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We have all heard about how a melon was sued for the slashing effect in the shower sequence.

This is from

The Psycho Guide: A Comprehensive  Guide to Hitchcock’s Classic Shocker by Joseph Smith

On the other hand, Danny Greene, an uncredited sound editor on the film - told Skerry in no uncertain terms that he used beef. That story is not well known – yet it seems credible not only because of Greene’s job title but also because he claims  to have  done the stabbing himself. Here is Greene’s account: “ We had changed the stabbing sound three times, but they still didn’t work … I was going to the closest market, buy a big roast beef, and stab it in front of a microphone… The prop guy said  “Here, you might take the same knife we used in the scene …” So, I get this giant chunk of meat, a big roast with gristle on the side. I stabbed it about fifty times, in the gristle and the meat part. It was just a vicious sound of slicing meat .. and the new stab sounds were a hit! Hitchcock leaned back in his chair and said “Ah, yes- very nice” Melons were never used on any way to create sound effects for Psycho. (Skerry, 232-233)

Anyone like the roast beef story?


Yet, there’s still a surprise for Psycho veterans when the curtain  pulls back and Mother raises her knife: Mom is right handed - but the earlier scenes show Norman is a leftie.

A door prize to first person to point out where Norman is shown to be left handed earlier in the film.


The censors did force Hitchcock to  excise an overhead shot of Marion’s fall ; it showed her body from the back, draped over the edge of the tub , with her buttocks clearly exposed. Psycho’s assistant editor,Terry Williams, told Skerry all the outtakes from the shower scene were blithely – and tragically –thrown away by an irritated  shop steward who didn’t want to sort and label the pieces. A still of this omitted image is reproduced  in Skerry’s book – and Gus Von Saint included this shot  complete with the slash marks on Marion’s back , in his 1998 remake.

Shame those outtakes are gone- any chance other outtakes might exist, I've read about multiple takes on the opening scene with Marion and Sam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_(1960_film)

There are varying accounts whether Leigh was in the shower the entire time or a body double was used for some parts of the murder sequence and its aftermath. In an interview with Roger Ebert and in Alfred Hitchcock and in the book  The Making of Psycho, Leigh stated she was in the scene the entire time and Hitchcock only used a stand-in for the sequence in which Norman wraps Marion's body in a shower curtain and places it in the trunk of her car.^[69] The 2010 book The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower by Robert Graysmith  contradicts this, identifying Marli Renfro as Leigh's body double for some of the shower scene's shots.^[70]

The Psycho Guide: A Comprehensive  Guide to Hitchcock’s Classic Shocker by Joseph Smith

concerning the excised footage from shower mentioned in earlier post in this thread

The body in that shot wasn’t Leigh’s , of course;  virtually no major star in that era would have appeared fully and visibly nude in a film. Rather Leigh in that frame is doubled by a 23-yeard old dancer named Marli Renfro; she was hired, because, as Hitchcock puts it , "I want someone whose job is to be naked on the set”(Rebello 104). Renfro was used mostly for testing how  various shots would work – and as a body double when Norman wraps up Marion’s corpse later on. Leigh always insisted that no shot of Renfro appears in the finished scene except the early blurred view of Marion behind the translucent curtain. Krohn’s book, however  indicates that well over four hours of shooting took place with Renfro alone, without Leigh  present on the set. Renfro, for example , must certainly be the one who appears in the aforementioned shots that show Marion’s breasts , however briefly.Psycho expert Stepehen Rebello indicates that stand in Ann Dore was used in the overhead shots of Marion fending off Mom’s knife. He also tells that Hitchcock himself was the one who held the knife in many of the shots throughout the shower scene.

So we have conflicting information from Leigh and there may have been two stand ins for Leigh, Renfro and Dore.

Speaking of stand-ins, Anthony Perkins was in New York preparing for a Broadway stage show when the shower scene was filmed. Mother in this scene was played by veteran doubler Margo Epper , and by the above mentioned Dore , whose face was blackened so as not to be seen clearly , though her “burning eyes,  dimly visible in some prints,  add a horrible touch when she tears open the curtain.”( Krohn 230).

Information here says Mother in the stabbing was played by both Margo Epper and Ann Dore. This means Ann Dore may have done Mother in some parts and Marion in other parts. I posted
the shower video for reference., but for the life of me I don't see any " burning eyes" of mother. Has anyone seen "burning eyes?"