Psycho (1960)
In 1957, a rural hermit named Ed Gein was arrested on suspicion of murder. Searches of Gein’s Wisconsin farmhouse revealed the bodies of several missing women, mutilated, decapitated, and their organs preserved in various ways. Gein had taken to donning their skinned faces and other body parts over his body as he traipsed around his isolated property. The victims were older women, not dissimilar in appearance to Gein’s deceased mother. Gein had also removed dozens more female bodies from the local graveyard where his mother resided – a domineering, Bible-quoting mother Gein claimed continued talking to him beyond her death to warn him away from other women, sinful harlots leading her boy astray. Gein claimed no remembrance of his acts and was deemed criminally insane, sentenced to life in a mental hospital.
Although local newspaper accounts sanitized the grisliest details, author Robert Bloch was unnerved. Gein lived just forty miles away from his Wisconsin residence and his murders went on for years without anyone suspecting. Any one of his neighbors could be a monster behind closed doors. Using Gein for inspiration, Bloch’s next novel, entitled “Psycho”, revolved around a killer whose personality schism resulted in committing aberrant crimes while remaining oblivious. Bloch viewed his killer, Norman Bates, as a Rod Steiger type – overweight, bald, and middle-aged. Norman is a hermit corrupted by a fearsome mother who stifled his sexuality. In the novel, he converses with Mother as if alive, revealing in the end that she exists within Norman’s fractured psyche, but also physically, her corpse is preserved through Norman’s taxidermy. Norman’s wayward motel-manager occupation provided isolation from locals and fresh victims on the outskirts of the Midwestern town of Fairvale. We learn that Norman does the killings while blackout drunk when the mother he’s preserved in his mind takes over his psyche.
For movie ideas, Alfred Hitchcock and his longtime production assistant, Peggy Robertson, regularly read newspapers. Bloch’s “Psycho” was reviewed well in Anthony Boucher’s “Criminals at Large” column covering crime-fiction novels for New York Times Book Review. Hitchcock owed Paramount a picture and asked if they’d consider it. Paramount script reader William Pinckard had already written a book synopsis, proclaiming it impossible to adapt into a film due to its lurid repulsiveness. Nevertheless, Hitchcock bought Bloch’s book to read on a flight to London. With tantalizing Freudian implications, seamy voyeurism, and shocking murder in a shower, he determined to buy the rights. Bloch, without knowing Hitchcock was the interested party, sold for a meager $9,500 to”Shamley Productions”, Hitchcock’s independent production company.
Paramount was against making Psycho. They wanted a lavish, marketable endeavor for their last contracted film with Hitchcock. That contract gave him choice of screenplay, cast, editing, and marketing for any picture budgeted under $3 million. They wouldn’t fund a movie that might never see the light of movie projectors due to its taboo subject matter. Hitchcock wasn’t dismayed. Examining movie industry trends, low-budget exploitation flicks made by American International, Hammer, William Castle, and Roger Corman were financial successes. While Hitchcock’s North by Northwest earned much more, it also cost much more to make. Star power made moviemaking expensive and forced compromises that weakened the picture. Worse, actors received the most recognition for a film’s commercial success.
How much more money could a low-budget exploitation flick make if it were done well? Hitchcock jealously admired 1955’s Diabolique by French director Henri-Georges Clouzot. Hitchcock had wanted rights to the French book Diabolique was based upon, but Clouzot beat him to the punch and stole his thunder. Some critics claimed Clouzot “out-Hitchcocked” Hitchcock. Diabolique similarly themes and murder in the tub. Psycho was his chance to prove something to critics – and himself.
Paramount wouldn’t give Hitchcock what he wanted in budget but reluctantly agreed to distribute the picture if Hitchcock financed the difference. Hitchcock agreed, deferring his usual $250,000 salary in exchange for a 60% stake in the negatives. Shooting in black & white would lower the budget even more, plus it would stave off censorship of the bloodiest moments. Close associates felt Hitchcock was going too far. Shamley producer refused to lower her salary for profit points, while associate producer Herbert Coleman quit altogether.
