Psycho (1960) in The Psycho Ward Forum

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Psycho (1960)

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professor liebstrum		#101	[-]
Aug 11 10 3:43 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	BBC are showing Psycho this coming Saturday. It goes out at two in the morning and their listings magazine, the Radio Times warns " May be edited for Violence"! It also says it was Hitchcock's hand holding the knife in the shower scene! Russ
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Bill Warren		#102	[-]
Oct 21 10 1:25 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Wasn't in Stephen Rebello's excellent book on the making of PSYCHO where it's said that Stefano's script was the second one Hitchcock commissioned? If I remember correctly, the first writer was James P. Cavanagh, who coincidentlly scripted the teleplay for the 1955 adaptation of "The Birds" that appeared on the series DANGER. I'm surprised no one has published Cavanagh's script based on the Bloch novel. (And for that matter, where's his "The Birds"?)
Ted Newsom		#103	[-]
Oct 21 10 10:54 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Those screen shots of Mama Bates at the top of the landing put to lie any thought that the part was doubled by a midget. She's taller than Martin Balsam, and he was not a little person, ergo-- poof goes another IMDB fact.
Bobtheman	Uh-uh, Mother-m-mother, uh, what is the phrase? She isn't quite herself today	#104	[-]
Oct 21 10 12:47 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I would like someone to use this screen capture or perhaps a better one from the dvd and then lighten it as much as possible so perhaps we can get a better look at Mother's face. She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother.
Bobtheman	An Unexpected Encounter	#105	[-]
Oct 21 10 1:58 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Great idea whoever came up with that - didn't you feel Marion's anxiety at that moment, and then the scary music made your heart beat a little faster?
FrozenGhost		#106	[-]
Oct 21 10 5:51 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I appreciate the attention to detail. The graphics at the beginning of the movie sets the action in Phoenix at the end of December. Note the prominent Christmas street displays behind the actors. Of course, PSYCHO is the farthest thing from you associate with Christmas and the holiday isn't once mentioned in the course of the movie but it's there for observant viewers. In all the volumes that have been written about PSYCHO, I can't recall this point being picked up by any commentator but it seems to be a deliberate choice on the part of Hitchcock and Stefano, like the subliminal shot of the skull on Perkins' face. Perhaps the thinking was that all this carnage taking place while the Yule time was in full swing adds to the unsettling nature of the movie.
Spoiler II		#107	[-]
Oct 21 10 9:59 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Got the Blu-ray of PSYCHO and it looks phenomenal. Watching the Making Of feature now but I did do a quick freeze frame of the shower scene and you can definitely make out an eye very clearly compared to what was posted in this thread previously. Someone more capable than I might try for a screen grab and see if another frame may reveal more creepy detail.
delgadosaur		#108	[-]
Oct 27 10 12:48 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Always wanted to know whether they shot the scene where he disposes of the car on the Uni lot, in the same tank where they shot the black lagoon stuff. Anybody know?
Bill Warren		#109	[-]
Oct 27 10 1:10 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It doesn't look like a lake to me, but a big pit filled with water; they winch the cars down. Spoiler II wrote: I did do a quick freeze frame of the shower scene and you can definitely make out an eye very clearly compared to what was posted in this thread previously. Where in that sequence? And whose eye? Last Edited By: Bill Warren Oct 27 10 1:12 PM. Edited 1 times.
Dubious Comforts		#110	[-]
Oct 28 10 9:09 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Bobtheman wrote: I would like someone to use this screen capture or perhaps a better one from the dvd and then lighten it as much as possible so perhaps we can get a better look at Mother's face. Here you go.... I could do a better job with a blu-ray screengrab, but dvd is all I have right now. I also need to take another look at those shadows at the top of the stairs... www.LivingDeadDocumentary.com
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Gram Owens		#111	[-]
Oct 28 10 9:19 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	My favorite movie of all time! From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it -- Groucho Marx
Bill Warren		#112	[-]
Oct 29 10 5:24 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	In the interview linked in the other PSYCHO topic, Rebello says the face of the actress playing Mother in the shower murder was blackened so her features couldn't be seen. Nonetheless, she doesn't have the unusual, he-left-in-the-coathanger shoulders of Tony Perkins. The other topic is in the 60s folder: http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/31981 Last Edited By: Bill Warren Oct 29 10 5:27 PM. Edited 1 times.
