Psycho

The Basic Plot in the Form of a Haiku:

My Basic Ramblings: On occasion, I am asked by Diane (my co-boss) to deposit checks into her attorney trust account for her. These checks are usually the money put down on houses, and can be anywhere from two thousand to two hundred thousand dollars.

Have I been tempted to take the money and run?  Of course.  Have I?  No, because a) Diane endorses the checks to her account and b) if I took the money, I'd end up going to a hotel and getting stabbed in the shower.  Knowing my luck.

I bought this on laser disc recently. Usually, laser discs have twenty or so chapter stops, allowing the viewer to find where he or she wishes to start watching relatively easily. (I think I wore out the chapter stop entitled "Sgt. Jack Vincennes" on my copy of L.A. Confidential. It's the first time we see Kevin Spacey, dancing with the starlet.  Sigh....backtrack!  Sigh...backtrack!) Anyway, Psycho has exactly four chapter stops. 1, she arrives at the hotel, 2, the shower scene, 3, the investigator meets Mother, and 4, Lila meets Mother. Kinda difficult to get to any other scene, like, say, Lila meets Sam. But it does provide you easy access to the big scary parts.

Anyway.............before CNN's message boards kind of blew up on them, someone lamented the lack of "adult" horror movies. He was right - horror movies today are nothing but teenage (or twenty-something) stars of Dawson's Creek and Party of Five getting themselves stabbed and disemboweled with Bush or Harvey Danger on the soundtrack. Where's the 90's versions of The Exorcist? The Omen? I suppose their modern-day equivalents would be Seven and perhaps Fallen (didn't see it but that's the impression that I got).

Alfred Hitchcock, when he bought the rights to this movie, bought as many copies of Robert Bloch's book as he could to keep people from reading it. I read it recently, before watching the movie again. There are quite a few differences between the book and the movie - the book introduces us to Norman and his mother in the first chapter, rather than further along; Mother decapitates Mary Crane (that's what she's called in the book); Norman is described as pale and overweight, more like Ed Gein, upon whom the novel was based.(sort of the direct opposite of Anthony Perkins. Poor Tony. Kinda got typecast after this flick).

Ed Gein. Whatta guy. Killed bunches of people, his house was filled with human skin vests and furniture made of the bones of his victims (I'd like to see Norm Abram do something like that on New Yankee Workshop. "Today we're going to make an end table out of the bones of these people I killed. Always remember to wear your safety glasses"). He was also the inspiration for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (The closest we have here in Rochester was Arthur Shawcross, who murdered something like twelve prostitutes and was arrested eating lunch not far from where one of his victims was found.  Go Rochester.)

The shower sequence, of course, is freaky and scary. It's neat to go through it in super slow motion on a laser disc, and watch each shot, analyze it before going on. You never see the knife enter flesh, Anthony Perkins wasn't even on the set when it was shot (he was in New York in a play), the blood was really chocolate sauce, Janet Leigh simply does not blink at the end.  I couldn't do that.  If someone tells me not to blink, I can't stop blinking.

Bernard Herrmann totally rocks. And not just because of the shower sequence music.  I also really, really like the music played over the credits.  (I would have put it as the music going through my head on my start page if I could find a Real Audio file of it.)

But, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we're getting a new Psycho.  Or a remake.  Or a "retelling" or whatever Gus decides to call it.  I just don't understand why. Remakes are never as good as the original, 99% of the time, and it's not like he's putting a new twist on it, like switching genders or anything - he's using the same camera angles and storyboards! What's the point? It's too bad Sean "Puffy" Combs isn't doing the soundtrack - then the remaking/sampling/stealing/whatever experience would be complete.

And look at the actors Gus is using! Julianne Moore, Anne Heche, William H. Macy, Robert Forster! Great, cool actors that I really like! Why on earth, as Premiere Magazine put it, would they "want to take on parts already so decisively played in Hitchcock's version....for these actors to be sidetracked by such a project seems like a waste."

It seems more like a pet dream of a director than an actual movie - "let's remake Psycho! Yeah!  Film it in color! That'll work" If you can really do that and get away with it, like Gus seems to be doing, when I become a rich and famous director, I'm going to say "let's remake Titanic! Yeah! Rather than falling in love with Rose, Jack'll fall in love with Fabrizzio!  That'll work!" Or maybe I'll combine Psycho and Titanic and Jack'll stab Rose in the shower.  That would work as well.

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