Paramount still played hardball. They told Hitchcock there were no sound stages available at the Paramount lot, and the budget couldn’t afford one if it became available. Hitchcock turned to Universal-International’s Revue Studios, to make Psycho under the same circumstances as his “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV show. For a song, he’d employ his TV crew and use his reputation to secure additional top-line talents at lower costs, including editor George Tomasini, composer Bernard Herrmann, and conceptual artist Saul Bass. Hitchcock already knew how to save time and money through meticulous pre-production planning. Knowing exactly how he’d shoot a scene meant less chance some studio could later change the nature of his films. Every shot was storyboarded while miniatures with breakaway walls were made with doll figures that allowed Hitchcock to plan every shot and camera movement.
Hitchcock wanted Bloch to adapt his novel but MCA’s agents pushed their client James P. Cavanagh, scriptwriter for several episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, including one Hitchcock directed called “One More Mile to Go” which featured similar story elements. Cavanagh followed Hitchcock’s eight pages of notes, but the director found Cavanagh’s draft a dull extended episode of his TV show and released him for a new writer.
MCA agents next pushed for Joseph Stefano, a newcomer who excelled in characterizations. Hitch was reticent to work with an unknown and Stefano’s prior work seemed heavy-handed and humorless. He reluctantly agreed to meet Stefano only because MCA’s Lew Wasserman persisted. Stefano also had reservations, deeming Bloch’s book as pulp trash unworthy of Hitchcock. Norman Bates was an unlikeable character to spend time with and the victims weren’t relatable. Stefano told Hitch that if Mary Crane’s character were built up as we followed her seduction to crime to solve issues in her struggling relationship. audiences might be invested enough to feel the tragedy of her senseless death right when it seemed she would turn her life around. Following Mary would also solve the problem of keeping the nature of Norman and Mrs. Bates secret by keeping them entirely out of the picture until it was necessary.
Hitchcock liked Stefano’s suggestions. Stefano had a surprisingly dark sense of humor and willingness to dive headfirst into salaciousness that piqued Hitch’s interest, enough to hire him on a week-to-week basis. Hitchcock asked Stefano if he thought Norman might be more appealing if he were played by Anthony Perkins, a younger star he enjoyed in Fear Strikes Out who was affordable because he owed Paramount one more picture. Stefano approved. Perkins projected vulnerability and innocence, which made Bates’s separation from his degenerative mental state believable. Stefano, unaware of the Cavanagh script, wrote from scratch using Hitchcock’s same notes and Bloch’s book. His story was built around the perspectives of four separate people who come to the Bates Motel, Mary, followed by private detective Milton Arbogast, then Mary’s sister Lila, and Mary’s lover Sam.
Hitchcock hired a local detective as a technical adviser to help Stefano with geographical accuracy. Names and locations along Route 99 were provided in meticulous detail. Stefano visited real estate offices and observed a real-life car dealer to establish authentic portrayals. The legal department found a “Mary Crane” in the Phoenix phone book so the character’s name changed to “Marion”. Bloch wasn’t pleased – Marion was his wife’s name.
In the finished script, Marion is a real estate office clerk in a struggling relationship with Sam Loomis, a hardware store manager in Phoenix, Arizona whose financial issues have kept them apart. When Marion is tasked to deposit $40,000 in cash into the bank, she impulsively steals it, fleeing to Fairvale, California, Sam’s hometown. En route, a powerful storm forces her off the road, booking a stay at the isolated Bates Motel run by the shy but friendly Norman Bates. But Norman’s mother, who resides in a Victorian mansion overlooking the establishment, isn’t going to lose Norman to just any visiting trollop who comes along.
Stefano wrote Norman with Perkins in mind. Perkins wanted to work with Hitchcock and signed without reading the script. He expressed concern the role might typecast him; Hitchcock encouraged him to take the chance since it was unknown if the film would be successful. Hitchcock viewed dialogue and character touches as the domain of writers and actors. So long as they respected his camera placement and hit their cues, they could suggest changes. Perkins felt comfortable with Hitchcock as the shoot progressed, changing some of Norman’s dialogue and personality tics, like munching on candy corn. Perkins also changed Hitchcock’s mind on how to shoot a sequence when he and Martin Balsam rehearsed the scene where Arbogast interrogates Norman. They thought their conversation worked better if Arbogast didn’t let Norman finish a sentence before asking another question. However, Hitchcock had already storyboarded the scene with a series of close-ups of each character that wouldn’t work for a rapid-fire exchange. When Perkins suggested it, Hitchcock asked them to show him and liked it so much that he tossed his storyboards in a wastebasket.
