She isnt quite herself today.
A kitchen knife.Skree skree skree skree!Mother, oh God blood, Mother, blood!
A wig.Skree skree skree skree!A psychiatrist.
Credit: Photofest
Everymomentin the movie is a piece of mythological Americana.
Its power of revelation never wears thin or gets old.
What it suggested is that none of us, in the end, are ever truly protected.
Lewis Jacobs/NBC
We were still a long way from Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, or chianti jokes.
Yet the most measurable and seismic effect thatPsychohad was on the horror genre itself.
BeforePsycho, horror movies were monster movies.
They were fantasies in which men battled supernatural creatures or turned into them.
In truth, there was no monster at all, no shrieking outsize mother.
There was just Norman and his rage.
Yet Hitchcocks genius is how deftly he created the illusion of a monster.
It was a Hollywood funhouse with a secret trap door.
They carry their demons around, making them real, becoming slaves to them instead of mastering them.
They become souls in demon drag.
And thats why the horror films of today are forever in his debt, and in his shadow.
But, of course, that can never happen again.
Because now we know whats coming.
The movies, it turned out, could only kill God once.
(Im sorry if that sounds lame, but this was college in 1978, folks.
Im not sure if worshipping Dave Matthews will look any less quaint in 30 years.)
There was a deeper cool connection as well.
Psycho Killer explicitly made the statement thatPsychowas rock & roll.
Hollywood filmmaking, as Alfred Hitchcock practiced it, was a deluxe affair.
Theyre there in almost every line.
And theyre part of what givesPsychoits weirdly corseted porno atmosphere.
3, and next summers reboot of the already-rebootedSuperman).
Yet movies can also be darkly artful adventures into the heart-stopping unknown.Psycho, uniquely, is both at once.
It turns order into chaos, taking 50s small-town conformity on its trippiest ride.
YetPsychowas considered overly violent and scuzzy by the Hollywood establishment.
At first, we identify with Marion.
What does the audience do then?
The truth is that it shifts around from Marion to Norman to the detective to Lila and Sam.
As that happens, the mystery at the heart of the film (whos doing the killing?)
draws our emotions like a cosmic magnet.
The mystery becomes, in effect, the main character, and we merge with that mystery.
And it may well be.
), is done on purpose.
I mean, really: Hitchcock hadnt suddenly lost his bearings.
He knew that he owed audiences of the timesomeexplanation of the sick-boy spectacle that they had just witnessed.
But he was also setting us up for the kill.
It made you taste your own fear.
It turns into a movie in which no one not even a sinner who repents will be saved.
So why does it trouble our sleep so when she goes bump in the night?
Okay, what are your memories ofPsycho?
Your theories about it?
How many times have you seen it?
Whats your favorite moment in it?
And does it still, after all these years, scare you?
