Psycho: Hitchcock’s low-budget gamble that redefined horror

Alfred Hitchcock earned his title “The Master of Suspense.” 

With his cam­era angles, the use of the music score to help build the ten­sion and his twist­ed plots, he cre­at­ed a long list of mas­ter­pieces that are still enjoyed to this day. His most suc­cess­ful film at the box office, one that gen­er­at­ed three sequels and a tele­vi­sion series is the sub­ject of today’s Reel Classic — Psycho, star­ring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh.

Known for his twists and turns in his sto­ry lines, the mak­ing of this film was a bit of a twist and turn for Hitchcock him­self. He had recent­ly com­plet­ed two suc­cess­ful films (North By Northwest and Vertigo) uti­liz­ing vivid col­or and very famous actors/actresses (James Stewart, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason and Kim Novak). He also uti­lized gor­geous scenery to com­ple­ment his efforts. However, with Psycho he chose to film it on a very tight bud­get (about $807,000) and uti­lized the stu­dio and crew from his tele­vi­sion show. Though Perkins and Leigh were suc­cess­ful, they did not have the same lev­el of recog­ni­tion or pop­u­lar­i­ty. Paramount Pictures was con­vinced the film would not do well com­mer­cial­ly but Hitchcock got them to agree to go for­ward with the project when he offered to give up his salary of $250,000 and instead take 60% of the film’s gross prof­its. The stu­dio agreed to do so.

The sto­ry begins when we meet Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who is a sec­re­tary in a real estate office in Phoenix, Arizona. Her boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), is at his home­town of Fairvale, California. He has recent­ly indi­cat­ed that his debts pre­vent them from mar­ry­ing and she makes the deci­sion to steal $40,000 from the busi­ness and dri­ve to Fairvale. A rain­storm forces her to stop for the night and she finds a motel that clear­ly has seen its bet­ter days. The name of this estab­lish­ment is Bates Motel and it is man­aged by Norman Bates. Marion learns that high­way recon­struc­tion has divert­ed traf­fic away from this road and the motel does lit­tle busi­ness now. She also learns that Norman lives in the creepy look­ing house up on the hill — shar­ing it with his moth­er. Norman, appear­ing to be a kind young man, offers to pro­vide sup­per for her in the motel office. When he goes to the house to get the food Marion over­hears him argu­ing with his moth­er over him shar­ing sup­per with her.

Over sup­per Norman talks about his hob­by as a taxi­der­mist and his efforts are dis­played through­out the office. He also shares with Marion how his moth­er is ill and he cares for her. He talks of how peo­ple can find them­selves in a “pri­vate trap” from which they can­not escape. Marion sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Norman con­sid­er­ing putting his moth­er in an insti­tu­tion and he becomes very agi­tat­ed stat­ing she isn’t a mani­ac, she just goes “a lit­tle mad some­times.” The con­ver­sa­tion caus­es Marion to reflect on what she has done and her own “pri­vate trap” decides to return the mon­ey to Phoenix the next morn­ing. However, things do not go as planned for Marion.

For those of you who have seen this film I do not need to go any fur­ther with the sto­ry, and for those of you who may not have seen this film before I don’t want to go any fur­ther as that would spoil the impact of the movie. I will say that oth­er char­ac­ters are intro­duced that include Martin Balsam as a pri­vate detec­tive, Vera Miles as Marion’s sis­ter Lila, and John McIntire as Deputy Sheriff Chambers. Hitchcock’s daugh­ter, Pat Hitchcock, also has a role in the film. Lila and Sam team up and hire the detec­tive to help locate Marion. Their efforts will also lead them to the Bates Motel.

In stop­ping here I am also abid­ing by Alfred Hitchcock’s insis­tence that the sto­ry not be spoiled. He had the­ater own­ers sign a doc­u­ment that would not allow any­one to be seat­ed after the start of the film. In 1960 that was unheard of as patrons could come in at any time dur­ing the show­ing of a film. As you can see on the poster above, Hitchcock was adamant that no one would be allowed to enter after the film began. Psycho was adapt­ed from a nov­el of the same name writ­ten by Robert Bloch. After pur­chas­ing the rights to the nov­el Hitchcock report­ed­ly bought every copy he could lay his hands on to pre­vent peo­ple from learn­ing the end­ing of the story.