Hitchcock’s notes included sequences not found in Bloch’s book of Marion encountering a Highway Patrol officer and purchasing a car. Hitchcock wanted a big star to play Marion, someone audiences would never suspect would come to harm. Hitchcock considered North by Northwest‘s Eva Marie Saint, but MCA pushed for their actors Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Piper Laurie, Martha Hyer, and Shirley Jones. Of those, only Turner had the star power Hitch wanted but she lacked that vulnerable quality he wanted and wasn’t believable as a plain Jane from Phoenix whose life was depressingly ordinary save for her sputtering romance.
Things clicked when Janet Leigh was proposed. The script wasn’t ready yet so Leigh read the novel. She found it ugly and frightening, but trusted that Hitchcock could make something great from it and signed on. Leigh took a lower price due to the smaller role requiring only three weeks of work (one being the shower sequence) but scored a two-picture contract with Paramount for $750,000 after the film’s success. Hitchcock’s only advice for her performance other than to hit her marks to where the camera moved was to talk as if a man’s hands were wrapped around her throat.
For Sam Loomis, Hitchcock considered Jack Lord, Rod Taylor, Robert Loggia, Cliff Robertson, Brian Keith, Leslie Nielsen, Richard Basehart, and Stuart Whitman. Hitchcock pursued Whitman until Universal pressed for the hiring of John Gavin. Hitchcock acquiesced; Gavin had a low salary and the Loomis role required little more than sex appeal. He later regretted it due to Gavin’s lack of charisma. He asked Leigh to work harder to make their trysts spark with passion. Hitchcock claims Leigh was so convincingly passionate that Gavin had an erection throughout their bed scene. Some have remarked Gavin’s disconnected performance was serendipitous, as it made Marion appear as madly in love with someone who didn’t feel as intensely, provoking further audience sympathy.
Hitchcock contemplated Caroline Kurney for Lila Crane before exercising his final contract option with Vera Miles. Miles wore a wig because her hair was clipped to her scalp for her role in Five Branded Women. Hitch joked that, sans wig, Miles looked like “the sexiest 14-year-old boy in town.”
Hitchcock stated that an unseen homicidal mother is scarier than an ancient mummy that you do see because the audience can believe what happens to the characters could happen to them. Names floated to the press of actresses considered for Mother (Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes), while a canvas chair was on the set reading “Mrs. Bates”. To throw audiences, Perkins didn’t voice Mother. Perkins suggested a male friend, Paul Jasmin, a young comic who concocted a shrewish old woman persona named Eunice Ayers to make prank phone calls. Hitchcock hired Jasmin after hearing one prank recording. Virginia Gregg and John McIntire’s wife Jeanette Nolan also recorded Mother’s dialogue, which Hitchcock blended with Jasmin’s to keep audiences unsettled.
Stefano added a psychiatrist character to explain Norman’s nature. Hitchcock initially didn’t like it, calling the lengthy monologue a “hat-grabber”, but approved when Stefano suggested it would appease censors with plausibility that reduced claims of Psycho as merely a sick, prurient fantasy. Stefano’s burgeoning relationship between Sam and Lila was excised by Hitch, who thought audiences would only care to follow these characters for unraveling the mystery. A scene shot from a high angle of Norman conversing with “mother” in the fruit cellar was cut because Hitchcock felt it diminished the final reveal.