Ted Newsom		#113	[-]
Oct 31 10 7:10 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I think I caught another error in Rebello's otherwise-excellent research. He claims James Cavanaugh wrote a preliminary script for PSYCHO which was chucked aside, in favor of a start-from-scratch script from Joseph Stefano. The budget tells a different story. The amount Cavanaugh was paid was something like $7,430.05-- too low for a minimum screenplay payment under WGA rules at the time. The means, without question, that Cavanaugh wrote a treatment-- a screen story-- not a script. (To anticipate the question: no, a studio could not simply decide to pay a writer less than WGA minimum if they decide not to use a writer's script.) And whether Stefano used elements of the Cavanaugh work or not can't be determined without comparing it to the shooting script. EDIT: $17,500 to Stefano, $7,166 for the earlier Cavanugh work, according to Rebello's book. The numbers are roughly proportional to the differences between the current WGA minimums. It's now $65,802 for a screenplay (excluding a treatment), and treatment alone is $29,250; low budget minimum is $51,169, compared to a treatment alone at $19,187. So a treatment-alone has always been valued at slightly less than 50% of a screenplay, and the Stefano/Cavanaugh numbers are in line with that. Last Edited By: Ted Newsom Oct 31 10 7:57 AM. Edited 3 times.
Bill Warren		#114	[-]
Oct 31 10 2:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Cavanagh, actually. His treatment might be in the USC library's special collection. It would still be interesting to compare the two scripts or Cavanagh's treatment to Stefano's script, whichever. The documentary carried over to the PSYCHO Blu-ray does mention Cavanagh's attempt, but I don't recally if it was referred to as a script or a treatment, though I think it was the latter. Another PSYCHO curiosity that's accidentally made much clearer: as my PSYCHO-loving friend Jim Shapiro pointed out, in the sequence in the cellar when Perkins rushes in, hands upraised, disturbing leer on his face, in the background you can hear a voice saying "I am Norma Bates!" Granted, this is hard to hear over the reprise of the shower murder slashing strings, but somewhere in the extras there's a clip of just that without any music, and the voice is very clear. It's entirely an overdub; Perkins does not seem to be saying anything in this scene.
Cueva Muerte		#115	[-]
Oct 31 10 5:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Best I could do. Faint eyes...not much else. Looks like she/he's wearing a cloth mask that starts below the eyes & goes down to the chin.. http://www.imageno.com/ce03hphh53c8pic.html Last Edited By: Cueva Muerte Nov 1 10 2:46 AM. Edited 4 times.
Ted Newsom		#116	[-]
Oct 31 10 7:56 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"in the background you can hear a voice saying "I am Norma Bates!" " There's plenty of people who argue that he never said that on the version they saw, and that therefore someone must have sent out multiple versions with and without the dialogue. That's just silly (and I referred to that legend when I reviewed Sthe book ex post facto last year.) No, Perkins just has his mouth hanging open. It's such an obvious overly-explanatory line, I'd bet it wasn't in the script, but added later to clarify why the hell Anthony Perkins is showing up in a dress. I just watched the ASP episode "Arthur" on hulu, written by James Cavanagh. That was broadcast the same year as the PSYCHO script was written, September, 1959. Given that "Arthur" is a young, presentable, quite well-mannered killer, I'd further bet that the suggestion of making Norman into a nice-looking young man (rather than Bloch's parody of Calvin Beck) came from the Hitchcock/Cavanagh collaboration. And that is really the major difference between the book and the movie (except for the Mom/Norman dialogues, which would be impossible on film.) Since the plot and story structure follows the Bloch book pretty closely, I wonder what Joe Stefano actually brought to the table as a writer? A wicked sense of dialogue, certainly.
Rapfred		#117	[-]
Oct 31 10 8:53 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Stefano's dialogue is a feast for the ears and a major artistic asset to the film. One need only check out the likes of STRAIGHT-JACKET, THE NIGHT WALKER, or CABINET OF CALIGARI to imagine Hitchcock's PSYCHO with Robert Bloch behind the typewriter. The guy might have been a hot-shot pulp writer, but his movie work is marked by some of the flattest, most cliché-ridden dialogue this side of George Bricker.
