, but it was founded a real dealership
called Harry May's used car lot, which was in North Hollywood.
And you may have noticed that a lot of cars in the lot are made
by Ford. And this is because Ford Motor
Company was the sponsor of Hitchcock's TV show, Alfred
Hitchcock Presents. So the car lot was intentionally
packed with their cars. All right, nice.
Replacement. But what's interesting is that
Marion's doing nothing wrong in that moment.
Like you're saying Westy, but Hitchcock.
Someone makes us feel like she's like robbing the players blind
or something. Yeah, it's they just want to
just just going to pull a shotgun out as a yeah, yeah,
yeah. I'll tell you what, a Ford
sponsored that. There was not one used car in
that lot. I'm sorry.
Pristine. Yeah, there isn't.
California, Charlie. Some of the most famous shots
from the film are the close-ups on Marion as she's driving often
with the voiceover could basically explain what's going
on in her head which I think a fantastic moment.
Very 60s though but very Hitchcock.
So when the film that get a proper actions and facial
expressions, Hitchcock would be behind the camera telling Janet
Lee what she was doing and thinking at every point in the
shot. Great.
Amazing, yeah. With those scenes in the car
close up on channel. Yeah, the voice over where
Marion's like, imagining everyone's found out what she's
done. So good.
The guilt just like eating away. That's such a brilliant way to
do it. Didn't you do that?
When you're driving and say I've got the radio on, you just start
spinning everything you've done in the last 20 minutes.
It's like, oh, did I say the right thing?
If I'm pissed off this time, yeah.
So that's Marion on the run. A white bra, $40,000 a black bra
and a cop in the rearview mirror.
I think she needs somewhere to stop for the night, don't you?
That's the last thing she needs. Yeah, just keep on driving.
Safer with California Charlie in the toilet.
Caught in the downpour, Marion pulls off the highway and sees a
flickering neon sign. Bates Motel vacancy.
She checks in and it's here we meet the guy who runs it, Norman
Bates. Actually, some of the most
famous scenes in the film as Norman talks to then spies on
Marion. Yeah, he's a strange chap,
Norman. Isn't he mad A.
Little bit, yeah. But how are the first scenes in
the motel? I mean, how great is that reveal
if the house on the hill just looming over the motel it's.
Pretty great. Just looks malignant.
And I think having the house and the motel separate, but they're
still linked together really closely.
I think it's just this great visual representation of Norman
and his mother because he can go to the motel to work as often as
he wants to, but he'll never truly escape her.
She's always watching over him from that house.
It's like a church in a graveyard, isn't it?
It. Is it's totally got that vibe
that it totally does. And then in retrospect, like
it's so chilling when Marion sees mother as we think walk
past the window and silhouette because it just looks so
innocuous. But no one it's actually Norman
dressed up. It's just spine chill and stuff
when you come back. It's not Michael Jordan cut out
from home alone. And then we probably meet
Norman. And at first he's got all the
powder and charming, all the 12 cabins, 12 vacancies thing.
But it just starts to chip away slowly at this first perception
that this guy's all right. I mean, the way he hesitates
over the number three key before giving her number 1 so she could
be next to the parlour for reasons we'll shortly talk
about, and then showing around. And he, he can't bring himself
to say the word bathroom. He can't even look at it.
Just Jesse's at it and kind of goes right.
Yeah, great introduction to him. It really is.
It's just a master class in like building dread for me because
you've got Marion driving in the rain, just the rain hammering on
the windshield. It's such a great visual anyway.
And then the music cuts, the Bates Motel sign comes into
view, and suddenly it's like somewhere else entirely.
And the check in itself, I find that quite tough to watch now,
probably because we know what's coming.
But that moment you mentioned, Matt, when Norman wishes for the
key for Room 3. As he does that, Marion says
she's from Los Angeles, and Norman then goes for Key 1
instead. So is that the moment he decides
to kill her or just the moment he decides to spy on her?
I'm not sure. But either way, minding the
gunner for Norman, and I mean Anthony Perkins.
We'll talk about him properly, obviously, but from the first
scene he is perfection as Norman.
He is. So the scene after the check in,
Marion goes to her room and over he's Norman arguing with his
mother. We find out he's arguing with
himself, obviously, but to hide the twist, Hitchcock did some
things to misdirect the audience.
She's got a loud voice, Missus Bates, hasn't she?
Booming voice right the way down to the motel.
It's funny when Norman's like mother.
She's just a stranger. As if men don't desire
strangers. So Hitchcock had a chair on set
throughout filming which had Missus Bates written on the back
of it. So anyone visiting thought that
the was an act was playing the part.
And he told the press that either Helen Hayes or Judith
Anderson would be hired to play Missus Bates.
She played in Missus Danvers in Rebecca, Judith Anderson, so
there was a link there. And apparently Norma Varden, who
was in Strangers on Our Train, she read those reports and
thought they were real. And she got on Twitch with
Hitchcock to say that she wanted to play Missus Bates.
Right. Yeah.
Fooled by? It and the voice of Mother that
we hear was provided by three different performers, Virginia
Greg and Jeanette Nolan, who had both appeared on Alfred
Hitchcock Presents, and Paul Jasmine, who had been
recommended by Anthony Perkins. That's right.
So their voices were sometimes mixed together to give it a bit
of an off kilter sound, right? A lot of it was Virginia Greg
though. She delivers the famous
monologue in the final scene and she also did the voice of Mother
in Psycho 2 and Psycho 3 as well.
Right, right. Was it not Thomas S Wilson?
She did the voice of his grandmother in About the Future
2. Yeah, yeah.
That's. A massive RIP of.
Good food tanning. Good food tanning.
So from there, he offers to make us some food, you know, nothing
much, just sandwiches and milk. I mean, I would like I'll leave
the milk if that's all right with you.
That sounds that sounds horrible.
To be fair, in cling film as well.
Now, going in the parlour, this should be a bit of a red flag.
There's just stuffed birds everywhere.
It's a massive owl leer and over his shoulder like he stuffs
things. But there's so much of A reveal
about the character here. I mean, you say that that Norman
Bates as a character is perfect from the start, and this whole
sequence just adds to it and just adds layer upon layer of
confusion, but at the same time, real sympathy for him.
But you know, you get everything you need to know on the second
watch from this moment. They're both completely lost.
They both want to find something else.
They both want to disappear. They're both unhappy with the
lives. She tries to move on the best
way that you can, and she can't at the end of it.
And she ultimately repents and wants to go back.
Norman can't escape and he really wants to and the way that
he talks about stuff in the birds because the passive to
begin with, he just attacks the passive things that are around,
which is what she is. He describes her as a bird.
So you or it's already this set up that she's going to be
killed. It's just absolutely fantastic.
And then when he starts talking about his mother, that switches
to that shot and that shot's fucking excellent where he's
just in the bottom right hand corner of the flame in that
owl's over his shoulder. There's a security camera which
represents his mother watching over him.
So, so brilliant. And what this does is it really
sells the mother as a character. You then believe that this
person exists. You believe that you're going to
see this person. And it just ends on one of the
most famous lines. You know, we all go a little mad
sometimes and we're all in the same boat and we're all the same
at the end of the day. It's a brilliant back and forth.
Really, really creepy. Loads of red flags in there.
A boy's best friend is his mother.
Get the fuck out. Leave.
Leave immediately from that. Like, I mean, yeah, you would
probably think that, but there's no way you would say that to a
girl. Well, that you're quite
attracted to that. You've just met.
You've given her a sandwich. Oh, me Mum's be best made by the
by the way. Oh, really?
Your stuffed birds and stuff. Yeah.
You're here by yourself. Yeah.
There's nobody else here. No.
Right. I'll see you later.
And the way that it's played back to him as well by Janet Lee
is just incredible. Both of them are absolutely
fired and all cylinders here and you buy it.
Hook, line and singer. You're into this film from this
point. Absolutely.
I mean, it's just two people talking and barely moving it
all, but it's so tense and so well put together.
It's how the scene develops A narrative that blows me away
because this is where the narrative starts to shift and
where Hitchcock transfers the role of main character from
Marion to Norman, which is basically at the start, just two
static shots, one on Norm and one on Marion.
But the way they develop it visually is great.
The first time Marion mentioned Mother, you mentioned the West.
He had cuts to a different shot of Norman, that one framed under
the owl. Then it switches again when
Marion suggests putting Mother in some place, I think she says.
And then Norman's shot from this really weird low angle where
Marion's shot at high level. So she shot from Norman's point
of view, but Norman isn't shot from hers.
So it's visually starting to put us in Norman's shoes.
Yeah. And this is when Marion makes
her decision to go back home, so her arc's basically done.
And then she tells Norm her name's Crane when he knows she's
written Samuels in the logbook, so he knows there's a good
chance no one knows where she is.
So it's all there in the writing as well.
Yeah, which is also a bird. It's a formed bird.
And it's weird when he's when he's leaning against it and he's
like a hobby should take some of the time, not all of the time,
but he's just stroking one of them.
Get the fucking. Out get another red flag, yeah.
Yeah. But it's all just masterful.
It's like the example if I was switching narrative from
focusing on one character to another and it's all done in
just one scene. It's crazy.
Absolutely, there's so many red flags in this.
It's a good job it's a black mite.
And then after this, she goes to her room and then we see Norman
being a dirty little Peeping Tom.
He's a peeping Tom. He's a peeping Tom.
As we're saying, red flags with this guy out of the chimney, to
be honest, but this is the first one.
We think this is actually dangerous now and Marion is in
big trouble. And just that huge close up of
his eye staring at Marion. That might be the most
Hitchcockian image ever. Yeah, those close up was
Norman's eye. How good are those shots?
They're ridiculous. How many times have you seen
those as a film makers copy that as well.
Yeah, too many. Scorsese.
He uses it in good feathers, doesn't he?
He does, yeah. Norman spies on marrying by
taking a patent off the wall to reveal the people behind it.
The painting is Susanna and the Elders which is a great name for
an all female punk band if you're looking for a name.
It really is. That's absolutely.
Which was by William Van Milleris and either 1691 or
1731. It shows the Old Testament story
of two elderly men spying on a young woman bathing, reflecting
Norman, spying on Marion. Disgusting.
Yeah, so it was from Hitchcock's own personal art collection,
apparently. It was.
Yeah, yeah. No idea how to use it the same
way Norman does. People all behind it, who knows?
And then after marrying eats with Norman, she adds up the
money she has on a piece of paper and then flushes it down
the toilet. Now, the haze cord was still in
practice at the time and restricted toilets being flushed
on screen for some reason. But the writer Joseph Stefano
wanted to break that taboo. So Hitchcock told him make it
integral to the plot so that it couldn't be removed.
And this is the first film that shows the target being flushed
on screen. Wow.
Yeah, more shocking than the murder it was at the time.
How mad that. Yeah.
People gaspered, probably gaspered at how simple that
fucking sum was for the grand -700 dead dead.
Straightforward that. Terrible at maths marriage.
Isn't it? Oh fucking I've ripped this up.
Well, before we head for a much needed shower, we've got a
question from our ATR and patrons.
It's on the parlor scene and it comes from Nathan Lang.
Hello, Nathan. Hello, Nathan.
So Nathan says Psycho has to be my favorite Hitchcock.
His use of foreshadowing and symbolism is so rich and best
exemplified in the conversation between Marion Crane and Norman
Bates. What are some of your favorite
scenes in movies with just two people talking?
It's a good question, Matt. So what are your favorite 2
Honda scenes? So I've gone for three.
One of them comes from boyhood, the link later film, and there's
lots of talking seeds and that obviously.
But the one I've gone for is where Mason, he's gone on a
fishing trip with his dad, Ethan Hawke, and they're just talking
about Star Wars and if they'll be any more because that when
they filmed it was before the sequels.
And it's a such a lovely time capsule of a moment.
And it perfectly sums up that the kind of father son
relationship at that age. I think that's a really
beautiful scene next to be amazed at Wesley hasn't got
these, but from Zodiac, obviously Tusky and Grace Smith
in the diner at the end. Grace Smith outlined in this
theory why it's Arthur Lee Allen and he's got an answer for every
single one at Toski's questions. I walked it.
Jesus Christ, just amazing. Door to door, it's great door to
door. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you for breakfast.
Yeah, every time you're that one.
And then last one is the Shining Jack and Grady in the bathroom.
How the balance of power just shifts between those two
characters. Yeah, nice, because Grady sorts
off all Bond and oh, sorry, Sir, because he spilled the drink on
him. But he just becomes more and
more evil and he gets Jack under his complete control by the end
of it, when he's talking about his wife and children, killing
them. I corrected them too.
Yeah, it's that red on the walls.
It's incredible use of colour. Yeah, yeah, amazing, brilliant
ones for me. I haven't got any of them.
Oh wow, really it? Isn't so I've got I've got
another four that that I felt was so cliched that you might
have had them anyway. So I was kind of like, we're
going to cross on this. My favorite 2 hander is hands
Lander. What do you think of that one?
So Inglorious Basterds, the open sequence, of course, Christopher
Wilson and Dennis Minoche is absolutely fantastic that.
One of the best. Back and forth of power is
unreal. The scene we're all waiting for
was Pacino and De Niro. Button heads in heat of course
in the cafe. Absolutely love that scene.
It's incredible. Hopkins and Foster, the first
time that she meets Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs,
I think to absolutely shine in that wonderful.
And another back and forth that's beautifully written by
Tarantino again is Hopper and Walking and True Romance.
I think that's is absolutely wonderful.
Yeah. One of my favourites.
Yeah, check them out. Absolutely brilliant.
Some great ones there. Yeah.
So Maureen has made her decision to go back to Phoenix.
She's eaten her sandwich and she's worked out her maths.
Time for a shower before she heads back home.
Easy, right? Yeah, she'll be knackered after
all that. That's skip it.
The director. The director of Psycho was one
of the biggest film making names in Hollywood, Sir Alfred
Hitchcock. Psycho was his 51st futurist
director with many classics under his belt already before
this. Some titles, The 39 Steps,
Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious Rope, Strangers on a
Train, Dial In for Murder, Rear Window to Catch a Thief, The Man
Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, and North by
Northwest. Wow, not a bad filmography I.
Thought you're going to do all 51 there.
Don't do the silent ones, that's fine.
Stop. Stop for breath.
I always do the famous ones, and there were just too many.
Yeah. Lords, yeah.
So Matt Hitch, what do we think of his work as director on
Psycho? I mean, I think it's exhibit,
AY, he was called the mass of suspense, isn't it?
And it's the way he manipulates the audience for me, because we
start off with marrying, as we said, scandalous that she's
having an affair with a married man and then she becomes a thief
and goes on the run. But Hitchcock makes us so
sympathetic that we are complicit with her crimes.
We want her to get away. And then she has this change of
heart and you think, OK, that's where her orc is going until no,
Hitchcock brutally murders her off our way through.
But even then, he doesn't change the narrative.
So we follow her grieving sister or the boyfriend or the private
detective. He puts us firmly in the
perspective of the guy who, as far as we know at this point,
has covered the murder up. And then we end up really liking
him. We don't want Orbigas to find
out the truth, we want Norman to get away with it.
And then he just flips it all on his head again at the end when
we find out what's really been going on.
And it's just sleight of hand after sleight of hand where he
makes us look one way and then completely blind sides us.
And the last thing that I always get from Psycho, Hitchcock
thinks this is just hilarious to him.
This is a black comedy. Like, the audience is shrieking
and screaming. I think he's just got a big
smile slowly spreading across his face.
I mean, as I said, Norman dressed up as as his mother,
walking back and forth talking to himself.
It's the funniest thing he's ever heard of.
But he's going to scare us with it at the same time.
And if anyone doubts that, just go and watch the original
trailer for this because it's 6 minutes long and it tells you
everything you need to know about how Hitchcock viewed this
film. And it is undisputedly one of
his masterpieces. Yeah, yeah.
When I was writing notes for this section for a while, I was
like, way on earth, do I start? It's just so much, isn't there?
Yeah, too much. The director who did too much,
that's Hitchcock. Something that always strikes me
on Psycho, though, is how lean it is as a film to compare like
Vertical or North by Northwest. Both incredible, but they're way
more like lavish than this cycle is.
Like Usain Bolt. It's like out the gates, done,
boom. There's not a wasted second, but
it never feels rushed or like it's missing anything either.
And I think that's because when the big scenes come, they're all
very different. Like the parlour scene we talked
about does take its time. That's the first time it feels
like we're allowed to breathe in the film.
Then the shower sequence. Absolute chaos.