The shower sequence begins with Norman removing a hanging painting to gaze at Marion in cabin one. Fittingly, the painting’s subject is “Susanna and the Elders”, from the biblical Book of Daniel, where men secretly watch a woman bathing before trying to coerce her into sex threatening her with false accusations of adultery. Having Leigh shoot the shower scene in a bathing suit was difficult. Hitchcock coaxed Leigh to perform nude but she refused. They compromised; Leigh approved wearing flesh-colored moleskin to cover her private areas. The steamy water often made the moleskin come off, limiting Leigh’s shower time. Professional model Marli Renfro was Leigh’s body double, used for lighting tests and to determine shower curtain and steam density to obscure nudity. Although Leigh has insisted every shot is of her, Hitchcock says that shots of Marion’s hands, shoulders, and head were Leigh’s, but the rest were Renfro’s, including a shot of Norman wrapping Marion’s corpse in a shower curtain and carrying it to her car, Censors nixed showing Renfro’s bare bottom for an overhead shot as Marion laid dead over the tub’s edge.
Although the filming experience was pleasant, after Leigh witnessed the finished film, she felt triggered with fear and vulnerability to begin only opting to shower when no other bathing options were available. When she must shower, she locked all the doors and left the bathroom door and bathroom curtain open as she stood facing the door rather than the showerhead, usually resulting in water everywhere. Shasta chocolate syrup in a newly designed squeeze bottle was used in place of blood. Ann Dore and stuntwoman Margo Epper played Mother for the shower scene; Perkins was never involved in any of the murders. Hitchcock experimented with Leigh to decide which hideous version of Mother was scariest; the winner was chosen by how loud Leigh screamed discovering them in her make-up chair.
Saul Bass designed the opening titles and storyboarded the shower sequence, Arbogast’s murder, and the discovery of Mother after discussing with Hitchcock what he wanted to see occur. A decade later, Bass shocked the film world by claiming he directed the shower sequence when Hitchcock was having second thoughts, a revelation discredited by everyone else involved. Bass retreated from this position later, claiming he’d shot and edited test footage of the scene on a spartan set with a handheld camera using the body double in place of Leigh to show Hitch how it would work. Hitchcock didn’t shoot everything Bass storyboarded, and included shots not storyboarded, further strengthening the notion that Bass was a collaborator, but not the director. The props department made a rubber torso that had tubes in it so it would gush blood when punctured but Hitchcock determined this wouldn’t look right and never used it. Contrary to Hitch saying the knife never touched Marion’s mody, there is a shot that shows contact. Renfro explains that they started with a knife pressed against her abdomen and raised up, then showed the shot in reverse in the film so it looks like the knife was poking in.
Assistant director Hilton Green says the only shots in Psycho not directed by Hitchcock are his own. Hitchcock caught the flu and allowed Green to shoot a sequence referencing Bass’s storyboards where Arbogast enters the Psycho house and goes up the stairs, with close-ups of his hands on the banister and feet as he climbed the steps. Hitchcock reshot most of it because he felt it framed Arbogast like a murderer instead of a victim, tipping off audiences that something sinister was about to occur.
The Universal set was closed. No interviews were given, publicity was tightly controlled, no official synopsis was released, and preview screenings were limited to top studio brass. Hitchcock toyed with changing the title, believing audiences would carry expectations that ruined the element of surprise. However, Paramount insisted because, with all other aspects secret, the title was the only draw for audiences most apt to enjoy it. Hitchcock removed the last few pages from his actors’ scripts. A rumor floated that he had assistants buy all copies of the Bloch book they could find. Nevertheless, spoilers did leak out before the shoot began from industry columnists regarding the early Leigh death and Norman’s taxidermy, transvestitism, and schizophrenia.
A production preview without music or sound effects received a lackluster response. While Hitchcock assured that it would improve with the score and tighter editing, he was privately apprehensive enough to consider editing it down to air as an episode of his TV show. Herrmann came up with a way to juice it up a bit – a score featuring only string instruments, rather than the post-bebop jazz riffing Hitchcock first had in mind. Herrmann even convinced Hitchcock to add music to the shower scene and other murders which were originally meant to be without score. Hitchcock uncharacteristically doubled Herrmann’s salary as a reward. After applying the music, and titles, and tightening up the pacing by eliminating longer conversations. The more polished preview met with astonishing success, though few knew if such a graphic picture would meet with success or failure.
Censors objected to suggestive dialogue, incest insinuations between Norman and Mother, a flushing toilet, and the word, “transvestite’. Censors were contentious about the risque opening sequence between Marion and Sam in a hotel room as well as the shower scene. Hitchcock said he’d redo the opening if they left the shower scene intact and were on hand to approve reshoots. They agreed but when they never showed, Hitchcock got to keep both sequences as they were.