Bill Warren		#118	[-]
Oct 31 10 9:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	STRAIT-JACKET, actually. Bloch was a great pulp writer--who wasn't able to entirely shed the pulpiness when he wrote movies, one of the reason his stuff plays so well when directed by Wm. Castle, another pulpmeister. Bloch could write melodramas; dramas he had a harder time with. Stefano, too, was an uneven writer; PSYCHO has his best dialogue, something Hitchcock supposedly didn't really concern himself with very much Bloch disowned the CABINET OF CALIGARI script, for what that's worth. Ted Newsom wrote: "in the background you can hear a voice saying "I am Norma Bates!" " It's such an obvious overly-explanatory line, I'd bet it wasn't in the script, but added later to clarify why the hell Anthony Perkins is showing up in a dress. I doubt the line was in the script; it's more in the nature of a sound effect than of dialogue, since there's clearly no attempt to make it seem as though Perkins is saying it. It probably was added for just the reason you suggest. But just how many people even noticed it then, or notice it now? I never did, until it was pointed out to me by Jim Shapiro. I've never seen it mentioned in any articles about the movie, but it's still there. Last Edited By: Bill Warren Oct 31 10 9:54 PM. Edited 2 times.
Rapfred		#119	[-]
Oct 31 10 10:29 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	>>one of the reason his stuff plays so well when directed by Wm. Castle, another pulpmeister.>> Says you. I just finished watching THE NIGHT WALKER. Ludicrous and creaky, it plays like amateur night at the old folks home. >>PSYCHO has his best dialogue, something Hitchcock supposedly didn't really concern himself with very much >> Sounds like one of Hitchcock's own tall tales. For someone who "supposedly didn't really concern himself" with dialogue, he managed to hire some of the best dialogue writers around -- Raymond Chandler, Ben Hecht and Ernest Lehman, among others. Indeed, if dialogue mattered so little to Mr. H., he would have done well to hire Bloch rather than Stefano. >>Bloch disowned the CABINET OF CALIGARI script, for what that's worth.>> Well, at least Lippert didn't tamper with Bloch's dialogue. The lines spouted by the actors are pure pulpmeister -- flat and cliché-ridden. Last Edited By: Rapfred Nov 1 10 1:07 AM. Edited 1 times.
Cueva Muerte		#120	[-]
Oct 31 10 11:18 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Script dated 12-1-1959 INT. THE FRUIT CELLAR Lila goes to the chair, touches it. The touch disturbs the figure. It starts to turn, slowly, stiffly, a clock-wise movement. Lila looks at it in horror. It is the body of a woman long dead. The skin is dry and pulled away from the mouth and the teeth are revealed as in the skeleton's smile. The eyes are gone from their sockets, the bridge of the nose has collapsed, the hair is dry and wild, the cheeks are sunken, the leathery-brown skin is powdered and rouged and flaky. The body is dressed in a high-neck, clean, well-pressed dress, obviously recently laundered and hand-ironed. The movement of this stuffed, ill-preserved cadaver, turning as if in response to Lila's call and touch, is actually graceful, ballet-like, and the effect is terrible and obscene. Lila gazes for one flicker of a deathly moment, then begins to scream, a high, piercing, dreadful scream. And Lila's scream is joined by another scream, a more dreadful, horrifying scream which comes from the door behind her. NORMAN'S VOICE (O.S.) (screaming) Ayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Am Norma Bates! Lila turns. NORMAN His face is contorted. He wears a wild wig, a mockery of a woman's hair. He is dressed in a high-neck dress which is similar to that worn by the corpse of his mother. His hand is raised high, poised to strike at Lila. There is a long breadknife in it. LILA Close on her face. She is dumb-struck. Her eyes are screaming. BACK TO NORMAN As he is about to start forward, a man's hand reaches in from the doorway behind, grabs Norman's wrist. Sam comes through the door, still holding tight to the wrist, pulling back the arm and at the same time throwing himself at Norman, football tackle style. SERIES OF CUTS - THE FIGHT Norman and Sam, struggling. The wild fury in Norman's face, the mad noise of his screams and vile curses. The terrified, fight-to-the-death look of Sam. The still, staring Lila. MRS. BATES A close of her face, She appears to be watching and enjoying the fight. Over the shot, the SOUNDS of the struggle, the screams of Norman. DISSOLVE TO:
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Psycho (1960)