Arbor gas on the stage is all tension.
He knows exactly when they like turn the screw and went to step
off the gas a bit more. Hitchcock's just like a master
at framing scenes and WADLUP as well is just his vision for the
film. The most famous director on the
planet by a long way at this time at a time he could be
coasting. He goes, I'm going to make this
on a fraction of the usual budget in black and white, huge
creative choices. And I think it's because he
knows the craft. He has complete confidence in
his mastery of the overall skill of film making.
He might be the best at that. I mean, we'll talk about some
specifics as we go through the film, but it all just feels so
fresh as well. I mean, Hitchcock was like 60
years old when he made this, but it feels like it's still like
cool and exciting feeling. It was made by a talented 30
year old or something. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, most great directors have probably one film
where you can go. That's his masterpiece.
Hitchhike has about four, and this is one of them.
It's just sensational direction for me.
Yeah. That first thing I've got
written down is seems like it was directed by a younger man
with more energy and more vigour and more.
It's just the energy that's attached to this is just the
confidence, like I said, at the top, but it's just the
cleverness as well. And he is on top of his game at
this point. I mean, 51 films, you're not
supposed to be doing it this quickly or have this much
confidence in what you're doing. You're supposed to be retiring
by that point easily. Just thinking I cannot be
bothered with this anymore. Jesus.
And I've got to do it on a on a strip back budget and I've got
to shoot in black and white again.
It's a breath of fresh air. It's just like he's taken in a
new release of life. There's a new breath of oxygen
here, and he's just absolutely filling his lungs with it.
And what I get from the direction of this film, it's not
built around the big sequences. Then big sequences came later
through audience participation, through audience reaction.
He didn't go right. I need people there for the
shower scene because otherwise it won't work.
Doesn't matter because you've got all of them are peppered
between. Then they've just got incredible
scenes that bridge them all together.
There's, like John said, there's not a bit of fat on this.
It zips through and even if you miss a couple of scenes, it
doesn't matter. You can kind of catch up with
it. It's just that clever.
He hits you with that shower sequence and then lets you sit
with it for a long, long time, which was unbeknownst at that
point in that in 1960. To sit with something like that
and just see the aftermath of it was just incredible.
For an audience to sit through with a hat, to sit through it
and he made them do it. It's staggering.
I mean, we've talked about it already, but that parlour
sequence, that back and forth between them would be a
standout. And pretty much any other film,
that introduction of none. But it was just, it doesn't get
better. Then it just goes downhill from
there. But it doesn't.
It goes up and it keeps going up and it keeps getting better.
Literally, it goes uphill, yeah. Of course it does massively.
It just, it just gets better and better and better and builds on
it. But the thing about Psycho is it
knows it's amazing, but it's nowhere near pretentious enough
to be. And then that's the whole point.
He's not being pretentious with it, he's just being clever.
He knows exactly what he wants to do with the film and he knows
he wants people to be scared, and that's exactly what he does.
Yeah, this is so much better than it had any right to be.
Oh yeah, should be so throw. Away it.
It should be. You remember that cycle 1 he did
wasn't. Yeah, it went on his TV show,
which obviously I think he nearly did.
And there was lots of elements that brought it all together.
But I think he just went in this with in the excitement of a
child, just like I'm going to make something scary and that's
it. And that's exactly what he did.
That passion is still burning there so you can see it.
Even now, yeah, it's brilliant. So the novel Cycle was written
by Robert Block and published by Simon Schuster in 1959.
When it came out, it got a glowing review in the New York
Times. Alfred Hitchcock's PA Peggy
Robertson saw the review. She read the book and then
showed her the Hitchcock. Yeah, Anthony Boucher had
written that review. He was a well known mystery
writer and critic at the time, so his approval was like a quite
a big deal I think at the time. Yeah, and then in the late 50s,
Hitchcock had seen two film projects fall through.
He abandoned an adaptation of a book called Flamingo Feather
when it became a logistical nightmare, and he'd also been
planning to make a film with Audrey.
Hepburn called No Bail for the Judge, but that stopped when
Hepburn fell pregnant. It was at this time Cycor
dropped on his desk and he bought the rights from Robert
Block for $9500. Nice.
Hepburn and Hitchcock together at last.
Nearly never worked together, did they?
I. Know that would have been
amazing, yeah. But when Hitchcock first bought
the rights to Psycho, we did it anonymously.
I think if Bloke had known who he was selling it to, he might
have asked for quite a bit more money.
Oh, you'd have. Ramped it up slightly I think.
Might have been Yeah. And the Wrights report to Shamli
Productions, which was Hitchcock's own company and he
was inspired by William Castle and he was AB movie director who
had hits in the late 50s with the likes of House on Haunted
Hill and The Tingler Horrors made on shoestring budgets.
Yeah, that came from the Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano.
He said the first time he met Hitchcock he was praising those
Castle films, but said just imagine if somebody good made
one. You know, like slammed.
Paramount had passed over the book when it came out, but as
they had Hitchcock under contract for one more film, he
took Psycho back to them. They didn't like the novel, but
Hitchcock said he'd make it for cheap.
He also said that he'd devote his normal quarter of a million
salary and put up the 806,000 production budget himself.
In exchange, he asked for 60% of the film's profits and getting
the film distribution rights back.
After Paramount made their money back, Paramount thought it would
never be a big hit, so they agreed.
Fools. Apparently, Bonnie Balaban, the
president of Paramount at the time, he said about Psycho.
It's unfilmable. It's about a queer killing
people in his mother's dress. He aged like milk.
That quote in more ways than one.
Hitchcock had the last. One.
You know what it's about, though.
And North by Northwest had cost over $3,000,000.
So working with a budget much less than he was used to,
Hitchcock came up with ways of cutting costs.
So instead of going with his usual feature film crew, as we
mentioned, he hired crew members from his TV series Alfred
Hitchcock Presents instead. Nice.
Yeah. And he shot it at Review
Studios, the TV arm of MCA, rather than on the Paramount
stages, because it was cheaper, presumably.
Yeah, Yeah. So it had all the resources of
television. But this does not look like ATV
movie at all. Not.
One little. Bit not for one second no
better. Than every other movie came out
that year to be honest. And he also came up with a very
short shooting schedule of about 3 months and had the script
changed so that they needed as few sets as possible.
Yeah, I'm not sure a scheduled man that could get the crew
cheaper too. The whole crew cost $62,000.
The crew that made Psycho, How much is that ridiculous?
Yeah. Hitchcock knew the importance of
keeping the reveal about Norman a secret.
On the first day of filming, he had made each cast and crew
member stand in front of him, raise the right hand and say I
promise I shall not divulge the plot of Psycho.
He stopped Janet Lee and Anthony Perkins doing any press for the
film in case they gave anything away.
And there's a famous story that Hitchcock had Penny Robertson
buy up as many copies of the novel as they could so people
couldn't read what happens. And he refused to release the
plots and officers to the press Amazing.
Yeah, secretive man. The only other director who'd
ever done that was Cecil B De Mille, who apparently refused to
tell a report as the plot of the 10 Commandments.
I think we kind of know what happens in that one, to be
honest, Cecil. Cecil's revealed there's only 90
What the? Fuck yeah.
Go out and buy every copy of the Bible you can find.
Yeah, sure. Well, Hitchcock famously never
won the Best Director of Academy Award.
He was nominated for Psycho, though, his fifth and final
nomination. Do you know who we lost out to?
I do know this one because this one's a tough one because it was
Billy Wilder for the apartment. It was indeed.
Yeah, that's competition. I know that's superb One.
Yeah. So no major award.
But in creating one of the most iconic and influential films to
ever come out of Hollywood and somehow on a budget of less than
$1 million, did all right pitch, didn't it?
Yeah, it's all right, isn't it? Just a bit.
Yeah, the cast. I like the film.
The cast of Psycho is a lean one.
In this section, we're going to be discussing Anthony Perkins as
Norman Bates and Veera Miles as Lila Crane, but we're starting
with Norman's tragic victim. We are.
So Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a Phoenix real estate
secretary, where he watches. Marion enjoys some afternoon
delight with her boss, Sam Loomis, before deciding to
pocket $40,000 of her boss's money, skip town and meet her
demise at the Bates Motel. A classic Hitchcock blonde mat
that was Janet Leigh as Marion Crane.
I feel a bit sorry for her actually, because I think when
people talk about this film, they'll talk about Perkins in
the shower scene and the twist. I think she just gets a bit
taken for granted along the way. Like her performance only really
gets talked about in relation to the shower scene, but she brings
so much moderate than that. I mean, part of the reason that
scene is so shocking is because of how likeable Marian is.
And considering, as we've been saying, she's the thief and
she's having an affair with the married man, that's all down the
league's performance. How much we like her.
I mean, that scene we've talked about where she's driving away
and imagining all the conversations other people are
having about her, so many conflict and emotions playing
across her face. You know, there's regrets this
fee of the consequences if she does go back, but there's also
like an undeniable joy at what she's done at the same time.
Like, why doesn't she deserve a better life with Sam?
That businessman wasn't Uttaprixa.
He deserves it. And she's kind of enjoying this.
So I think that scene, the Paula scene where she treats Norman
with such kindness, the all contribute what a well drawn
character Marian is. And that's why her death is so
impactful. And Lee's performance needs a
lot more praise than he usually gets.
Yeah, and once she gets the money, he says to her.
Like, I never carry more than I'm prepared to lose or I can
afford to lose, so he can afford to lose.
Exactly. Like it's expendable stuff.
Yeah, totally get why she gambles on her.
Every thought in her head is totally.
Believable for her performance, Yeah.
Yeah, I think of all the cast members she brings to star
quality. She is a classic Hitchcock
blonde. She's glamorous, elegant.
The camera loves her. From her very first shot, lying
on the bed in the hotel, you see why Hitchcock wanted her.
She looks great and it'll be a massive shock to see I get
butchered, basically. But she's not just a pretty face
like you're saying, Matt. Janet Lee's got the acting chops
as well, for sure. She's got to sell the whole
first act of the film on her own, basically.
And she does. I believe Marion is a decent
person who gets pushed far enough to make a mistake, and
then I believe that when she comes to her senses and changes
her mind. I mean, we talked about the
parlor scene and I think Lee's excellent in that.
She barely even moves, but you can kind of see her making the
decision to go back. It's all been like a mannerisms
in the face, really subtle. But then she's like gone, which
I still find it quite shocking now in 1960.
It must have caused meltdowns. The biggest name in the film
lying dead on the bathroom floor.
It's horrific. And what makes it work is the
work that's been done to that point to make us relate to and
care about Marion. That's in the writing, it's in
the directing, and it comes from Janet Lee as well.
I think it's all around great character building.
Yeah, it is. Yeah, I mean, she's just, for
me, really, really fantastic performance.
Because it if without her, you haven't got the impact, like
Matt says, you don't have a film.
You need a character that you can follow, that you are just as
confused as she is. You are just as guilty as she is
because you're seeing this all through her point of view and
you understand her back story without going too far and you
kind of sympathise. And it really does work.
And thinking of Janet Lee as well, at this point in my
career, she's read this script. She knows what's going to happen
and she's put the groundwork in here.
She could have easily formed this in and nor she's going to
get a really good death scene and not be in the rest of the
film. And she could have been bitter
and a little bit annoyed by that, but she definitely isn't.
She acts in the start of this film like she's going to be
there when the credits roll, and that's the best thing about it.
And it really does work. It's almost like she didn't know
she was going to get killed as an actress and as a character.
It's just I'm in this all the way through Hitchcock.
No, no, no. It almost feels like that.
That's how much she brings to it.
She brings this like she's the she knows she is.
She convinces us that she is, and then she's wiped out
spectacularly. Or I mean, that reach out to the
shower curtain. There's nothing more iconic.
She looks the part, She acts the part.
I do think, yeah, it's criminally underrated how good
this performance is because you wouldn't have a film without
Janet Lee. Absolutely.
Yeah. So before Janet Lee was cast as
Marion, there were lots of names that Hitchcock apparently
considered. So Eva Marie St.
Lee Remic, Angie Dickinson, Piper Lorry, Shirley Jones, Lana
Turner, Dina Merrill and Jane Simmons who all discussed.
Eva Marie St. was in North by Northwest.
Wasn't she? Yeah.
Yeah, and Angie Dickinson, she plays a Marion Crane type in
Dressed to Kill, which is kind of Brian De Palma's homage to
Psycho It. Is.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, one of many Brian De Palma homages to Psycho.
Every film that Brian De Palma made.
Yeah, Far from Scarface, obviously.
But Hitchcock liked the idea of casting Janet Leigh after seen
it in Orson Welles Touch of Evil in 1958.
So he sent out a copy of Robert Block's novel with a no team.
Please consider the part of Mary Anthony.
Perkins is said to play a Norman Bates and she never had her
audition. Yeah, she also had one film left
on her, seven pictures here with Paramount, Janet Leigh.
So I imagine they put her forward to Hitchcock as well.
And he actually agreed to do it for 1/4 of a usual salary, which
was like $100,000. So she must have been keen on
Hitch. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
We're keen to work with him. I mean, yeah, she wasn't turning
down Tony curtains for him. I doubt.
Wouldn't have thought. So stranger things have
happened. And Lee said that when she was
cast, Hitchcock briefed her before filming By saying I hired
you because you were an actress. I will only direct you if a you
attempt to take more than your share of the pie, B you don't
take enough, or C you are having trouble motivating the necessary
timed movement. All right.
Andy made her take the eye. Will not spoil Psycho auth,
presumably. Yeah, that'll be it.
Yeah. And Janet Leigh did say as well
that she created the whole back story for Marion.
She knew what she was like in school, what her favorite colour
was, what made her laugh, all that kind of stuff.
And it kind of shows because I'm always surprised how fleshed out
she feels, like almost immediately.
And other crew members fed into the character as well.
Marian was dressed by the costume designer Rita Riggs and
costume supervisor Helen Colvig. They bought the clothes from a
Beverly Hills boutique called Jax JAX, based on photographs
given to them by the assistant director, Hilton A Green.
Yeah, so apparently Hilton Green found a young woman somewhere
who much luck he had in his head for Marian, and he took photos
of all of her clothes and gave him to the costume team.
Really weird. Buffalo Bill, but.
Yeah, it sounds like I'm getting Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill if
you ask me. You're 12, right?
Lee was only on set for three weeks, and one week of that was
filming the shower scene. But the film had a big effect.
After the film came out, she received some threatening
letters from men detailing what they would like to do to marry.
And Crane 1 was so bad she passed it on to the FBI and they
investigated it and found the culprit.
It's gone. It's awful, isn't it?
Yeah, Yeah. She also said that the film made
her feel really vulnerable in the shower from then on, and she
would always as Bast, if possible, for the rest of her
life. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah.
Well, for a performance as Marion Crane, Jana Lee was
nominated for best actress in the supporting role of the
Oscars. She lost out to Shirley Jones
for Elma Gantry. OK, surely Jones has been
running for Marion as well, like we said.
Yes, right. So no Wayne, but we think
generally brings the star quality as Marion and with the
shock of her exit 1 of the classic Hitchcock blondes.
Iconic performance, yeah. Yeah, definitely. 2nd in our
cast list is arguably the most famous performance in the film.
Anthony Perkins is Norman Bates. We meet Norman as the lonely
young man who runs the Bates Motel and see him murder Mario
and then Pi Arborgast before finding out he is mother and
seeing him locked up for his crimes.
You might fool him, Matt, but you won't fool his mother.
All right, So how's Anthony Perkins and Norman Bates?
Again, I feel a little bit sorry for him as well because after he
did this, he was so typecast as Norman for the rest of his
career. No one could see him as anybody
else. Yeah.
Having said that, the reason he's typecast is because he is
so brilliant as Norman. Like, you never know where you
are with this character when you first meet him.
As I said, he's got this easy charm for him, He thinks very
likable. Then you see that's just on the
surface, and there's this whole, like, ocean of anxiety and
nervousness to the character. He's so incredibly awkward in
his own skin, but that's because really, that skin belongs to
someone else, and there's someone else in there.
And you do get these moments where I think you can see mother
bubbling to the surface, like when he pushes Marian's car into
the swamp to dispose of the body.
That's just like the hint of a smile on his face, like he's
enjoying this, which Norman isn't, but mother is, and that's
what we're seeing. And it's this constant conflict
between the two. And whenever he has to talk to
somebody, he's a nervous wreck. And yes, it's a shame he was
typecast. But if it's going to happen to
you as an actor, at least make sure it's for something as
memorable as this. Yeah, I mean, it's iconic, isn't
it? Part of Hollywood history?