Hitchcock was a mas­ter at uti­liz­ing cam­era angles and music to inten­si­fy the sus­pense in his films. The music from Psycho is espe­cial­ly mem­o­rable. Hitchcock employed com­pos­er Bernard Herrmann to write the score for the film. Herrmann uti­lized strings only and his efforts are espe­cial­ly note­wor­thy with the screech­ing strings dur­ing the show­er scene. Hitchcock was so pleased with the score that he dou­bled the salary of Herrmann. He was lat­er quot­ed say­ing “Thirty-three per­cent of the effect of Psycho was due to the music.” 

Interestingly, ini­tial­ly he was insis­tent that there be no music in the show­er scene. However, his wife, Alma Reville, con­vinced him to add the music and it is now per­ceived to be inte­gral to the scene. The music from Psycho is ranked #4 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years of Film Scores.

As men­tioned above, the stu­dio (Paramount Pictures) was not expect­ing much from this film and Hitchcock filmed it on a very low bud­get. It turned out to be the high­est-gross­ing film of his career, and the cut from the film’s gross earn­ings earned him over $15 mil­lion. It was also the sec­ond-high­est-gross­ing film of the year with Spartacus lead­ing the way.

Though a major hit with movie-goers, crit­ics were not all as com­pli­men­ta­ry. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: “There is not an abun­dance of sub­tle­ty or the late­ly famil­iar Hitchcock bent toward sig­nif­i­cant and col­or­ful scenery in this obvi­ous­ly low-bud­get job.” Interestingly, Crowther lat­er changed his opin­ion and includ­ed Psycho in his Top Ten list of films for 1960, describ­ing it as a “bold psy­cho­log­i­cal mys­tery pic­ture. . . It rep­re­sent­ed expert and sophis­ti­cat­ed com­mand of emo­tion­al devel­op­ment with cin­e­mat­ic techniques.”

The crit­ic for The Washington Daily News urged the read­ers to “go see it if you like movies that shake you up. But if you’re afraid to go in your house after­wards and keep watch­ing behind you the rest of the night, don’t blame me.”

In a review writ­ten in 1998, Roger Ebert wrote of Psycho’s ongo­ing appeal: “What makes Psycho immor­tal, when so many films are already half-for­got­ten as we leave the the­ater, is that it con­nects direct­ly with our fears: Our fears that we might impul­sive­ly com­mit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becom­ing the vic­tim of a mad­man, and of course our fears of dis­ap­point­ing our mothers.”

The crit­ics’ con­sen­sus at Rotten Tomatoes states “Infamous for its show­er scene, but immor­tal for its con­tri­bu­tion to the hor­ror genre, because Psycho was filmed with tact, grace, and art. Hitchcock didn’t just cre­ate a mod­ern hor­ror, he val­i­dat­ed it.”

Psycho earned four nom­i­na­tions for an Academy Award: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Janet Leigh), Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock), Best Cinematography, Black & White and Best Art Direction Black & White. Interestingly the famous music score did not receive a nom­i­na­tion. Another inter­est­ing note here is that this film was Hitchcock’s fifth nom­i­na­tion for an Oscar for Best Director, but he nev­er won one.

More recent acco­lades have the film’s inclu­sion in Steven Schneider’s “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” and Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” list. The American Film Institute ranks it as #14 on its list of Greatest Movies of All Time. In 1992 it was select­ed for preser­va­tion at The National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Psycho gen­er­at­ed mul­ti­ple sequels includ­ing Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986), and a pre­quel made for tele­vi­sion called Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990). Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates in all three films. In 2013 a TV series titled Bates Motel aired, fea­tur­ing Norman Bates as a teenag­er and his moth­er run­ning the motel. It ran for five seasons.

Bates Motel is still a gath­er­ing place. The house and motel are on Universal Studios’ lot and are a pop­u­lar stop for tourists on the vis­i­tor’s tram.

The Internet Movie Database rates Psycho at 8.5 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 97% and an Audience Score of 95%. Searching my Roku device, I found the movie avail­able for free on Movie Vault and Film Noir. It was also avail­able with a sub­scrip­tion on Netflix and Peacock. There is a copy of the DVD on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library.

I have includ­ed a trail­er below, but for those of you who may be inter­est­ed, there is a six minute trail­er avail­able on YouTube that has Alfred Hitchcock pro­vid­ing a tour of the Bates Motel and the Bates home. It is inter­est­ing in that he begins to describe cer­tain events then, hes­i­tat­ing, refus­es to go on — again pro­tect­ing the sto­ry line. He does so mul­ti­ple times. It is pure Alfred Hitchcock.

As the nights grow longer and cool­er, and Halloween creeps its way toward us, Psycho would make an excel­lent com­pan­ion to while away your evening hours. A word of warn­ing how­ev­er. When you make your way to the show­er, lock the door!