Hitchcock hosts the theatrical trailer, a tour of the Bates Motel and Bates house, written by James Allardice, who wrote Hitchcock’s introductions to his TV show. No one was admitted into theaters after the film started. This was not purely a publicity stunt; Hitchcock worried late-arriving audiences would be confused if they didn’t see Janet Leigh. Theater owners (who were given a package that included lobby clocks, cardboard standees, and a manual detailing how to best handle the situation) weren’t happy at first because there were half-empty showings but they filled up once the public caught on and began arriving extra early for their desired showtime. It became an event, and audience interest was piqued to find out what the hubbub was about.
Hitchcock, using his celebrity status, promoted the film himself internationally. It still became a huge success, taking in about $10 million in the US off of a budget under $900,000, and another $6 million overseas – the average ticket price was seventy cents. Only Ben-Hur made more money that year, from a budget sixteen times higher. Hitchcock exchanged his Psycho and TV series rights to MCA/Universal in 1962 for stock shares, making him a multi-millionaire.
Psycho represents Alfred Hitchcock’s final masterpiece and one of the most influential films in cinematic history, henceforth changing the horror genre from supernatural yarns or creature features to the battle with the evil forces that potentially that lie within us all. Psycho has filtered into the mainstream subconscious of popular culture, and one can’t overstate how significant it was for its era. Psycho represented a huge gamble. Hitchcock used much of his own money to make a low-budget, black-and-white film that wasn’t certain would see the light of day. The film represented something unique at the time of its release, featuring unmarried people engaged in a sexual affair, garbed in frilly undergarments, peek-a-boo voyeurism, schizophrenia (including transvestitism), suggestions of nudity, horrific scenes of violence (mostly unseen), and a psychopathic main character. Psycho broke many Hollywood taboos in terms of what can be shown or said in a mainstream Hollywood release.
Psycho is more than influential, important, and groundbreaking — it’s extremely entertaining. Despite multitudinous more extreme copycats, Psycho remains brilliantly constructed and prodigiously edited, with stellar, fluid direction, fine performances, a very witty, dark-comedy undercurrent, and nuanced characterizations. The Bernard Herrman score, with its use of mostly strings (a cost-saving measure), is legendary (especially the shower scene, symbolizing Marion coming clean), as are the frenetic Saul Bass opening titles. Hitchcock originally planned for the shower scenes to not have music, but Herrmann felt the opposite would work better.
Psycho opened to mixed reviews. Critics, especially in Great Britain, derided it as gimmicky and slow to build. Hitchcock felt critics were miffed that they didn’t get preview screenings. Critics came around after its massive public success, earning four Oscar nominations: Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Leigh), Best Cinematography (B/W), and Best Art/Set Direction (B/W).
Like all masterpieces, it’s not without all faults. The expository psychiatrist scene explains Norman’s maladies and motivations, but Simon Oakland’s performance is hammy and emotive. Luckily, it bounces back with a brilliant final shot of Norman that ends the movie with just as much menace, fright, and humor as he’d been masterfully doling out all along.
Psycho is courageous filmmaking of the highest order. Its shock value may diminish, but it still entertains through a fascinating premise, interesting characters, and the showmanship of a director with a deftness for understanding the psyche of the audience. In the world of Psycho, everyone has something to hide. Mirrors frame every major character, exposing a split personality, a second side not shown to the public. Except for Norman, who avoids mirrors, no longer able to see what he’s become. Hitch puts up a mirror to us all, implicating us in carrying the guilt in the most heinous of film’s events, revealing something unnervingly primal about our overwhelming internal attraction, counter to our moral repulsion, to twisted tales of seamy sex and shockingly graphic violence.
- A minute-longer European version shows more skin and violence than the American theatrical release.
Qwipster’s rating: A+
MPAA Rated: R for violence, brief nudity, and subject matter
Length: 109 min.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire
Small role: Pat Hitchcock, Ted Knight, Alfred Hitchcock
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Joseph Stefano (based on the novel by Robert Bloch)