I mean, as a character, Norman's interesting because he's not a
cartoon. He's grounded because on the
surface he's shy and awkward. He does seem like he wouldn't
harm a family. But as it gets a norm, it
becomes obvious he's disturbed and then had a split identity.
I think what's really interesting is how we're clearly
supposed to relate to him because we see how lonely he is.
We're here as embarrassment with mother.
The way they hand over the role of main character from marrying
the Norman that's done so well that by the time he comes to
clean up the murder, I kind of feel this panic.
Such a complex villain, I think Still.
And Anthony Perkins just takes what's on the page and makes
Norman totally 3 dimensional. He does that shy, sweet thing
well. 12 cabins, 12 vacancies, every single time.
It's living with that. It's so good.
But then when the switch flips, he's pretty terrifying.
He manage his support for you. Norman's totally unhinged, but
doesn't raise his voice once, just the way that he stands, the
way he holds himself. And yeah, those shots next to
the swamp with no words, and then that smile that he gives to
Arborgast after he drives away because he thinks he's getting
away with it. It's so good.
I mean, what can you say? It's Norman Bates in Psycho, 1
of the great characters in Hollywood, and it's in the
writing and it's also in what Anthony Perkins brings as well,
his old timer stuff. I love him.
I love Sweetheart.
He's great in the first like 30 seconds.
Is there one of them people who's like you really like when
you first move in and then he gets a little bit creepy as your
neighbor and then you end up just waving and then you just
don't come out. If he's at the car, you just
wait a little bit longer. It's that kind of character.
But it's just, it has this believability.
And I think what you guys were talking about there, like when
he's happy with himself, I always see it as like how happy
his mother would be at his actions.
Not necessarily her as a person, but she would be proud of him.
Like he's making that proud by doing this.
He hasn't got his own mind. He doesn't oversell everything,
but he doesn't undersell it either.
The fact that he spends all of his time just stuffing birds.
And I don't mean that as a euphemism.
Literally. He wishes.
I think his wardrobe's great. He's just looks really clean.
He's really crisp. He's really fresh.
He's just really zippy as a as a guy.
So he's got some good gags in there.
Like you said there, John, like 12 covers, 12 vacancies, candy.
And he's just got these little moments where it's just it's
just so well measured and so well played through.
You believe it. You believe every single step of
it all the way through the film. And that's so important.
But that's Perkins performance. He is fantastic.
I guess the only negative, like you said there, Matt, is how it
affected Perkins himself, because he did become totally
typecast, didn't he, As Norman, Yeah.
If you're that good though, you there's no way else you can go.
Once you do this, that's it. Yeah, absolutely.
It's a shame in his career so far, yeah.
So in the novel, Norman is described as being a pudgy,
balding, middle-aged man in glasses.
Some writers who knew Robert Block have said that an
inspiration for Norman was Calvin Thomas Beck, who was a
publisher of a horror magazine called Castle of Frankenstein.
Apparently he was a socially awkward mama's boy who was
dominated by his overprotective mother.
Sounds very familiar. Yeah, imagine that, though.
I've based a character in you in my new book.
Oh, have you? I can't wait to say that.
Massively insulting. He's a massive fat wet letters
of living man Oh class. Thanks for that.
And it seems like there was never anybody else considered to
play the part of Norman. Joseph Stefano said that he was
initially reluctant to right cycle and told Hitchcock the
problem was the character of Norman in the novel was just
impossible to sympathise with. And Hitchcock said, well, what
have we got? Tony Perkins?
Yes, Stefano would recently seen Perkins on stage in a play
called Look Home. What Angel?
And he said. When I saw him, I thought,
that's exactly who I want Norman to be.
Right. Right.
So he knew straight off, yeah. Fair enough.
And like Janet Leigh, Perkins saw a paramount the picture
under his contract, which meant his fate was well below his
usual rate. He got paid $40,000 to play a
Norman. In contrast, Cary Grant had been
paid $450,000 for North by Northwest. 40 grand for Norman
Bates is a bargain. Yeah, really is, yeah.
Maybe that's why Marion stole that much.
Paying for him. Exactly.
Yeah. Just take it straight out of the
safe. He didn't put it in the boot
after all, did he? Or the Trump or whatever you
want to call it. Well, Perkinsley, I said as well
that on set Hitchcock would always refer to him as Master
Bates of. Course he did.
Hitchcock did get accused of harassing some cast members,
like Tippi Hedren most famously didn't he on The Birds.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, before we finish and
Anthony Perkins and Norman Bates, we've got our next ATR
and Patreon question and it comes from Gareth Binmore.
Hello, Gareth. Hello, Gareth.
Gareth says what makes Norman Bates one of cinema's most
enduring psychological villains? And how does the film portray A
dissociative identity complex one from Gareth?
Matt Biz, what's your take? Why does he endure it?
I think because he's so sympathetic.
Like, even though we really like Marian as a character, I still
don't really hate Norman for killing her.
I I still feel sorry for him because we understand what an
abuse of an lonely childhood he had.
Now, ultimately, he's not in control of his actions.
And that's what separates him from the likes of, you know,
Michael Myers or Jason Foys, who go in their space because they
want to. Norman doesn't want to do any of
these murders. He's helpless and it's a mother
who wants to do them, and he can't do anything to stop her.
And the other thing about in which the two direct sequels
lean into, it's that sense of knowing something is going to
trigger him off, but you don't know when and you don't know
what. So that's what really kind of
makes him so interesting. Like, what's going to like, flip
that switch in his head when he goes?
You never know who's safe around him because some people are, but
some people aren't. So think how does it betray
their identity is something to feel a bit sorry for as well as
be scared about. Yeah, I think you're right.
I think Norman is written to be sympathetic because horror films
before Norman were usually monsters, like literally like
Frankenstein and Dracula, like the Universal stuff.
Norman's the guy next door. He's really normal, normal
baits. Until he's not, obviously.
But by that point it's kind of too late because we're already
empathising with him to some extent on the dissociative
identity side Gareth asked about.
I mean, psycho isn't a textbook, obviously, and the psychiatry
seen at the end simplifies it massively.
I think we'll get to that. But from what experts seem to
say, what it does get right is the idea of one personality like
swallowing another. Because Norman's not pretending
to be his mother. In his head, she's real, and
she's in charge. So is Norman evil, or is one
part of him evil? And if that evil part of him
just came about entirely through years of abuse, as the film kind
of implies, where does that leave us in judging Norman?
It's so great for 1960. This is villain writing, like,
ahead of its time, I think. I mean, it's barely been much
since I think. Yeah.
I think, yeah, because he is. And you do endure it because
you'd kind of in a weird way, see a little bit of yourself in
him. Like if you've ever been bullied
or if you've ever felt low, or if you've ever felt this lack of
confidence and this frustration that you have where you just
want to lash out or you just want to do something.
It just you just want something to disappear.
You just want something to go away.
And he has that desperation. It is very black and white.
It's there's no, like you said, there's no grey area for him.
His man wants it to happen. He's got no say in it.
He's very much in the middle of it.
Again, it's the performance, whether you like it or not, you
will see a little bit of yourself in that character
because he does try and act as normal as society deems it to
be. What is normal to act this way
and how the film portrays the disassociate of identity
specifically, I think it does it very cleverly through certain
techniques. And one of the most obvious is
that Norman is never ever seen as a reflection in the mirror.
Every other character is. So you never ever see another
side room. You never see that duality.
You have to come up with that yourself, but ultimately I think
it's just because the character is relatable, whether you like
it or not. He is to probably everyone just
about I would think. Yeah.
For his performance as Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins received
no recognition at the Oscars, not even the nomination.
Now that is madness. That is mad.
Yeah, yeah. But I just don't think they knew
what they had at the. Time.
No. Oh, not sure they didn't know
Bert Lancaster won that year, also for Elma Gantry.
But for us, decades later, Anthony Perkins is pretty
extraordinary as Norman Bates, a performance that defined an
actor, a character and one of the most influential roles in
Hollywood. Absolutely.
There's a lot to it, yeah. The last but by no means least
member of our cast we're going all in on is Vera Miles, who
plays Lila Crane, Marion's younger sister.
Lila doesn't turn up until nearly an hour into the film,
but ends up piercing together what's happened, Eventually
finding herself face to face with mother, then Norman in the
fruit seller. Yeah, Patience doesn't run in
her family, Westie, So we best got to move on.
Vera Miles is Lila Crane. I mean, she's fantastic,
arguably the biggest star in this film at this point, but she
really does bring it. I mean, she's just so, so good.
And the thing that I get from her performance is you
completely believe her and Marian's relationship that it's
not perfect, that the kind of speak but that don't quite get
on as well as they should. And you, there's this element of
guilt that she has all the way through the film that they
should be closer. She should know what's going on.
But the performance itself, I mean, there's just such a
contrast between who she's acting with.
When you cut Leila and Sam in the same scene, it's like she's
it's just head and shoulders above nearly everybody else.
It's just fantastic. But what an actress to sell the
actual point that needs to be sold.
But she's just so intelligent as well as a character and totally
believable within that intelligence.
If just like if, if Marian had just maybe reached out a little
bit, I think Lila could have helped her a lot more than she
feels that you could have. I don't know how much they would
have spoke gently and Vera Miles about it.
Look, this is where we've come from.
This is who we are. Feels like they had a
conversation about the kind of blueprint of how these two grew
up. And like I say, it's a wonderful
performance from Janet Lee. But again, not taking anything
away from Vera Miles, she picks up the baton and runs with it
right till the end and succeeds. She really does.
I mean, she comes into it late, but yeah, I think she's really
good. She's got a bit of a thankless
job here. Vera Miles, because she's
playing the character, doing the investigation heavy lifting in
the back half of the film. She has to essentially take over
from Janet Lee, which is no small ask.
Plus she has to put up with Sam for far too long.
Not. Far too long.
What makes my life good is how capable she is, I think.
Like, yeah, all big ass gets himself killed.
Sam's pretty useless, The sheriff's totally useless.
So it's Lila who kind of gets us to the reveal.
And Vera Miles doesn't have an easy either, because she's
basically just walking from one room to another, asking
questions a lot of the time. But she does bring, like,
charisma and presence of the part.
I like it. In Sam's hardware store.
We are gasses to her. I might just believe that.
And Lila, just like I don't much care if you believe me or not.
Yeah, yeah. I think Miles is smart enough to
make the character likeable, which means that Marion's death
hits even harder because of what Lila's lost.
Yeah. Yeah.
Only thing, and I mean, they couldn't have done it, really,
but I would love to have seen one scene in the first act
between Janet Lee and Vera Miles somewhere.
That would have been brilliant somehow.
Yeah. But yeah, brilliant supporting
performance, I think. And she kind of feels like the
lead by the end. I would have liked that if she'd
get, like, turned up and just given her half the money.
Yeah, I'm leaving. Like, give her 20 grand.
What's this for? She's like, don't ask any
questions. I will not see us again.
And then she takes 20, and they've got to try and, like,
match it up. Yeah.
To kind of bind them both together.
And would it be because even though they don't share a scene,
I can totally see their relationship?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can. I can see them on the phone to
each other just being like, well, why don't you tell us
what's going on? So it's none of your business?
Totally. It's it's really good, really
works. Yeah, I think she's really good,
but I've got Thankless written down as well, John, because
there is a little bit aspect to it, you know, she's the worried
sister and that's about it for most of it.
I mean, her and Sam are very similar.
They've got a dry fall with the plot in the second-half.
Once marrying an Arbor cast are killed, but she doesn't have
much of an arc to it. And I think maybe Hitchcock
really wanted the more memorable performance to come from Perkins
and he doesn't want anyone to take the spotlight away from him
because that's the ironic twist of the film.
The person you end up investing in the most is the murderer at
the end. Having said that, she is great.
I mean, you are screaming at her not to go into the house at the
end because you don't want her to meet the same fate as her
sister. So it's just instantly likeable.
There's limits as to what Miles can do with his character, but
she elevated a lot. Definitely, yeah.
She pushes to the limits of what you'd expect the character to
do. Definitely, yeah.
Like we're saying about the film, I think she does more than
you could ever reasonably expect it to do with it.
Yeah, definitely just a little looks to Norman as well when the
checkmate just a little. Yeah.
Who the fucks this game? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Should be more sensible than Marion, yeah.
So before Beer and Miles, there were other actresses in the
running to play Leila. Felicia Far, Carolyn Jones,
Caroline Corney, Eleanor Parker were all considered for the
role, and Kim Stanley was offered the role but apparently
turned it down due to reservations about working with
Anthony Perkins. Yeah, she was known mostly as a
staging TV actress at the time, Kim Stanley.
And apparently she had a problem with Perkins, although it's not
reported what that was. Right.
Yeah. Too much candy for crunch,
probably. Yeah, maybe.
Yeah. But cycle wasn't the first time
Hitchcock had came across Vera Miles.
She'd starred alongside Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man in 1956,
and then Hitchcock had cast her alongside James Stewart in
Vertigo. But that didn't happen.
As Miles pulled out when she was pregnant.
Hitchcock replaced her with Kim Novak, and according to Miles,
when she told him she was pulling out, Hitchcock said
Don't you know it's a bad taste to have more than two children?
Because he only had one. Yeah.
Amazing. Yeah.
I mean, I know that's bad taste, Alfred.
Yes, that. Definitely.
Is, yeah. But yeah, it's quite interesting
because Grace Kelly retired from acting in 1956 and Hitchcock
apparently saw Miles as his next main female lead and he signed
her to a five year contract and had her Paramount stylist get to
work on her style to turn her into a Hitchcock blonde.
So yeah, she was lined up for Vertigo.
Right. Wow, could it make matters
worse? Miles had just filmed the war
film called 5 Branded Women about Yugoslav women punished
for consorting with German soldiers, and she'd shaved her
head for that role. So turned up to film Psycho
basically bald. So she's wearing a wig in the
film? Yeah, wow.
Wow. Could never.
Tell Dad. Never knew that, Yeah.
Good job wasn't here in the shower.
No one would have got the shock of his life.
She's going to take the wig off at the end of the film, then
she's like a dad. Well, for a performance as Lila
Crane, Vera Miles received no recognition in the Academy
Awards. No great surprise given Janet
Leigh took the supporting slot. But in carrying the second-half
of the film and turning Lila into a role with real substance,
some top stuff from Vera Miles. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, Top draw. So that's our main cast.
We've talked about Janet Leigh as Marion, Anthony Perkins as
Norman and Vera Miles as Lila. 3 very different performances, but
some top casting from Hitchcock in Psycho.
Yeah, brilliant stuff. All the right movies will be
back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by
listening to this episode. Sponsors.
Thanks for listening to our sponsors.
Now back to the show. The middle.
Heading into the midsection of Psycho and we're going to the
most famous moments of all. We're going to be talking about
Arborgast's arrival of the motel and his own grizzly fate.
But first, we've got 45 seconds of Hollywood history to get
into. We'll do.
Having made her decision to go back to Phoenix, Marion decides
to have a shower before bed. Norman, though, our mother has
other plans. He burst into the bathroom,
butchers the tragic Marion, leaving her murdered on the
tiled floor. One of the most famous scenes in
all of cinema. Westie, is it for good reason.
It absolutely is, for good reason.
This would have been incredibly shocking.
If you're watching this 960, you're sitting in that audience.
It's the first time you've seen it.
You haven't heard anything about it, but just imagine that music
coming out. That's that silhouette creeping
up. You've got no idea what's going
on. The reveal from that shower
curtain pulling by the sound design is incredible.
The water still hitting down, you're already thinking, well,
this is a little bit too much nudity that I've already seen,
so you'd be bothered about that. You've already seen a bra in the
first scene, so you're already reeling about that.
You have no idea where this is going.
See the toilet flushing? Toilets flush.
At this point, it's like watching A Serbian Film, like in
1960. But it's just the editing here,
just the frenicity of it, just the the confusion of the whole
scene, just the different angles that come up.
The thing that really freaks me out is why do people in films
just get in the shower 1st and then turn it on?
I don't understand why that happens.
Nobody ever does that. Ever.
No, it's too cold again. Does it and this to do it in
Groundhog Day he learns his lesson in Groundhog Day he
doesn't do it again. That's probably why she gets
stabbed to be honest. But for me it's Hitchcock here
and how he just sits with the aftermath.
You just that water runs and you're just sitting there going,
can I leave now? Can I get out of here because
I'm so uncomfortable? Can I breathe?
