If not Hitchcock's best, 'Psycho' is certainly his most iconic with isolated sequences that will forever be imprinted on filmgoer's minds. A master class of atmosphere, tension and genuine scares of the boo! variety, 'Psycho' made sure no one who saw it ever felt safe in the shower again.
No doubt inspiring the score of slasher films that would appear in later generations in which the lack of subtlety would most likely appall big Al, a knife-wielding maniac was a fascinatingly nasty subject matter for 1960.
Hitchcock bought the rights to Robert Bloch’s novel for a surprisingly thrifty $9,000. The novel fictionalized a series of real-life murders in Wisconsin at the hands of Ed Gein – who also inspired 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' A more accurate account of these murders also showed up in the 1974 film 'Deranged.'
Coming off of the huge undertaking of 'North by Northwest', Hitchcock decided to get down and dirty with the production of 'Psycho' shooting it for under 1 million dollars (not much even then) and using his television crew to cut down on time and costs.
He also shot the film in black and white knowing that shooting in color would cause major censorship problems (sad that this same issue popped forty-five years later for Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' when he was forced to covert a sequence to B&W to appease the ratings board - yeah, we get it MPAA, blood is red, thanks).
The film opens in Phoenix, Arizona and we meet Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) enjoying a lunch break rendezvous with her lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin). Madly in love, they meet up when they can while Sam tries to get past his financial hardships of paying alimony to his ex-wife. Sam also lives in California so a big change will need to happen to get their wish of living happily ever after.
Fate provides just the change as $40,000 in cash drops right in Marion’s lap when her too-trusting employer allows her to deposit this cash in the bank herself on a Friday afternoon. The temptation is too much and she takes off with the cash with a loose plan of heading off to California and starting a new life with Sam.
Not necessarily putting on her best poker face with a suspicious cop, she ends up tired and off the highway on a rainy night where she discovers that Bates Motel has plenty of vacancies.
Warmly welcomed by the kind owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), he invites her for sandwiches up at his house just a few steps up from the hotel but Marion quickly realizes something is amiss when she hears him and his mother engage in a screaming match up at the house.
After an extremely awkward conversation where Marion seems to kindly suggest that maybe Norman should put his ill mother in the care of professionals and Norman doesn't react to kindly, she retreats to her room for the night which is the last time anyone ever sees her alive.
I can't imagine anyone not knowing how the events play out by know but I'll tread carefully just in case. Marion's sister and Sam grow understandably worried about her sudden disappearance and with a detective hired to track the cash, the trail soon leads to Bates Motel but the mystery surrounding her disappearance might not quite be what it seems.
We the audience, of course, know part of the answer and are ahead of the investigation in certain ways, but the full realization of what happened is one of the great shock twists of all time.
And this of course follows the very unsettling and novel at the time knocking off of the main character. We get to know Marion Crane and follow her escape for a full hour before she's suddenly ripped away from us, a development that makes the audience realize that anything can happen after that.
I can imagine a lot of walk-outs after that first shower sequence as all cinematic comforts, even of the genre, are thrown out the window. To this day, this is still masterly carried out, not to mention the actual cutting and framing of the shower sequence itself, a prerequisite for film 101 classes around the world.
Showing almost no on-screen gore, the sequence plays out a lot worse in people's heads than what's actually on screen. Tobe Hooper carries this tradition on with 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' which also features very little on-screen gore.
A lot of the credit also lies with the performances and Bernard Herrmann's flawless string orchestra score. The opening credits set to a piece of score that already seems to playing out to high tension is a marvel and later picked up from M. Night Shymalan for the opening of 'Signs'.
Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates was key, giving the role a child-like innocence that’s sympathetic during and even after the big reveal - it's a marvelous performance that he could never really shake in subsequent years and eventually gave up and returned to the well a number of times for inferior sequels (although 'Psycho II' does actually have some merit...).
Like 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' before, I owned the previous non-anamorphic 'Collector's Editions' but never got the '05 'Masterpiece Collection' so for this new "digitally remastered picture", know I'll be comparing it to the old '98 DVD release (it's been ten years!...wow, I'm getting old).
This 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer looks great although the black and white presentation will of course be inherently less impressive than, say, the vibrancy of 'Vertigo'.
There's still quite a bit of grain and some shots definitely suffer more than others, sometimes even within the same sequence, but the films contrast and lighting has been considerably improved with deeper blacks and more definition between the lights and darks.
I'm thinking this may be the definitive visual representation of 'Psycho' even taking into account the inevitable Blu-Ray release - which may only enhance what little flaws are here.
A Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track is provided and the track is great for its age with Hermann's flawless score coming in loud, clear and unnerving. Special Features from the old release are carried over with 'Newsreel Footage', 'The Shower Scene with and without Music' and most notably 'The Making of Psycho', an hour and a half documentary that covers all thing 'Psycho'.
It was great on the original release and its great now and a must see for fans. 'Production Notes', 'Production Drawings' and various 'Trailers' were also featured on the old release.
New special features start off with a commentary from Stephen Rebello (author of 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho') who is an obvious expert on Hitchcock and the film itself. Nary a dry spot, Rebello is a constant supply of anecdotes and information. 'The Shower Scene - Storyboards by Saul Bass' and 'The Psycho Archives' provide new content for disc 1.
On Disc 2, we get 'In the Master's Shadow - Hitchcock Legacy' a half-hour featurette that gathers comments and interviews from contemp film professionals, 'Hitchcock/Truffaut Interview Excerpts' discussing 'Psycho'. And finally, an episode of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' entitled 'Lamb to the Slaughter'.
The film itself is beyond reproach. Psycho is a classic piece of cinema and arguably one of the most influential genre films of all time. Endlessly studied and scrutinized, it's a film no fan of film should be without as it's infinitely cinematic and at the end of the day also enormously entertaining - a point that might get lost or weighed down under all the pretentious film critic talk. Smooth packaging and some great new special features all add up to a package you'd be crazy, ahem, not to pick up.
Psycho (Universal Legacy Series) is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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