There's that blood coming down and into the drain and then that
amazing transition from the drain to the eye and then it
pulls back and then he's still seen her on the ground.
It's just punched you in the face.
It's a kangaroo kicking you in the face for 30 seconds and then
stroking your back to life for like an hour and a half.
Really strange image that. Yeah, Kangaroo.
Yeah, it is a strange image, but I'm sticking with it.
Yeah.
It's a massive punch in the face and then a stroke of the hair.
It's just so well done by Hitchcock.
If I had a time machine, I would go back and watch the audience
watch this first shown 1960. No one knew what was going.
That would just be incredible. Yeah.
Oh, it really would. I mean, not just one of the most
famous scenes in Hollywood. This is one of the best pieces
of film making I think I've ever seen.
Literally every frame there for a reason.
It's an extraordinary thing. Firstly, when Norman pulls back
the shower curtain and Marian spins round, they do like a
classic thing, an American cut, I think it's called, like when
the monster revealed or something, and it goes wide
shot, mid shot, close up, like, bang, bang, bang.
Yeah, it does that. Yeah.
Wide shot Marian to a face, screaming, but just a mouth.
It could look really cheesy if you don't get it right.
This one is unbelievable. It's out outrageous.
It's the pace of it. It's perfect, isn't it?
It is the shots themselves are just perfect and then we're in.
It's total chaos. I think the average shot length
of the attacks, about 3/4 of a second, which let's just get
away with far more nudity than you would have otherwise I
think. But the quick cutting, it's like
an assault on us watching. It's just a barrage of all these
horrific images. 1 after the other, the knife or marrying,
screaming or a body being stabbed different.
Your brains like catching up with one another.
One gets thrown in front of you. And we often talk about breaking
the 180 grey rule on here. Yeah, yeah, Hitchcock's breaking
the 360° rule doesn't exist. Yeah.
Living about all over the place. It feels frantic as hell, which
is obviously the exactly the idea.
I love how we treat it as its own short film almost, because
we get bookend shots. The first shot of the scene,
looking up at the shower and it ends with that same shot as
well. Same shot.
And it feels totally different both times you say it.
I love that. I think as a director, having a
vision for a moment in the film and then executing it, this,
it's hard to top. It's horrific to watch.
But creatively, I'm just in total, all of it.
And I didn't even mention the score and.
That was the fastest I've ever heard you talk about anything in
25 years. Yeah, I mean, 45 seconds, 45
seconds in cinema has changed forever after this.
That's all it takes. I mean it's not lost one bit of
it's power to shock and again, like Wesley out do anything to
go back to 1960 and see this for an audience for the first time.
I mean it's scandalous in itself, borderline just the
notion of seeing the woman in the shower.
So that's going to play you off killer and then that to lead
into the most brutal murder probably ever in cinematic
history. At that point, they must have
lost their absolute minds because this plays into the fact
that this is when someone is at their most vulnerable naked in
the shower. But also, it's the place where
you should be at your most comfortable, because what's
scary about taking a shower? Everyone does it.
Hitchcock just obliterates all that comfort.
And it's maybe the greatest example of the suggestive power
of cinema ever. People think the C nudity, the
don't. People think the C the knife P
is flesh, the don't. It's all because of the editor,
because of that music and how Hitchcock saw this in his head,
translated it to the edit, added the score.
It is absolute genius of the highest order and it still
scares the absolute shit out of me every time.
I think it is filmmaking genius. It's about as good as it gets.
Yeah. So the shower scene was shot in
six days, from December 17th through December 23rd, 1959, but
it had to be postponed twice as Janet Lee was poorly.
It's 45 seconds long, 50 different camera angles and had
78 setups. It was storyboarded in full, but
Hitchcock bought a Moviola editing machine on the set so he
could see what they were making as they were filming.
Storyboard. What was it, a fucking flick
boot? Yeah, it's really fast.
That influenced what footage they would shoot on the fly.
Amazing. Wow.
Yeah, you need to see it. Surely don't.
Yeah, the cooks are that quick. You can't storyboard this and
nail it on the page. Surely it's just genius stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, and Anthony Perkins wasn't
present at all during the shooting of the shower scene,
and a stand in played mother instead.
Some reports say it Perkins was rehearsing a Broadway show
called Green Willow in New York at the time, but that's not why
he wasn't there. Hitchcock kept him away as he
didn't want any chance that the audience might be able to spot
that Norman was Mother. So instead Mother is played by
two stunt women called Margot Eppe and Anne.
Dore. Yeah.
So Margot Eppe is the one who rips the shower curtain.
Auburn. And then for the rest of it,
apparently it's Anne Dore, right?
I mean, we can't tell. Obviously, her face has been
made-up because it's like, pitch black.
There's no features there, is there?
It's crazy. Is that an influence on Star
Wars? Andor I got that out.
That was the worst joke I've ever put.
Janet Lee wore mole skin pads and strips to cover herself
while filming the scene, and she had a body double called Marley
Renfrow. Renfrow was a model and a dancer
and said that when she auditioned, she had to strip
naked for Hitchcock and Janet Lee so they could review her
body. Ridiculous, She said.
She spent hours a day naked on the set, and at one point
Hitchcock attached a measuring tape to the camera and put the
point of it on her breast just to make sure it was going to be
in focus. Which is a normal thing for a
focus bullet to be honest, but not the director.
I'll do that. I'll do that one.
You take a break. Where is this from?
A&Q Is it? To be fair, she said he was a
gentleman and went out of his way to make her feel
comfortable. So I mean, that's, that's all
very nice, but still. Yeah, fair enough.
Well, according to Molly Renfrow, whenever we're looking
at a shot where we can't see Janet Lee's face, it's her that
we're seeing, right? And when Norman wrapped
Maureen's body up and carries out of the car, Anthony Perkins
is carrying Molly Renfrow, right?
Yeah. She only made about $500.00 for
the film, apparently. And she went on to become one of
the first Playboy Bunny girls as well.
Molly Renfrow So. Some legacy, right?
Fair enough. And obviously, one of the most
famous parts of the shower scene is the shrieking strings in the
score written by Bernard Herman. Hitchcock had originally told
Herman that he wanted the scene without any music at all, but
Herman disagreed. So it just brought music for it
anyway. And when Hitchcock was
disappointed with how the scene was turning out, Herman showed
of his composition. Hitchcock was so impressed that
he used the score in the film. And when Herman asked why he
hadn't wanted music in the 1st place, Hitchcock said it was an
improper suggestion. My boy, improper suggestion.
Yeah, I mean, to say Herman was right goes without saying.
A. Little bit, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another bit in the score that
blows me away is after the attacks done and Marion's alone
and like dying and the music is that like Babble Babble.
Yeah. That represents Marion's
heartbeat, surely, because it gets slower and slower, then
stops as soon as she collapses. That is beyond genius.
Yeah, get out. Yeah.
Get the hell out, Bernard. Yeah.
We mentioned Saul Bass earlier as he did the opening title
sequence, obviously, and he was involved in the shower scene
too. He storyboarded the scene and
eight days before the film was shot, Bass filmed test footage
of the shower scene with Marley Renfrow and editor George
Tomasini as a demonstration. Hitchcock.
Yeah. So it was like a proof of
concept basically to show how the quick cutting would work.
I mean, usually proof of concepts are when they're using
new technology. This needed a proof of concept
because they were just innovating film making itself.
Just fantastic. But there was some controversy
later in 1970 when Sol Bass said he didn't just storyboard the
shower scene, he directed it as well.
But this was denied by some crew members.
Hilton Green, the assistant director, said Bass was never on
set and said he later confronted Bass about it.
And Janet Leigh went on record to say I was in that shower for
seven days. And believe me, Alfred Hitchcock
was right next to his camera for every one of those 70 odd shots.
I bet he was. Yeah, with the tape measure.
Yeah. Even when everyone had gone
home. And Joseph Stefano called Bus's
claim the most shocking thing about Psycho as.
Well, I'm not surprised. Yeah, I directed the shower
scene because Oh yeah, amazing. Bastard do the storyboard
though. If you see nose they are
outstanding. Oh, there will be.
Yeah. Because that's what he's good
at. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Just seeing your storyboarded. It that's still an amazing
claim, yeah. And John mentioned how to see
this book ended by two shots looking up at the shower.
And these shots needed a custom prop.
Hitchcock wanted the camera to be in the middle of The Jets of
water, so a six foot diameter shower head was made-up and the
central jets placed so the water sprayed past the camera.
No wonder Gently was scared of showers after there's Six
footers war the worlds. Trigger happy TV shower?
No. Isn't it massive?
Shoot. Hello.
No, I'm in the shower. But another nice deal about his
shot is a during the attack it seems like more, but we only
actually see two shots of the knife touching Marion's body,
one's where it seems to go into her stomach.
And they did that by pressing the knife against Leigh's or
maybe Molly Renfrow's body, pulling it away, and then
playing that shot backwards, which is cool.
Yeah, yeah. And with the film being shot in
black and white, the production used chocolate syrup instead of
blood because it showed up better on camera.
Some reports say it was Bosco chocolate syrup, while Molly
Renfrow said it was Hershey's. An important distinction.
Yeah, doesn't matter. Well, you mainly see a bird
running down the drain, don't we?
That's what we say, I think, yeah.
Yeah, and more food was used to create the scene.
The sound the knife makes whenever marrying the stabbed is
a knife stabbing A cassaba melon.
One of the props crew called Bob Bourne lined up a Lord of Melons
and they're all stabbed in sequence, with Hitchcock
choosing the one he thought sounded best.
One of the things they also tried was steak, and when
Hitchcock didn't choose that, Bob Bourne said he just took it
home and had it for his dinner of.
Course he did. She would do.
It Yeah, well, apparently Hitchcock closed his eyes and
Bourne went along the table stabbing like melons and
cassavas and and at the end Hitchcock just went cassava.
Final shot is the extreme close up where we transitioned from
the shower drain to Marion's eye and the shot has two errors.
As Marion has died, a pupil should be dilated.
Janet Lee was going to wear contacts to make our eyes look
that way, but when Hitchcock was told it would take six weeks for
our eyes to acclimatize, he ditched the idea.
And then after filming, Hitchcock's wife Alma reveal
spotted that Lee took a breath towards the end of the take.
So that's why we cut away to the shower and then back to Marion
again. Yeah, such a shame because it
would have all been one shot. That was the plan, yeah.
Because, yeah, he'd be. Then go straight from there back
to the money on the night stand, don't we?
Yeah. Just kind of feels totally
meaningless. It does, yeah.
They're pointless, yeah. After this has happened, Norman
has to clear it up. And the thing about the scene
and it took so long for it to click with me is how efficient
Norman is to doing this. Yeah.
Yeah, how many times has he done this?
Exactly, this is not the first body he's had to get rid of.
He's so like nor fuss about it. And there's this moment of pure
Hitchcock when he's pushed the car into the swamp and it floats
for a bit and you just think, oh God, it's not going to sink.
You shouldn't want it to sink. But Hitchcock has put you
entirely your Norman side in you field, just as much relief as he
does when it does finally disappear.
I think it's such a strong choice just showing that scene
because it's a good 10 minutes of no dialogue, just following
Norman round, doing not all that much really, but I can't see my
eyes off it. It's crazy.
Yeah, yeah. After the murder and clean up,
Norman hides Mariano's body by putting it in the boot of the
car and sinking it in a swamp. This was filmed on the Universal
back lot. A hydraulic lift was submerged
in a small lake and that's how they created the effect of the
car stopping, sinking and then starting again.
Yeah, and the $40,000 goes in there as well, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does. Yeah.
So it's like he's not just getting rid of marrying, He's
getting rid of the entire first half of the film is like, none
of it left. Money means nothing.
Yeah. So marrying's gone, the money's
gone, Norman's cleaned up, sunk the car, and as far as he knows,
he's got away with it. However, a certain private
investigator has other ideas. Yeah.
He certainly does. Arborgast with Marion missing
her sister Lila gets involved. She heads to Sam's Hardware
store where they're joined by a third party Pi, Milton
Arborgast, hired by Tom Cassidy to find his $40,000.
In the scenes that follow away with Arborgast as he heads to
the Bates Motel, meets Norman, and then meets Mother Matt.
How does the investigation go with Arborgast?
I mean, he turns up to question Norman, and is there anyone who
could be any worse in this situation than Norman?
I mean, he is absolutely rubbish.
The slightest bit of gentle questioning and he just falls to
pieces. He becomes this stammering,
nervous wreck and it becomes one of the funniest scenes in the
film for me because he's chewing on his candy as usual.
And it just gets more and more intense and you get this
incredible shot. And it never feels to make me
laugh when he leans over to see Marian's signature in the book
and in the the one that Albert Gaster's got to like, compare.
And it's this massive close up of him in his jaw is going 10 to
a dozen just grinding that candy.
And you can see in his head he's going fuck, fuck, fuck.
I've been rumbled, I've given it away.
But what love is? Albert Gaster's so amused by how
easy this is. He's like, who is this guy?
He's like giving this information up so easily, but
it's all a lovely bit of sleight of hand because Norman is so
nervous. You think, well, there's no way
he could do a brutal murder, surely, no way, this guy.
And like I say, I think it's such a funny scene.
And that's a great contrast to what we know is going to happen
to Arbogast shortly. It is another great dialogue
scene. It's also pretty strange
structurally as well, because we get the intros to Lila and
Arbogast in Sam's hardware store, and it's pretty odd
because Lila just turns up and then Arbogast just turns up.
Like skulking in the doorway. Really weird from here.
These are our main characters and it should feel like a really
jarring sort of handover, but I don't think it does.
And the tone shifts because we go from Norman cleaner with the
swamp, which is all quiet and tense, straight into this snappy
three-way dialogue scene. It kind of feels like the
curtains dropped and then opened again to reveal the hardware
store. And it works.
It's all just really well judged by Hitchcock.
But in Arborgas at the motel with Norman 12, Cabin 12
vacancies, obviously. Obviously straight in there with
that. That's the power shifts and the
conversation that are great because Norman is all cocky at
first, but Arborgas kind of picks his story apart.
I think Perkins is really good because there's Norman's story
unravels. He starts getting all nervous
and jumpy and Norman just totally gives himself away.
As soon as he changes his mind about not remembering Marion, he
looks guilty as sin. Yeah, and the line that does it
is when he says I'm not capable of being fooled, not even by a
woman. That's a great line because it's
like he thinks women are more intelligent than him, but also
deceitful. So brilliant.
From Perkins and Martin Balsam as Arborgast and great writing.
I think it's another brilliant dialogue scene.
Arborgast is played by Martin Balsam.
He'd made his way up on the stage before breaking into
films, and he was suggested to Hitchcock by Joseph Stefano, who
knew him from the New York stage world.
Stefano told Hitchcock that Balsam had a particularly
unfriendly smile. Which he kind of, yeah.
Yeah, 12 Angry Men was his first major film role, wasn't it?
I think he's an excellent actor. Dialogue scenes especially.
He's got this really like natural style in his delivery, I
think, and it works really well, yeah.
And when filming this scene between Or Bogas and Norman,
Hitchcock directed Balsam and Perkins to overlap each of this
dialogue to make it seem more natural.
And the scene worked so well that the crew burst into
applause when Hitchcock shouted Cut.
Yeah, what they do as well, if you've noticed, is that through
the whole scene, the camera is almost always on the listener
rather than the speaker. Yeah.
Which is great for an interrogation scene because the
reactions that kind of tell the story.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's all kinds of camera
angles and different framing. I mean, I'm not counted, but
apparently there's 99 cuts in this one scene, like for a
dialogue scene. Yeah.
Wow. So, I mean, we've been
introduced to him, but he's out of there.
Yeah, he's not in long. Unfortunately, I mean, you set
up with that phone call, he's called back any kind of England
he's got about the case. He reports it back, which is
really good. Then that sets it up later.
Surely he would have got back and it gives them the motivation
to go looking for him. And he goes in, he's looking for
him, he's not there, checks the safe and then he's going to that
house and you're thinking hat off.
I love that. He's just like really, really
polite. And then he starts creeping up
the stairs and you get that lovely cut where it goes.
The door just cracks open and that bit of light comes out at
the top of the stairs and then boom, you just get that overhead
shot. The strings come back in.
Isn't you know, there's mother, there's the knife outcomes from
nowhere. Amazing that to have that as an
overhead. Really love that she's gone at
them straight down his face, right, cut down his face, which
is quite, you know, that is quite jarring.
But what isn't Jordan for me is that rear projection.
But I mean, that's just unintentionally funny.
Now he's just flailing around. But what really makes up for the
scene is when he hits the floor and she's just on him and that
is shocking from that angle. That really works.
So I can kind of forgive that because it's Hitchcock thinking
it was going to be more impactful than it actually is
now. Maybe at the time, I think it's
just the flailing of the arms and the kind of that looks a bit
too close to camera. Maybe if it hadn't pushed with
him as well. It kind of and let them just
fall down. I don't know, but what a way to
go out. What a great character.
Another shocking sequence that's really well done, really well
played through. We don't have as many cuts here.
It's not as frantic as we have seen in the shower, but it's
still just as impactful. It is the second murder scene
and we talked about how good the first one was and I'm not sure I
can say this is at that level. I mean, what is?
But this is still incredible film making.
Firstly, when Abergas pulls up at the motel, he gets out the
passenger side door of his car. Have you noticed that?
Really strange. You see Norman Walken, don't
you? And he disappears as Abergas
pulls up, which is a really nice move.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't realise he gets out the
passenger side. Yeah, he shovels across.
So once we're in there, it's a staircase, obviously, so good
cutting from Arbor Gas slowly creeping up the stairs to the
door at the top, like sliding open.
It's also measured and like, tense.
And then it's just like, bang, we cut that over headshot.
Looking down at the landing, his mother comes racing out.
You don't get an angle like that anywhere before this, so it hits
you like a truck, especially with the screeching strings.
Again, I mean, that's short. And the closer the Barber guys
falling down the stairs are the ones that get talked about.
And I think they're both brilliant.
But I'm also freaked out Westie by that moment when Mother leaps
on him at the bottom of the stairs.
You just see the knife. It's just horrible.
It's. Just like the boots coming in as
well. It's like it's just Panther,
like it's horrible. Yeah, yeah.
Brilliant though. Yeah, I mean, I think always
worth remembering that for all it's reputation, Psycho only has
two murders in it. But I think that's tribute to
how brilliant and shocking the both are.
And considering how iconic Marion's murder is, it says a
lot about this one that it's nearly as scary.
And I think there's just some wonderful misdirection nearby.
Hitchcock, he can't give the game away at this point.
So if he shot this from behind, mother, it totally would,
because he'd be asking, well, what's he hiding?
Why is he shooting, shooting from behind?
But you shoot it from that angle, that bird's eye view,
There's nothing suspicious about that.
And even if you start thinking about it, you can tie it in with
the fact that we've seen so many stuffed birds in the parlour.
This is just a thematic link more than anything else.
It's brilliantly done. And I think because you've only
got these two murders in the entire film, it needs to
contrast with Marian's. And I think the contrast is the
speed of it, because with her murder, you see Mother sneaking
up on her, so you're expecting the same AE, you're expecting
Mother to sneak out and get over gas.
But the speed at which he comes charged out of that room and
then the strings kick in, that's what makes it really scary.
Yeah. Also, surely being a private
investigator doesn't give Arbogast the right to just
wander into people's house. Does it go where he wants?
Yeah. Yeah, but when the scene was
scheduled to be shot, Hitchcock was away from set due to
illness, so the shoot was overseen by two others.
Hilton Green and Salt Bass were on the set managing.
It bass in there again. Yeah, that's what he can claim,
yeah. Ridiculous claims, no doubt.
Apparently Hitchcock was supervising via telephone as
well, so he was still involved. Right.
Reining in bass, I bet.
He's everywhere. So it was all in the can.
But when Hitchcock returned, he scrapped the whole thing.
Bassett storyboarded insert shots like close-ups of Arbogas
hands on the banister and his feet climbing the stairs.
But Hitchcock didn't like them. He said that shodded to make
Arbogas look like an intruder. Yeah.
Which he was. Get out.
Hand off or not? Yeah, Hitchcock said they made
him look like the killer in the scene rather than the victim.
He said The Telegraph that something was about to happen as
well. OK, fair enough.
Yeah, I mean, if you there's that many close-ups and it's
creepy. Yeah, you don't need it.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
The close up shot of Abercast fallen backwards down the stairs
was filmed with rear projection. As we've talked about South
Martin Balsam was filming, sitting on a chair and waving
his arms around as if losing his balance in front of a screen,
projecting a Dolly shot moving down the stairs.
Which yeah, it works, but I don't know if it really works.
I mean, having two death scenes though this famous in the same
film, that's just ridiculous, yeah.
Yeah. Unreal.
And to feel the audience by mother's identity, Hitchcock had
yet another person play. When Arbogast is killed, he
hired a short actor called Mitzi Kersner, who had appeared as a
Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, and he played his mother in the
attack. So some sources called Mitzi
Kersen are male and some say a female.
So it's all a bit murky, but I mean, that's what, 6-7 different
people playing mother in the film?
I mean, no one that no one saw it coming.
No. Exactly.
Yeah. Exactly.
So that's two main characters down.
Norman's running out of places to hide bodies, and back at the
hardware store, Lila's waiting for a call that's not going to
come. She might have to go and sort
this out herself it looks like. Yeah, thank God, the crew.
We're getting into the crew now and there's a lot to talk about
where Psycho was testing of achievements arguably as
influential as the film itself. We're going to be talking about
Bernard Herrmann score and John L Russell's cinematography.
But first we're starting with the man who took a pulpy novel
and turned it into an acclaimed screenplay.
So Joseph Stefano had barely any feature credits to his name when
he landed Psycho with experience on Broadway and TV.
He moved to film with a Co writing credit on French Italian
comedy and Out of Brooklyn and his first solo feature was The
Sophia Loren starring The Black Orchid, both 1958.
So Psycho was just his second full feature screenplay.
Matt shall we? How was the screen writing on
Psycho? I mean, we'll get on to the
changes they made in a minute, but to me, this is a prime
example of how you do adapt something and how what you take
out is maybe more important than what you leave in.
Because this is pared back to the bone, which it absolutely
needs to be. Every character in this needs to
be in it, and every character is in it for exactly the right
amount of time that they need to be.
No one is cluttering up the narrative.
There's no scene in this film where I'm checking my watch and
wanting to get a move on to the next scene.
Even that arsehole businessman at the start, he's in it just
enough to make him memorable and make you glad Marian steals his
money. But he's not in it so long that
you sort of wonder, well, how is he going to tie into the rest of
the film to see the cycle? Is that why he's in it so much?
It makes all these right decisions?
There's no plot details that don't matter.
Every scene, every line in this film is completely relevant to
the finished article. It's a really ruthless
adaptation. I agree, Yeah.
I mean, for me, the structure alone is impressive basically
because of how unusual that is. Because like we talked about, it
starts with Marion as a protagonist.
Like a simple classic protagonist, beautiful Hitchcock
blonde gone astray. And then halfway through, she
gets killed. The main character switches to
Norman even though he's a murderer, which is weird.
But then Lila and Sam come into it, and the focus moves to Lila
as a protagonist. And by the climax, Norman's back
to your classic antagonist, just the guy who needs to be stopped.
It's like switching points of view all over the place.
It's madness. It should feel like chaos, but
we don't even notice, I don't think, do we?
It's not jarring or confusing. I don't think I've seen that
done anywhere before. Not as successfully as this
anyway. It's some piece of writing, but
also there's loads of little technical touches from the
writing that I love. Like we said, lots of the
exposition is told through voices in Marion's head.
That's such a clever way of telling us what's going on back
home without having to cut there and killing the pacing.
And in terms of the books, the following does keep its core but
changes quite a lot. We'll talk about what changed.
But he takes a pretty grimy horror novel about a murderer in
his mother's clothes and turns it into what is still that, but
also a more tragic sympathetic character study of a split
personality. And the dialogue seems to be
taught about the parlor and Arbogast with Norman.
They are fantastic pieces of dialogue, scene writing, the
whole thing. It is just a master class.
I agree in adopting a novel. Sensational piece of screen
writing for me. Yeah, I think it's just
wonderful how this feels like it's more than one film and it
doesn't feel tacked together either.
It feels like 2 separate journeys almost with the same
goal because kind of a remake of the first half in the
second-half without it seeming weird.
It's just like you say, it's very, very easy to follow, but
at the same time it's quite non linear.
It does kind of bounce around. To me.
It just feels like when you watch Domino's get knocked over
without the next one. It just feels like, but it never
goes back to the first domino and repeats it.
All of the numbers of the Domino's are individual and it
takes you through that. And the best thing about the
writing here is the dialogue spot on.
Every character's fleshed out. Every character seems to have a
real motivation to move forward in the story.
Like you say, nobody feels that they're just put there for the
sake of it in less as writers hands.
That guy at the start who lost the money would come back with
Abergath and he would then be investigating.
He would then be killed. You'd be happy that he'd been
killed and then you'd be. That's why he was there at the
start. It just doesn't happen.
Doesn't need to come back. He comes back in the voice over
and that's enough. And think the best thing about
the writing is that it's not patronising at all to the the
audience. It's really brave, it's really
forward thinking and it's just it's really intelligent writing.
I totally agree. It is all those things.
And Robert Block was a pulp writer who'd been selling
fiction to the classic horror and fantasy magazine Weird Tales
since he was 17. And in 1957, he was living in
Wisconsin, about 35 miles away from where serial killer Ed Gein
was arrested. And those murders revealed a
house full of furniture made from human remains and Gein's
dead mother's bedroom, perfectly preserved.
On the back of this block wrote a manuscript for a horror novel
called Psycho in about 6 weeks, and Simon and Schuster published
it in 1959. So Block later said that he knew
almost nothing about Ed Gein when he wrote Psycho, right?
I mean, like 30 odd miles away, loads of similarities.
Like a year later and he goes, no, I made it all up.
Yeah. If so, that's one hell of a
coincidence. Block.
And game was apparently an inspiration for The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs as well,
wasn't he? Yes, he was, yeah.
After Hitchcock bought the rights to Blocks novel, the
first person he hired to adapt the screenplay was an Emmy
award-winning TV writer called James P Covener who had worked
with Halpert Hitchcock Presents on the TV show.
He had a reputation of being a master of black humor, but he
had never written a screenplay. His draft was rejected by
Hitchcock, who said it was like ATV horror short story.
Imagine being the guy that got rid of from a psycho Pete Best.
Pete was. But then Hitchcock went to Ned
Brown, who was literary agent that he really respected.
Apparently he said he was looking for a writer, and one of
Ned Brown's clients was Joseph Stefano.
So the rest of history. Fair enough, and we've talked
about some changes that Stefano made to the book around how
Norman looked and renaming Mary as Marion, but there were others
as well. Yeah.
So just before you start, Matt, the reason they changed Mary to
Marion is that the way apparently two people living in
Phoenix at the time called Mary Crane and the one who avoid any
potential litigation issues. Right, right.
I think Marion Crane sounds better anyway.
It does. Yeah, miles better, yeah.
Well, in the book, Mary Crane only appears in two chapters,
Stefano said in his first meeting with Hitchcock, he
pitched the 1st 25 minutes of the film, which fleshes Marion
out into a more developed character.
That kind of makes the film, doesn't it?
Totally makes the. Film.
That's where it becomes killing the leading lady.
Not to open with Norman either and keep him in the wings.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And Marian's murder scene is
less violent in the film. In the novel, Norman doesn't
just stab Mary to death, he decapitates her and mutilates
her corpse. Stefano raced this with
Hitchcock and said even if the Haze Code allowed that they
shouldn't do it. Decapitates that mutilates the
corpse. Don't know anything about I'd
gain my own. Exactly.
Mean finish her out of her what? Yeah.
IKEA. Well, yes, the final said that,
Hitchcock said. Oh no, we can't cut Janet Lee's
head off. I mean, I certainly don't want
to say that either. Definitely not.
Definitely. Not and the novel gives his
mother's name, Norma Bates, and the full back story of Norman's
relationship with her. Norma's lover Joe Considine
convinces her to start the Bates Motel and gave her the money to
start it. Norman gets jealous and kills
both Considine and his mother by poisoning them with strychnine
in their tea and then takes over the motel.
This back story's hinted at in the film when the sheriff and
his wife tell the story, but from the point of view that they
don't know Norman killed them. Yeah.
Yeah, and when Norman burst into the cellar at the end, he
shouts. I'm Norma Bates, but it's really
hard to make it out. It is, yeah.
Yeah, got to listen for her, Yeah.
Also, at the time of writing, Joseph Stefano was apparently in
therapy dealing with issues relating to his own mother.
Right. That must have fed into what he
was putting into the script here.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
Matt's shocked. Mom, do you know what I've done
to kind of get over issues? I wrote this.
What do you think? You're all right, son.
And in the final act of the novel, Sam Loomis ends up
falling in love with Lila Crane. But Stefano removed the subplot
and said it made Sam's love seem cheap.
Just a bit. Just anyone will do.
Any Crane sister? I'll have your sister and said
yeah. Yeah, it does seem that way.
Though when you see them together, it does seem like they
are developing like a bond together.
It's not explicitly explained, but it is there.
Yeah. I mean, I guess at that time
especially would be pretty typical for that to happen,
wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When Stefano delivered the first draft of the script, Hitchcock
gave it to his wife to read, too.
As he always did, he fed back Stefano by saying Alma loved it.
The only significant note he gave was to make the highway
patrolman the tales Marion more threatening and less
flirtatious. Right, just everyone flirting
with Marion. Fair enough.
Just make him terrifying. For his work on Psycho, Joseph
Stefano received no recognition in the Academy Awards.
Not nominated. That's the real crime, yeah.
Yeah, it is. His mother would have been
furious. The winner was Richard Brooks,
who adapted Elma Gantry and won a few that year.
That one. Right.
Yeah, Big one. Joseph Stefano would never reach
his psycho heights again as a screenwriter, but in turning a
horror novel into a radical psychological acclaimed
screenplay, this film doesn't exist as it is without.
Him. Absolutely not.
Look next, the composer and what a composer Bernard Herman that
had been scoring films in Citizen Kane in 1941.
What a bad place to start and cycle with his 32nd feature.
Other previous highlights included The Magnificent
Ambisons, The Day of the Earth Stood Still and The 7th Voyage
of Sinbad and this was his sixth collaboration with Hitchcock, a
fairly handy little partnership going on by this point.
Westie. So Bernard Herman score for
Psycho, What do we make of it? I think Bernard Hermann knows
this film better than Hitchcock knows it at this point when he's
making this music lovely, because he knows he knows
exactly what the tone needs to be to bring it out of this TV
movie area that Hitchcock was probably so used to doing.
And without Bernard Hermann making this a cinematic score, I
don't think the film would have seemed as cinematic as it
definitely does. And not only does he have them
beats where it totally makes the shower scene and totally makes
them jump scares when Mother shows up when that bird's eye
shot, but I also remember the the dreamlike score that he does
when she's reminiscing and the thoughts are in her head.
And it's all, it's all. And it's just got this WAVY feel
to it. And it's very romantic.
But also at the same time, it's quite, it's full of guilt and
Norman's got this kind of 3 N theme that goes through that's
really foreboding and really scary.
But it's always just hinted at under the surface.
And it's just this duality as well to the score where it's
just got so many elements to it, but it just seems to be two
sided. But like we're talking about
with this shower scene. I mean, he's just, I don't want
any music in this. He's like, yeah, OK, man,
whatever, whatever else, I'll be back in 20 minutes.
And then he turns on. He's like, fucking put this to
it. All right.
You cannot understate how important Bernard Hermann was
not only to this film. Go to the landscape of cinema
going forward from here. He absolutely nails this to the
wall and probably one of the only people who I'll stand up
and say at this point in cinema history was just as important as
Alfred Hitchcock. Why was that?
I mean, yeah, when you're talking composers who made a
contribution to a film that goes above and beyond what you can
ever like, reasonably expects, you've got like, John Williams
and Jaws or Ennio Morricone and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
and Bernard Hermann. Psycho is right in that
conversation, no problem. It's about as iconic as film
scores get, I think. I think firstly, Herman's
creative decision to score the whole thing with just strings is
incredible. I love that.
And the kind of ostinato style of the melodies he writes, like
the opening credits that we talked about, gives the film
this constant sound of being furious.
It just sounds feels angry, but it's all the way through.
Like Marian's driving scenes are scored with the title music,
which sounds great. And that also means that when
Hitchcock decides not to use music, it stands out even more,
like Norman cleaning up after Marian's murder or singing in
the car in the swamp they carried out to basically
silence. It's so unusual, but makes the
whole thing feel like real. It's just the perfect choice for
me. I mean, obviously it's the music
in the shower scene that gets taught about the most,
understandably because those screeching one note strings, the
transcender film, they're known outside of cinema.
That's incredible by itself. But also the whole score, it's
just film composition on another level, I think from Bernard
Hermann A. 100%. Yeah, I mean Herman's gave
Hitchcock this score and Hitchcock just, he uses it like
a weapon. Like I said, the the opening
credit, it's it's like being assaulted by the music.
I mean, I think, I mean you've mentioned John, I think it's
biggest influence is obviously on Jaws.
And I think about those scores in the same way.
Like what sound goes through with shark's head when it's
swimming towards it's spear? Well, it's the Jaws thing,
obviously. That's the sound of it.
Yeah, he's in Shark Tale, anyway.
What sound is going through someone's head in a brutal knife
attack? Well, it's the theme from
Psycho, obviously. That's what that sounds like.
Like I said, it's that's what rage sounds like.
That's how well it fits. But as you're saying, it's not
just the famous bit, it's everything else.
It's the way it sits under so many scenes because as we've
been saying, there's lots of scenes without dialogue because
it's either just marrying or it's Norman.
But the skull fills the gap and it gives it that constant sense
of her knees constantly putting you on edge.
But then when it ramps up for the big moments it is like
someone jumping out at you with a knife.
Brilliant. Work.
It is, Yeah. I mean, those screeching strings
are so good, they can be taken in different ways, like you said
there, man. It's like the sound of what's in
the killer's head. I was thinking the sound of
what's in Marion's head, just like sheer terror about what's
about to happen. And it also sounds like the
sound of the the knife itself maybe itself.
Totally, Yeah. Bernard Herman had worked with
Hitchcock five times before Psycho.
The other films were The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too
Much, The Wrong Man. Vertigo and North by Northwest
Because of the lower budget, though, Hitchcock was worried
that he might not be able to get Herman on board.
Herman was reluctant at first, but agreed to sign on at a
reduced fee, and Hitchcock later said that 33% of the effect of
cycle was down to Herman's score. 33% I don't agree with.
More than that. I think it's more than that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Herman went from, oh, not
sure about this one to, oh, go on then.
I'll just write the best score ever.
Yeah. I mean one of the great director
composer collaborations though, surely?
Hitchcock, Herman, isn't it? 100% up there, yeah.
Been working with the reduced budget, one of Herman's first
ideas was that he wanted the film to be scored entirely by
string instruments. So he had an orchestra of 50
musicians, but no brass, percussion or woodwind.
All fifty of them want stringed instruments, and Herman said the
idea was he wanted to create a black and white sounding score
to match the visuals. Yes.
So 26 violins, 10 violas, 8 cellos and six bases was the
breakdown apparently. Right, But down to the reduced
budget, isn't it? Yeah.
And Herman just turns into like an advantage, an artistic
advantage. That's just a great composer
right there. Oh.
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, all the things give us the
sound of the score just slicing through the visuals all the way
through the film. Yeah, yeah.
For his work on Psycho, Bernard Herman received no recognition
at all of the Academy Awards. What's going on here?
Did the Academy forget Psycho existed?
Must hate. Hitchcock.
Too scared to nominate it to scare them too much.
The winner was Ernest Gold, who scored Exodus, the Ottawa
Preminger historical drama. Right, OK.
Hitchcock, though he doubled Herman's salary on Psycho
because he was so pleased with the music.
It's not fair enough. Yeah, and it was one of the
great and most influential film scores to come out of Hollywood.
Yeah. Yes, 100%, Well, 33%, yeah.
Finally, in the crew, it's the director of photography, John L
Russell. Cycle was Russell's 32nd feature
as cinematographer, but the bulk of his career had been in
television. He'd also be in DP for Orson
Welles on Macbeth in 1948, and reportedly Orson Welles called
him, get this, the greatest camera operator in Hollywood
history. Wow, yeah.
So it is. Quietly impressive CV Westie How
is John L Russell's work on Psycho?
I think as an operator, you can see that.
You can see when he's just taking the camera to the places
you he wants the audience to discover.
But again, this screams to me, we're on a budget here boys, and
we've got to try and make this work.
But it definitely does work. I mean, they used Mitchell BNC
cameras, which were a little bit cheaper at the time, and he shot
everything on A50 mil. Well, they say everything.
I would say 90%, ninety 2% of this film was shot on A50 mil,
which gives it like the equivalent of the human eye when
it's shot on 35 mil film. So that's kind of what you would
see. And it was shot on Bosch and
loom bolt lenses, which were again a little bit cheap.
I mean, the £145.00 now for the same lens, if you want to buy it
on eBay, you know, it's next to nothing.
So that's basically what what he was dealing with, which is why
it feels so creepy, why it feels so immediate and why it feels a
little bit nasty at times because it's just, it's almost a
point of view from your point of view.
So you just, you can't escape it, which again is just
incredible work. I mean, it's shot on Tri X5233
film, which is really contrasting.
So that really accented the black and white, but it also
accented the shadows and the highlights.
This film is very black and white, like the shadows are
pitch black. You're absolutely lost in them.
And I think that's what Hitchcock wanted.
He wasn't looking for any middle ground, and John El Russell was
integral in that. Yeah, he surely was.
I mean, he had a lot of experience at this point, John
Russell. And I think you can see that in
his influences because the lighting here with the black and
white, it looks like those classic German Expressionism
films. You see all the harsh angles and
those deep shadows. One of the best examples, I
think, are those shots of Norman by the swamp.
He's barely layered, all almost a silhouette against the war.
Dad could be from, like, Nosferatu or something.
Yeah. And tapping into those early
horrors which go for this like primal terror, it's surely
intentional, because that's what Psycho does as well.
Yeah, but doesn't ramp it up with like a small machine in the
background, anything like that. Just keeping it really simple
though. It's like, let's just use that,
but then just keep it as realistic as possible.
Yeah, yeah. And it works great.
Yeah. I mean, what I like is how some
of the shots are really odd, like the opening shot of Marian
lying on the bed from this really strange angle, like below
her. And there's a famous shot of
Norman looking at the log book with Arborgast when Norman's
shot from below and we're looking like open his chin it.
Just moves around with him, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I think that's Lugery as
well. It's like, where can we put the
camera to get everything in this shot with this lens?
I mean, a typical director has hands.
I'm not sure any of that would work.
Yeah, it doesn't just work. It's really striking.
Another great shot. When Norman leaves Marion's and
goes home, he sits at the kitchen table and he's framed in
the doorway. Looks like he's caged by the
house or what the house represents.
How good that? Yeah, like the reverse of the
searches. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's trapped, yeah. And after Sam goes to the motel
alone and then back to the hardware store, that shot of
Lila in silhouette running towards the camera, Yeah, get
out. Far too good.
Yeah. So working with the constraints
of television, I mean John L Russell under Hitchcock's
extreme guidance, I would guess you managed to produce all of
this. Literally some of the most
famous images in all of cinema. I can't believe they did that on
the TV budget with ATV crew. I think it might be one of the
great unsung DP jobs there is. And ATV camera with ATV lens.
It's crazy. It doesn't look like it at all.
It's so precise. There's not a wasted shot here
and evidence to a point. The amount of visual
storytelling or tonal said and done by the Cinema Trophy is
incredible and it's always served in the sorry.
I mean, the way that motorcycle cop is framed, he's usually
either in that huge close up or he's in that wide when he's
observed and marrying from across the street.
Both of them put you on edge because he's never framed
normally like a regular character race.
There's always something off about him and there's one
repeating visual motif which is so effective.
And, and Wes, he's mentioned the mirrors already.
But what I picked up on from that, it's whenever Norman is
talking to someone at the motel reception, he's on the right at
the frame, the other person's on the left.
The mirror's hanging on the wall between them and it always
reflects the other person. It happens with Sam, it happens
with Orbigas, so visually Norman is always outnumbered in these
situations. He's always ganged up on, which
makes us feel sympathy for him because there's only one of him.
But it's all done subliminally, it's all done through the
cinematography. It's amazing work.
Yeah. Yeah, really, really clever
that. Yeah.
I wonder if that's meant to signify how Norman feels as
well. He always feels the victim.
Totally does. Yeah.
That's the sense he gives you. And that's just you can't see
his other side, his other persona either.
You can see exactly what else his other side is.
It's very cleverly done because you can just, you can explore
that all day, just out of them shots.
Amazing. Yeah, you could.
Absolutely. Hitchcock's 10 films before this
had all had the same director of photography, Robert Burks.
Due to the budget, Hitchcock couldn't afford Burks this time
so turned to John L Russell who was the main cinematographer on
the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
He came on board with most of the camera crew he worked with
on the show as well. 75 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents he
shot and that's a lot, yeah, but working with the same crew we
knew so well, that must have helped as well.
I'd imagine 100. Percent, yeah, would have kept
the budget down, would have kept the morale up.
Everything would have moved a lot faster.
And it'd be loving it. Working on a Hitchcock film, I
bet, yeah. It would have been great.
And Hitchcock had made eight films in colour by this point
but went back to black and white for Psycho, 1 of the main
reasons being it was just cheaper to shoot in black and
white. But another factor was it meant
he could show more blood on screen without getting censored.
Yeah, or chocolate sauce, without anyone realising.
Yeah, exactly. But apparently John Russell
complained to Hitchcock about not shooting in colour because
at the time colour was like a sign of prestige.
Yeah, and Hitchcock said to him, but dear boy, it would have so
much more impact in black and white.
Don't think he was wrong. Definitely.
Not exactly. I mean, I wouldn't have argued
with him like we're going to shoot in colour.
It just wouldn't have worked in colour, not at all.
And another influence was a French director called Enri Jos
Clouseau. He made a black and white horror
film in 1955 called Le Diabolique, and it was based on
a novel called She Who Was No More that Hitchcock had also
tried to buy the rights to. Yeah, you had.
It also features a murder in a bathtub as opposed to a shower.
Right. Yeah, and no spoilers, but the
endively Diabolic it's not a million miles away from Psycho
either. Right.
No. It's a great film and it's very,
very Hitchcock. You can see why he wanted to do
it. Right.
For his work on Psycho, John L Russell was nominated for Best
Black and White Cinematographer the Oscars.
That was still a thing. Then he lost out to Freddie
Francis for Sons and Lovers, right?
No win, but he deserved nomination.
And for us in Psycho, John L Russell pulls off some of the
most striking and influential black and white cinematography
out there. Oh, it's definitely up there,
yeah. Incredible.
So that's our crew. We've taught Joseph Stefano's
innovative screenplay at Bernard Herrmann's legendary score and
John L Russell's effective cinematography. 3 massive
contributions, 2 of them possibly all of them with career
best work. I would say so, yeah.
Hitchcock surrounded himself with some pretty good people on
this one. Yeah, he knew what he's doing.
Yes, he did. The end.
Into the final act of cycle and the Bates Motel walls are
closing in around Norman. We'll be talking about Lila's
solo trip up to the Bates house and down to the food seller, but
before that is Lila and Sam teaming up.
There is. So, with no contacts from
Barbagast, Lila and Sam decide to take matters into their own
hands. First they visit Fayville's
Sheriff Chambers and his wife Eliza, before checking into the
Bates Motel themselves. Norman's being investigated yet
again, Matt, how did Lila and Sam deal with it?
Well, they do a bit better, you know they're not dead.
Put them. Out exactly.
Couldn't do much fucking worse. Yeah, but all of about the
scene, it's exposition, but it's exposition done really well
because it's piling up the questions at the same time.
When they say our wall gas was going to Cressy and Mrs. Bates,
the sheriff's wife was so happily surprised Norman took a
wife. What's really clever is when Sam
goes no with his mother, it's just a facial reaction from the
sheriff and his wife that just don't jump straight in with, oh,
can't be her, she's dead. It's just really drawn out for
maximum effect, building up the tension of, well, something
isn't right, but we don't know what yet.
You know, the sheriff is more suspicious about Arborgas and I
love the way he delivers that line at the end.
Norman Beats, his mother has been dead and buried in
Greenlawn Cemetery for the past 10 years.
And it's like, that's all that's missing.
Great stuff. Because what the hell is
actually going on with Norman? It's like Harry wasn't there to
save those men because you weren't there to save Harry.
Harry. Yeah, amazing.
Yeah. I mean, this whole stretch of
the film kind of opened with Norman carrying Mother down to
the food seller. How good's that shot?
The camera follows him up the stairs and spins round above the
door to watch Norman carrying her down.
Yeah. And she's like, you think I'm
fruity, huh? Puns from Mother.
Yeah. And then Sheriff Chambers.
He's played by John McIntyre, who'd also been in a few Alfred
Hitchcock Presents episodes. And he was married to Jeanette
Norman, who we mentioned being one of the actresses who did the
voice of Mother. So couple of things.
But he's furious about being woken up in the middle of the
night and he offers no help whatsoever.
No, Lila's like we want you to do something about it.
Like what? Look into all these people who
keep going to the motel and vanishing.
Maybe, yeah, but just nothing. He's back to bed.
Yeah, it's great, though, because you totally feel like
he's on Norman's side and that these people are nuts.
Yeah. You do?
Kind of, yeah. It's like what you're coming
into our small community for making trouble.
Yeah, it just also sort of fill that plot all of why don't they
just go to the police? Well, because they're pretty
rubbish, yeah. Yeah, so from there they learned
Sam just decided to take things in their own hands and they go
to the hotel and the meet Norman.
And I absolutely love this moment because I love the choice
of it being in broad daylight, which is a really nice contrast
to everything else. Like our guys goes there, it's
night time, it's mysterious. You can see everything.
You can see Norman at the window.
So there's he's not necessarily hiding anything again, which
makes this even better as a mystery because they're looking
for something in broad daylight and they still can't find
anything. I do like Sam here as a
character. I like the way he just kind of
takes control and he's pressing and he does seem quite clever
for about two seconds, 3 seconds.
And I really like that because to be clever in front of Norman
is not a big feat, is it? It's not a hard thing to pull
off. And all of the dynamic shift,
the way it becomes that Leela is the brains and then Sam's the
brown. In private, she's like telling
him what this is where we need to go, this is what we need to
do. And then they go into the first
cabin, which is great. And I love Sam is straight in
the drawers. That's all he's good for.
Draw there, draw there, I'm out. Nothing.
No more ideas, Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And then she goes into the bathroom.
We've got the toilet again. The audience must have been
gasping. Please, like, don't fucking
flush it twice. I can't handle this.
Don't do it again. It's just really convenient that
you pick, sit up and say it's $40,000.
I was looking at you this tiny bit.
He puts it in his wallet, it's fine.
Then when she goes up to the house from there, it's just an
incredible moment. But just that dynamic between
them all, between all three of them, I think it's just great to
see all three of them just bouncing off each other.
Yeah, we get that little scene before this at the Fairville
church, don't we? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The sheriff's still there doing nothing.
Yeah. It just starts to feel like we
might be in danger of the plot star in the saga base.
But then Lila and Sam are checking into the motel, and
suddenly we're back in business. Yeah.
And after all the discussions about Norman, seeing Lila come
face to face with him for the first time, I think it feels
really powerful. The attention of their talking
is incredible. It does very much to me feel
like the calm before the storm, which we know obviously that's
what it is. This is around the time that Sam
Loomis started to play a bigger part in the film and when
looking for the actor to play him, Hitchcock had been
interested in some well known actors like Stuart Whitman, Tom
Tryon, Brian Keith, Cliff Robertson and Rod Taylor.
Yeah, they'd have been too expensive, presumably.
And John Gavin plays Sam, doesn't he?
Do we like him in there? I mean, Sam's a bit crap, isn't
he? That's what.
He's saying just a bit. Just a bit, you know, and, and
Gavin, you know, some performance.
He's functional. I don't think Hitchcock has any
great interest in him as a character.
He is. So he fulfills the brief.
But when you talk about the performances and Psycho, you go
Janet Lee, Anthony Perkins, Martin Bolts and very Miles.
Oh, yeah, John Gavin. You know, there's a reason he's
#5 on the cast list. Yeah.
Yeah, I know at the time universally been trying to turn
John Gavin into like a Rock Hudson style leading man.
Yeah. And because they already had him
under contract, it seems like Universal put the squeeze on
Hitchcock a bit to cast him. Yeah, maybe like, oh, cast John
Gavin and we'll give you this Ripes deal that you want or
something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He looks very Rock Hudson in this film as well.
He does? Yeah.
You're going to wear a suit in this bit.
OK. Do I have to?
Yes, you do. And Stephen Rebello, who wrote
Alfred Hitchcock in the making of Psycho, said that Hitchcock
agreed to John Govan being cast with the words.
I guess he'll be all right. He wasn't happy with his
performance or and referred to Gavin as the Stiff.
Yeah, he is a bit warden, isn't he?
He is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He had a big year though. Also in 1960, he played Julius
Caesar in Spartacus. Yes.
Yeah, Yes, that's right. Yeah, I.
Wonder what Kubrick said about him?
Yeah, back to our narrative. And Lila and Sam are booked into
the Bates Motel as a married couple and they have a plan.
Should we talk about them putting it into action?
Let's do it. Right, here we go, the climax.
Sam keeps Norman occupied with a chat in the motel office while
Lila heads to the Bates residence.
What follows is tense Lilac explores the empty house, Sam
gets decked, and we end up in the food seller for one of
cinema's most famous reveals, Lilacs in the house, literally
and figuratively. Westie, what are your thoughts
on this? My thoughts on this always
combat a Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Every single time I watch it, it feels like this is the house
from Texas Chainsaw Massacre before it got sold to Shell the
threw chickens in the front room.
It just feels like you need that sliding door that Norman's going
to build that in about 20 years time, stop putting faces on and
just have things squeal like a pig when people walk in.
And I get that real feel to it. But there's just, I love that
back and forth between Sam and Norman, which is a distraction.
You keep cutting back to that scene.
Then you get cut by Elila. She's looking around the house.
She's going to deal with an old woman.
If she gets face to face with Norman's mother, there's going
to be a bit of a scuffle here. And like, she could probably
take her, I think, because she understands her.
But once she gets upstairs, man, some of the stuff that you see,
it's just really unsettling. But settling.
You make it unsettling yourself because Hitchcock doesn't show
you in an unsettling way. Like you're looking literally
looking around somebody's house and you shouldn't be there.
So you feel a bit, I feel a bit creepy.
I feel a bit sick when she's kind of walking around.
And again, we get that incredible mirror shot, which
we've seen all the way through the film, but that actually
scares her. And that could be somebody else
reflected in these mirrors. And it just shows that she's
cemented and who she is. She doesn't have a split
personality. She is definitely just one
person. And then you go into Norman's
room or the child's room, or you would imagine that's where
Norman's sleeping. And then obviously, Sam,
straight out of the fucking idiot.
Where's that woman that you came with?
Bang. He's about 8 foot tall.
He's massive, went to the hard way.
Still, that seems cut off. All the blood to his brain.
I can't even think properly with that tie on.
So Norman's knocking him out. He's straight up to the house,
you think? Right.
So there's going to be two against one.
Now, you get Norman coming into the house, as we've seen before,
and he decides to go upstairs. We don't know where she's going,
We don't know what she's doing at this point, and it's
completely wide open. Yeah, it is.
I mean, it's just Hitchcock is the most of suspense, isn't it?
Yeah. Cutting back between Sam with
Norman Delilah swimming about the house is about the most
tense part of the film, which is seeing something.
And how many times has that happened since this film though?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Every time, yeah. And Sam, I'll keep Norman
occupied, will you? Will you know you've?
Got 8 lines of pattern. That's it.
That conversation, he's like, would drive me crazy being here
alone. I'd do anything to get away,
wouldn't you? Doing his absolute best to give
the game away to Norman. But the bits with Lila are just
superb film making. The shots as Lila's walking up
to the house, cutting between her and her point of view.
Brilliant. Yeah.
And then once we're in the house, it's like every shots
doing work. The hallway now looks massive
and the staircase looks massive. How Big's mother's indentation
on the bed. Yeah, Looks like Wiley Coyote's
fallen off a Cliff and just landed there.
It's ridiculous. And I think here Miles is great,
she's got no dialogue, but the tension she manages to inject
just by reacting to things, a look of disgust as she looks at
things and yeah, shocks herself in the mirror.
That's great. But we do get some more back
story I think here as well in the visuals, because Mother's
room is all huge and ornate, but Norman's childhood room is
really small. Seems like he was stuck away in
the corner, which is quite clever.
And I think a shout out to Robert Clatworthy as well.
He was the art director. He created lots of the interiors
of the Bates house. Just fantastic from him.
It's all fantastic. Just come on, Sam, you had one
job. And there's some small details
we see in Norman's house which mean more than they might see.
At one point, Lila picks up a book and looks horrified when
she looks inside. We don't see what she sees, but
the book tells us that Norman was a collective pornographic
illustrations. So apparently Hitchcock wanted
to show she was looking at pictures of half naked African
tribes like you might see in the National Geographic.
Right, Get your name in the National Geographic.
But either way, it probably wouldn't have got past the Hayes
code. I wouldn't.
Know you know. But I think it might work better
that we don't see what it is, surely.
What the Hell's in that book? Yeah, exactly.
Imagine we've seen a page from that book which is like an
illustration of 1/2 naked woman being flushed down the toilet.
I lost the minds. Doing terrible maths.
And when Lila is in Norman's bedroom, the camera holds on a
record player that has Beethoven Symphony #3 on a turntable.
That piece is called eroica, which means heroic in Italian,
maybe reflecting Lila's bravery. Also, with a glance, I think it
kind of looks a bit like erotica.
Yeah, maybe that's why it's there.
I think Hedgecock would have definitely chosen it for a
reason, because that's what he does, isn't it?
And the Bates House itself is a big presence from the time
Marian gets to the motel, and Hitchcock had lot of work put
into the creation of it. The way it Looks was modelled on
a 1925 painting by the classic American artist Edward Hopper,
called House by the Railroad. And that is the same painting
that Charles Addams used when he created the Addams Family
Mansion in the 30s. Right.
I think the influence of that painting on Psycho and the
Addams Family is obvious when you see it.
Yeah, it looks exactly the same. And Hopper's biographer, GAIL
Levin, said that Hopper and his wife, Joe were delighted that
Hitchcock put the house in the film.
And Hopper's painting was apparently based on a real house
in Haverstraw, NY, which was built in 1885 and is still there
today. It's the Bates house when you
see it. Yeah.
Not sure I'd fancy living there. No, I.
Don't love it me. And the set for the house and
the motel were built on the universal back lot.
Hitchcock always preferred a film indoors, so only the wide
shots of the house were shot outside on the back lot.
Another set of just the house porch was built indoors in the
sound stage. So those shots were Lila
approaching the house. We're cutting between shots of
both of those sets, right? I mean, not that you can really
tell the magic of film making. Yeah, brilliant.
The 8's house cost $15,000 to make and was built as a facade
only. It had no right side or back, as
we never see that in the wide shots.
They were both added in 1964, so the house could be added to the
Universal Studios too. Yeah, it was built on the same
sound stage where Universal had filmed Phantom of the Opera in
1925, the LON Chaney classic. Right.
Yeah. Oh yeah, and again, the house is
still there at Universal. What?
Sure, that must be Wow, Christmas do.
Let's go. It's that Christmas, so might as
well might as. Well as well, yeah.
Go there for Halloween. Just stay for Christmas.
Yeah. So Lila's in the house.
There's only one place to look now and here we go the
revelation to end all revelations and again just put
yourself in the shoes have seen this for the first time in 1960.
Like the feeling of thinking what on earth is going on here
what she going to find. I mean they must have been on
the absolute edge of their seat and that's what this scene plays
in do brilliantly. I mean, because Lila going into
the food seller, on one hand you really, really don't want it to
because there's definitely nothing good down there waiting
for her. But on the other hand, you do
really, really want it to go down there because it's the only
way you're going to find out what's going on here.
And this is what I mean by Hitchcock manipulating the
audience. It's like when you've got a
piece of string with a kitten and you just dangling it and
then yanking it away just to tease it at the last minute.
And let's face it, this should be silly beyond belief.
I mean, if you read this on the page, the corpse of Norman's
mother swings around in a chair. Well, he comes charging into the
room dressed up as her. You go?
No, Surely not. That can't work.
And yet it does. And it's because Hitchcock's got
the audience in the palm of his hand, and he's got such control
over everything that he can pull this ending off.
And it's not laughable. It's absolutely terrifying.
Yeah. I mean what a scene.
Love that shot when Norman comes in the house and runs up the
stairs and we track back to Lila hiding in one shot.
That's great. And yeah, when she looks down
the stairs to see the cellar door, that's such a clever
choice because there's an audience.
You're like, she can't not go down there.
Maria might be in there, but if she does, she's trapped.
So it's really good. And the reveal of mother, surely
the best single shot reveal there is spinning around in the
chair, grinning, horrific. The sound design's brilliant.
Vera Miles scream is absolutely massive.
And then Lila hits the light bulbs would create this really
unsettling, like sway in the lighting.
Just inspired stuff. But I remember watching this for
the first time, and when we hear Norman's footsteps coming
thundering down the stairs, I remember, like, catching me
breath. And that was, like, decades
after it came out. Yeah.
Also a nice touch that I love is everything we've seen Norman in
the film, he's left-handed because Anthony Perkins was
left-handed. But everything we've seen,
mother, she's holding the knife in her right hand, right?
Right. Wow.
But in 1960 we'd see nothing like this.
Surely audiences must have been pissing in the seats.
Hitchcock wanted the coordination of Mother spinning
around in the chair, then Lila hitting the light bulb to be
perfect. The props man was sitting below
the frame spinning the chair, and he and Vera Miles had to do
it again and again until Hitchcock was happy.
Also, Bernard Herrmann had composed a piece of music
specifically for the moment Norman bursts into the cellar.
Hitchcock got rid of it and told Herman he wanted something based
around the shower scene theme instead.
Yeah, much better that way, surely, because it works as a
call back. But also just in case anybody
was in doubt about the twist and if Norman was the guy in the
shower scene, Hitchcock tells us through the music.
It's the same music because it's the same guy.
And Mothers Mummified Corpse was created by the make up
supervisor Robert Dawn at Universal's make up department.
He apparently worked on top of a real human skull, and after
production wrapped, Hitchcock mailed the skull to the
Cinematech Francais Film Museum in Paris, where it is still on
display. Yeah, Hitchcock apparently said
an American museum would probably sell it or lose it.
Please send it off to Paris. Probably, yeah.
But a real skull? Where did they get these things
from? Just like dig someone up.
Yeah, yeah. No, I didn't know anything about
Ed Gein, honestly. Yeah, exactly.
Do you need a skull? I can get your.
Skull. Yeah, I can get your skull with
nail Bully. And Mother's corpse was dressed
by costume supervisor Helen Colvic.
She said she made 12 different dresses made in various sizes
because of all the different people that played Mother.
She said Hitchcock wanted Mother to be dressed normally as it
would be scary that way. And Colvic said it was a lot of
fun to do. Yeah, looks it.
Yeah, it's black and white, but we know the colour of that
dress, don't me, because Eliza Chambers tells us earlier when
she says she helped Norman pick out the dress and periwinkle
blue, she says yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a story, does the
rounds as well. But to test the corpse out,
Hitchcock placed it in Janet leaves dressing room to scare
her. I'm not sure how true that is,
but I wouldn't put it past him. I.
Wouldn't put it past him. Yeah, that would have worked.
The twist is revealed and Norman's caught, but we're not
finished just yet. Back at the police station, we
get two final scenes, one final look at Norman in his cell, but
not before psychiatrist doctor Fred Richmond, played by Simon
Oakland, is brought in to explain what's been going on.
The contentious scene with Richmond.
Matt, what are our thoughts? Yeah, I mean, not a lot of
people don't like this scene because it is 5 minutes of
something explaining why Norman's done what he's done,
but I've never had a problem with it.
And the reason is I need this 5 minutes to just decompress a
bit. Like after everything we've just
seen that scene in the future. Like I need 5 minutes just to
take a breath, calm down a bit, let the nerve settle.
And I think that's what this scene does really well.
I mean, yeah, it over explained some stuff, but it's still a
time for one last little shiver down the spine when he asks if
they have any unsolved missing persons case.
Yes, two young girls and just leaves her to that.
Yeah, we do get some new deals out of it, like we find out
about the two of the girls, so we know Norman was a serial
killer. But aside from that, I do think
it over explains Norman's motivations too much.
I mean, we've seen the reveal. Do we need 8 minutes of getting
explained back to us? Yeah, although I do quite enjoy.
I would start with Sheriff Chambers saying Delilah.
Well, if anyone gets any answers, it'll be the
psychiatrist. Well, yeah, it certainly won't
be you. Will it?
It won't be. You did nothing.
Yeah. I mean, I think to be fair, we
don't really need this now. But I think the audience, if you
sat through this in 1960, you're going to need a little bit more
of an explanation about why you've just been shook to your
very core through everything that you've just witnessed for
the first time. And I think it's Hitchcock just
nailing it into the audience's mind so that when they leave the
theatre, they won't stop thinking about it.
They'll be driving home like Marion Crane, and all they'll be
hearing in the head is the whole film of Psycho.
And he's telling you, yes, you're right.
You have seen the psychopath on screen, you've witnessed it.
Deal with it. Yeah, so this scene has been
criticized over the US for being unnecessary, but it was added to
the film by Joseph Stefano, who was trying to satisfy Production
Code expectations that horrific events be explained properly.
In the book, Sam figures out Norman's condition and explains
it to Lila. Simon Auckland apparently nailed
his monologue in one take, and Hitchcock shook his hand and
told him he'd just saved the picture.
Wow. Great.
I'll be slightly more impressed by that.
If Simon Oakland was brilliant, I'm not sure he is.
He's a bit theatrical for me. Yeah, he's a bit happy.
The bit where Lila is like did he kill my sister?
And Richmond goes yes and no. Awful, Yeah, awful.
Might be a lad the more in The Simpsons going.
These stories are completely true.
And by true, I mean false. But also, we mentioned earlier
that Joseph Stefano was in therapy himself, wasn't he?
I wonder if that influenced his bringing this scene in maybe.
Yeah, yeah. Well, from there we closed out
with Norm in his cell. Now totally consumed by mother,
we get one final monologue from the lady herself.
Yeah, less controversial, this one, Wesley.
Yeah, great though it is. I just love it when it's kind of
taking this blanket and say, no, sure, I'm finished with them,
whatever my work's done. And they just walk in and just
the way they hold the shot from the corridor and Scorsese, he's
like, I'm using after taxi driver.
We're not going to say what's going on.
And then you get mother's voice with that.
Thank you, that's wonderful. I love that.
And then you're in with him and you get that wonderful low shot.
Perfect. You know, Nolan used on the joke
when he's in the cell, it's the same, same kind of shot and it's
just that slow creep up. And again, he starts repeating
things in his head, much like we'd seen marrying at the start
of the film. So you're just thinking, yeah,
I've seen the same film. It isn't 2 films separated.
And it's just that wonderful moment where he looks up and
he's trying to justify everything.
He wouldn't hurt a family in the start.
You know, the shot of the skull in the face and then the music,
the cars getting pulled out, the end just at the bottom.
Fantastic way to end the film. Very confident and very modern
for the time. Yeah, yeah, it is a very modern
looking shot. I think that's ending his goal.
It's basically a masterpiece, That shot that slowly pushes in
on Norman. It's beautifully framed with
Norman just offset from the sender.
And then the sculpt results of a Norman's face, the horrible
little smile he gave us and the final line, She wouldn't even
harm a family. It's just perfect.
No notes. Yeah, I mean think Perk and see
was just incredible. All those little nods he's given
to himself is he's even with his voice, the way his eyes dot
about when she says they're probably watching me, and then
to end with him breaking the 4th wall, that slow grain across his
face. I mean, he's gone from those
kind of babyish good looks to looking genuinely terrifying for
the first time. And then that line.
She wouldn't even harm a family. I mean, anyone still want to
tell me Hitchcock just doesn't find this hilarious?
The only thing for me, why is that not the final scene?
Because we could back to the car being dragged out the swamp.
Which is fine, the narrative kind of needs it.
But put that before Norman surely?
I can't believe the last thing we see isn't Norman looking into
the camera. Fade to black.
Best fade to black ever. Is that just me?
Maybe there might have been too much for people.
Yeah. Burned in the mind completely.
You get the complete closure. Then I think it's full circle.
You start with marrying, you kind of end with marrying.
Yeah, fair enough. And Hitchcock actually wasn't
convinced about superimposing Mother's skull on top of
Norman's face at the end, so apparently send out different
versions for screenings. 1 had the end in receipt today and
another had no dissolve at all. And that's why some old
audiences sometimes swear they never saw it first time around.
Yeah, it wasn't some like Mandela Effect or anything like
that. Exactly, Yeah.
Yeah, I like to dissolve, but I don't think it needs it
necessarily. Or does it?
No, I don't think it needs it. No, no, I agree.
I don't think so. It's it's a nice little touch,
but it could have been even more subtle, to be honest.
Yeah. So that's it.
Norman's a corpse, Norman's in custody, poor Marian's been
found, and as ever, mother has the last word.
Overall, for us, the final act of psycho is one for the ages.
Well, absolutely. It still delivers of.
Course it does. It's all the right.
No, it might not be in the right order.
Reception and awards. So that's the film itself, the
making, the murders and the mother.
But how was Psycho received when landed in cinemas on September
the 8th, 1960? Well, a box office's best friend
is Matt, so here he is to give us the rundown.
Go for it, please, Matt. So production budget of $807,000
and on that cycle was a huge financial success, taking just
over $32 million worldwide. It was the second highest
grossing film of 1960 behind Spartacus.
So Goodyear for John Gavin, it went on to be the most
commercially successful film of Alfred Hitchcock's career.
And at the Oscars, as we're saying, Psycho got nominations
but no wins. Janet Leigh was nominated for
best actress in the supporting role, Alfred Hitchcock nominated
for best director, John L Russell nominated for the best
cinematography, black and white, and Joseph Hurley, Robert
Clapworthy and George Milo were nominated for best art direction
and set direction, black and white.
Yes. So from the deal Hitchcock cut
with the studio we talked about, he ended up making $15 million
from Psycho. Wow.
In 1960 money as well.
So yeah. Laughing at the bank, yeah.
Yeah, it was a bit joke for him, wasn't it?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Hitchcock filmed an official trailer, which was him giving a
guided tour of the Bates Motel. It ran for 6 1/2 minutes and
ended with Hitchcock pulling over the shower curtain to
reveal a woman screaming. Janet Lee wasn't available when
they shot it, though, so Vera Miles stood in for her wearing a
blonde wig. Brilliant that.
Yeah, it's a great trailer. It's fantastic.
Yeah, you mentioned it before, man.
Check it out if you've not seen it.
Yeah. Also something I absolutely love
is the Psycho logo. Yeah, that like, block sans
serif font with the crack through the middle.
Yeah, it was actually designed for the book by a designer
called Tony Palladino. And Hitchcock just kept it
right, as he should have. Fair enough.
Yeah, Usually it's in yellow as well, Wesley.
Yeah, there you go. And in 1960, movie audiences
would pay once and then have access to a day screen into the
theatre, so people would just often come into a film halfway
through. But Hitchcock wanted people in
their seats when Psycho started, so a cardboard display was sent
to theaters to be displayed in their lobby in Detroit.
Hitchcock pointing at his watch and said the manager of this
theatre has been instructed, at the risk of his life, not to
admit to the theatre any persons.
After the picture starts, any spurious attempts to end by side
doors, fire escapes or ventilating shafts like John
Mcclane will be met by force. The entire objective of this
extraordinary policy, of course, is to help you enjoy Psycho
more. Alfred Hitchcock.
Yeah. In the studio was also give the
theatre as a record to play in the foyer with background music
and a voiceover saying 10 minutes to psycho time. 5
minutes to psycho time. Really.
Amazing and. The marketing around this is
just ludicrously good, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great. Yeah.
I mean, this is really the start of the whole formalising of like
definite start and end times in cinemas, I think.
Yeah, Huge. Yeah.
Hitchcock letter said that after the film came out he received an
angry letter from the father of the girl who had refused to have
a bath after seeing Lead Diabolic in 1955 and now she
refused to have a shower after scene cycle.
Hitchcock sent a note back that said send her to the dry
cleaners. Amazing.
She was in about huge 6 foot shower head.
This will sort her out. Exactly.
Yeah, absolutely stank. Stand her through a car wash.
And from that feedback, we can dive straight into the critics
comments, starting with the great Roger Rebut.
Although one caveat, his review was a retrospective, not from
the original release because he wasn't a critic in 1960.
Yeah, yeah. So what do we reckon Roger gave
Psycho out of four full for easily?
Of course it was. And, he said, What makes Psycho
immortal, when so many films are already half forgotten by the
time we leave the theatre, is that it connects directly with
our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of
a madman and, of course, our fears of disappointing our
mothers. No other Hitchcock film had a
greater impact. Yeah.
Yeah, hard to argue with Roger on that.
Roger may have had a domineering with that too sounds.
Like it? Yeah.
Bosley Crowther in the New York Times, however, at the time of
release gave Psycho a more lukewarm reception.
He said there's not an abundance of subtlety or the lately
familiar Hitchcock bent towards significant and colourful
scenery in this obviously low budget job.
Right. I mean, no, there's no colourful
scenery. It's in black and white.
Yeah, exactly. And David Parkinson in the
retrospective Empire magazine review gave Psycho the full 5
stars over the five, of course, saying timeless classic, superb
performances and the infamous shower scene make this the
perfect nightmare. Yeah, Yeah, I think The Perfect
Nightmare is a pretty good description, pretty much.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You won't shake it.
Yeah. And today in Rotten Tomatoes,
Psycho has a 95% audience approval rating and 97% from
critics. And on IMDb it currently sits
with a rating of 8.5 out of 10, placing it 36 on the IMDb top
250. And that is one place below
Grave of the Five Flies, and one above The Lion King.
Yeah, there's a trilogy I. Was going to say, not real bad
fellows those things. Sandwich between 2 animated Tia
Jaggers. Yeah, 2 right, Yeah.
So Cycle was a phenomenon, the biggest of Hitchcock's career, 4
Oscar nominations, a marketing campaign that reinvented how
audiences watch movies, and the critical legacy that's only
grown over the years. Seems like the world worked out
pretty quickly. This was something special.
Yeah, I think so. Sequels and influence.
A film of Psycho Stature doesn't just spawn sequels, it's spawned
franchises, remakes, TV series, and more.
Let's start with the sequels though.
Three direct ones. Psycho 2 came out in 1983 with
Anthony Perkins back as Norman after he gets released from the
Asylum, Psycho 3 in 1986 and Perkins himself directing and
Psycho 4 the Beginning in 1990 is a prequel made for TV, also
written by Joseph Stefano. Less of acclaimed in the
original Westie. But what do you make of the
Psycho sequels? I'll go for Psycho 2 if I may.
Lovely. I loved Psycho 2, based 22 years
after the first film. So he's coming out of the asylum
and if you haven't seen it, I would highly recommend checking
it out. I think it's really good
writing. The directions obviously nowhere
near Hitchcock's level, but the acting's good.
Obviously Perkins is great in it, he's just bringing that back
as if he'd never left. Very underrated sequel.
I think it's really good. Lovely.
Yeah, so picking up from that, I think Psycho 3 is worth a watch
if you've not seen it, right. It's definitely got the 80s vibe
through with, you know, a lot of unnecessary nudity.
But it does have this real kind of sleazy, neon drenched
atmosphere. The kills are well done.
It's got a one with ice cubes. I must have seen this really
young and it's been stuck in my head since.
I thought you meant ice Cube. I was like seeing it.
Been around a while. Before boys, no.
See, that one's worth watching. And then for the beginning, I
mean, it's very much ATV movie from the 90s.
It's filling in a lot of stuff we don't need filling in.
Henry Thomas plays the young Norman and he's no Anthony
Perkins, to be fair. All right.
It's just beating you over the head with all the subtext from
the first film. Like on.
Did you get the incest undertones?
Did you get that? Did you get that?
Yeah, I've got got that on the first film.
Yeah. Yeah, It's just a bit dull.
It's a bit enough. And if you want to explore the
early life of Norman and his mother, I'd recommend watching
the Bates Motel TVCVS instead. So I did it a lot better.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was 2013, wasn't it?
Freddie Highmore's Norman Vera Farmiga played mother.
She's. Brilliant in it.
Yeah, she is. That is worth a look.
Yeah, for sure. How about the impact, though, of
the first Psycho and everything that came after it that wouldn't
exist without it? Matt, what do you think of the
legacy of Psycho? I mean, how long have you got?
It's arguably the most influential film ever made,
certainly up there in the conversation, the birth of the
slasher movie. There were movies before this
that had big twists, but cycles, probably the first one that made
the twist the the huge part of the market.
And I think he said don't give away the end.
And it's the only one we have like, say the trailer playing
the music in the lobby that we've just talked about.
As you said, this is the film I made.
Film started at a specific time. It really did change the
industry and then the film makers.
I mean, this one is definitely in Spielberg's DNA, but
definitely in Jaws. The way he creates suspense.
And the light bulb definitely went off over Brian De Palma's
head the first time he watched. It really did.
I'll, I'll just remake this for my entire career, I think in one
way or another. And then the amount of film
makers who watch this and realise Hitchcock did this on
the small budget really quickly. Sam Raimi, Evil Dead, The Corns
with Blood Simple, The Blair Witch Project.
Yeah, yeah. It is endless the influence of
this one. Yeah, you're right Mark.
The influence of Psycho is enormous.
Obviously so big it is like, where do you begin?
Yeah, for me, there's maybe 3 main things I find interesting.
1st, the slasher genre. Without Psycho, I don't think we
get Halloween in 1978 and Friday the 13th and scream the whole
template of the slasher, like the mass killer and knife, the
suburban setting, the woman victim, the final girl.
All of that is in Psycho. Yeah, I mean, in Halloween,
Donald Pleasence's character is called Doctor Sam Loomis the
Stiff. Yeah, yeah, John Comlin knew
what he was doing. Yeah.
Also the crafting techniques being ridiculously influential.
The shower scene alone gave the master class in how to use
montages to create terror in chaos.
I know against Scorsese model the montage and Raging Bull when
Jaylen Mona was getting his brains beaten out from Sugar Ray
Robinson on the shower scenes. Editing like shot for shot, he
said. And just as placed in popular
culture is as big as about any film.
Those screeching strings transcend the film.
Everyone knows what that means. It's been parodied by Mel
Brooks, by National Lampoon, by The Simpsons, even Looney Tunes
to the shower scene and it's mentioned and We Didn't Start
the Fire by Billy Joel. That's all he did.
Should we check a psycho bell in the Congo?
If that's not a measure of cultural impact, I don't know
what is. Neither do I.
Yeah, exactly the same as you guys.
I think for me, the biggest influence is not how it was
made, but how it was viewed. I mean, arriving at the cinema
on time. Can you imagine that now people
just walk in and out the halfway through a film?
No, no. It just absolutely baffles me.
And I think without that rule in place, then you can't have
necessarily the record of the ticket sales and you can't have
the record of how many people it's been to see it and how many
views it's had and how much that's turned over and how that
marketing works. And then you get Star Wars and
then you get Jaws, then you get the Blockbuster.
Then you get start getting the success of film based on an
actual blueprint that Hitchcock set up because he didn't want
people to miss the end of the film.
Some of my favorite films. I don't think you'd have Misery
without this. I don't think you'd have Silence
of the Lambs without this. Texas Chainsaw, I've already
mentioned we could do a full podcast on the legacy of Psycho
and the influence of Psycho. That's how big it is.
Absolutely. And Psycho was first scheduled
to air on US television in 1966. Just before that, though,
Valerie Percy, who was the daughter of a US senator, was
stabbed to death by an intruder in their family.
Whore. It was huge news.
And as a result, cycle was shelled from TV until 1970,
right? Yeah, the Valerie Percy murder
still unsolved. Really sad.
Really. Really.
Yeah, but in 1969 cycle was re released in theatres.
It did really well and that led to the 1970 screening.
Right. OK, OK.
So Cycle's influence is pretty hard to calculate.
Just about every horror film since 1960 has its fingerprints
somewhere and basically the foundations of an entire genre.
A new way of screening films and a new way of thinking about
cinematic film making. Pretty big influence.
Yeah, forget about it. Made with ATV crew.
Yeah, unbelievable. All the right movies ranking.
And we've nearly checked out of Psycho. 109 minutes of black and
white Hitchcock horror. Now it's time for the moment we
put a number on it where we each rate the film out of 10.
Matt, your choice. Get us started, please.
Your summary in school for Psycho.
Yeah, no, great. Need to elaborate on this one.
For me, I think everyone knows where this is going, probably
for all of us. Sometimes I'll give a film A10
because it's got a real personal and nostalgic importance to me.
Sometimes I'll give a 10 because the film is just so entertaining
I can't find anything to bring it down.
And sometimes I give a 10 because of its place in
cinematic history and it can't be denied.
And it's impact, it's beyond measure.
Psychotics, all three of those boxes to be honest.
So I really should be giving it 30, but it can't.
But it's got one of the easiest turns I'll ever give a film.
Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the things
for me is just how fresh this still feels.
Hitchcock was 60 years old, 51 films in, and it's black and
white, but it still feels modern in lots of ways.
And there's some moments like scenes or shots or characters
they have. I saw them in a film now.
I'd still be like, oh, that's new.
Oh, that's cool. Yeah.
I mean, some of the creative choices are incredible.
He kills the star, he switches to protagonists, he shoots the
toilet flushing outrageous and craft wide.
It's non-stop. The opening pound into Phoenix
is still superb. The Saw bus titles and Bernard
Herman score stuff for the Hollywood Hall of Fame.
And then Janet Lee, Anthony Perkins, 0 Miles, all brilliant
and iconic. There's so much more.
You just can't fit it all in. One misstep maybe for me with
the psychiatrist scene, but the rest is so incredible it easily
carries it. I mean, it's one of the most
famous and influential films in the history of the whole medium,
so it's an easy one for me. 12 cabins, 12 vacancies, 10 hour
10. Nice.
Nice and Westie, your submarine score for Psycho, please.
Yeah, I mean, what else can you say?
It's just incredible. I mean, just one lens, that's
enough for me for a 10, let's be honest.
And then everything else on top of that.
I mean, this was just a film that wasn't necessarily born of
we need to make money, we need to turn over screenings.
We need. It was just Hitchcock needed to
make something that he really wanted to make.
It was a film of creative necessity done on a budget with
his TV crew who wanted to make something scary.
And we had this idea for something and everybody brought
their A game to something that didn't deserve it.
And what we got was something we didn't deserve either.
But I'm so glad that we do have it.
I'm so glad that it still works now.
And I'm so jealous for anyone who hasn't seen it, It's such an
easy 10 for me. It'll stay with you for the rest
of your life. So that's not goes in and of
course we also have some from our ATRM patrons should we see
what they have to say about Psycho.
Yeah, go through. Do it.
First up, it's Dane de Josie. Dane says.
One of the easiest 10s I've ever given.
I wish I had a time machine to go to one of the original
showings of Psycho going in completely blind.
It must have blown viewers tops off at the time.
This is one of those films that simply changed movies forever.
Yeah, nice. That's brave.
Going in blind though. I'd want to know what was going
on. And I just watched other people.
Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Next up, Shazzap, who said it's
a nine for me. Superb film.
Yet I find The Birds more terrifying.
Right. OK, The Birds is a good shout.
Also great in its own rice. Great.
They're in this one. They're just stuffed.
Yeah, the prequel. Yeah.
And finally, Oliver Betts said
it's my favorite. Hitchcock had a humongous
influence on the horror genre, which I love.
And being partied by The Simpsons on more occasions than
any other film. Right.
It's a stone cold classic. And 10 on 10.
Nice. If it's good enough for The
Simpsons, it's good enough for me.
Absolutely, yeah. And the scores are in from our
paid runs. What do you think they gave it
out of 10 I'm. Going to say 10.
Oh full whack, I'll go 10 as well.
It has to be. It was a huge 10 out of 10.
Beautiful. There we go.
Which gives Psycho the full whack.
It does 40 out of 40 joining a very special list, that one.
It is indeed. Yes, it should.
So for now that's Psycho doing Dusted.
Hopefully you've enjoyed it, hasn't made you go a little mad.
Yeah. Well, we all do sometimes, yeah.
Well, next time out, Matt and Westie will be creating the
Bathe Motel for the two of us, and we'll be joined by Luke.
It's all happening as you talk 1970s American rock and Cameron
Crows Almost famous. Yes.
Yes, yeah, 3 golden gods there, right?
Yeah. On top of the roof.
I'm only the fucking lead singer.
But before we sign off, one last reminder about Patreon.
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Yep, harder to not find us, let's be honest.
Exactly. It is.
We're all off now to find out what's really behind that
painting on Matt's wall. Yeah, and pull his car out of
the swamp, I want to say. Find that North by Northwest
picture behind. Yeah, that's fitting, isn't it?
Yeah. Come back for Almost Famous and
until then, thanks for listening everyone.
Yes. Thank you so much, guys.
Take care. Thanks for listening guys.