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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - June 16th

"PSYCHO" released in 1960

Who can possibly forget Bernard Herrmann's amplified screeching/ear-piercing score during the now infamous scene with the mysterious "Mother" figure slowly entering the motel room bathroom while the not-so-innocent Marion Crane is showering, and proceeds to stab her to death - and we're only in the first twenty minutes of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Psycho!

Desperate to help her deeply in debt lover, Marion Crane (played to perfection by Janet Leigh) spontaneously steals $40,000 from her boss's property company, and flees town. On her way to Fairvale, Crane encounters a number of disturbing characters - a gruff yokel car salesman, "California" Charlie (John Anderson) and a stern suspicious Highway Patrolman (Mort Mills) - but none as disturbing as she is about to meet. Caught in a rain storm, Marion pulls into the Bates Motel for the night, befriending the odd but like-able owner, Norman Bates (a career performance for Anthony Perkins). Spending the evening chatting and having supper, Marion learns of the complex relationship Norman has with his Mother - a clinging, demanding woman, who takes every opportunity to belittle her son. Reaching a catharsis of sorts, Marion retires to her room for the night and has her fatal encounter with Mother in the shower. Norman, as the dutiful son, covers up his Mother's murderous crime from Marion's searching sister, Lila (Vera Miles), boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin) and the dogged attention of private detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam); his investigation not ending so well as he also meets Mother. Desperate, Lila and Sam decide to stay at the Bates Motel themselves to solve the mystery, but discover a shocking, twisted truth they never expected!

Adapted in part from the 1959 bestselling book by Robert Bloch - who in turn was inspired by the real life murderer and body snatcher Ed Gein, who had been arrested two years before - Psycho was recommended to Hitchcock as a possible film idea by his longtime assistant Peggy Robertson (Robertson being one of a trusted few people who chose prospective material) after she read Anthony Boucher's positive review of the novel. Hitchcock acquired rights to the novel for $9,500 and personally financed Psycho through his own Shamley Productions, if Paramount would merely distribute; and waived his usual $250,000 fee for 60% of the profits. With financing in place, Hitchcock commissioned the first draft of the screenplay from James P. Cavanagh (a veteran of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series) before meeting the inexperienced Joseph Stefano; Hitchcock, liking him, hired Stefano to rewrite the script - Hitchcock may have also been influenced to hire Stefano as he was, at the time, in therapy dealing with issues with his own mother.

Partly inspired by the low budget B-movies of William Castle, Hitchcock chose to film Psycho in black and white, musing that "if so many bad, inexpensively made, black and white B movies did so well at the box office, what would happen if a really good, inexpensively made, black and white movie was made". To keep the budget under $1,000,000 (almost US$8 million today) Hitchcock took most of his crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including the cinematographer (John L. Russell), set designer , script supervisor, and first assistant director (Hilton A. Green). He also cast Leigh for a quarter of her usual fee (paying only $25,000) and  Anthony Perkins agreed to $40,000; despite their both being proven box-office stars in their own right.

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Filming began at Revue Studios (located on Universal's backlot, where the infamous Bates house on the hill still stands to this day!) on November 11, 1959. Throughout filming, Hitchcock created and hid various versions of the "Mother corpse" prop in Leigh's dressing room closet. Leigh took the joke well, and she wondered whether it was done to keep her on edge and thus more in character or to judge which corpse would be scarier for the audience. This hopefully served her well when shooting the iconic shower scene! Involving six-days of filming and 77 different camera angles, the scene runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts. 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. Leigh later stated in Roger Ebert's interview for the book,  Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, that she was in the scene the entire time and Hitchcock used a stand-in (identified as Marli Renfro) only for the sequence in which Norman wraps Marion's body in a shower curtain and places it in the trunk of her car. And of course there was Hermann's score, the effect being achieved only with violins in a "screeching, stabbing sound-motion of extraordinary viciousness."

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As the cast and crew had to a "loyalty oath" not to reveal the films secrets during filming, Hitchcock also did most of the promotion himself to preserve the films finale. Even critics were not given private screenings but rather had to see the film with the general public, which, despite possibly affecting their reviews, certainly preserved the secret. Perhaps as an homage to William Castle, Hitchcock had a "no late admission" policy for the film, which was unusual for the time, with Hitchcock concluding that if people entered the theater late and never saw the star actress Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated. Theatre owner's, who first opposed the idea, began to love seeing the long lines of people waiting to see the film.

Initial reviews for Psycho were certainly mixed.  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."  Other negative reviews stated, "a blot on an honorable career", "plainly a gimmick movie", and "merely one of those television shows padded out to two hours." British critic C. A. Lejeune was so offended that she walked out before the end! In sheer contrast, the public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of theaters as people had to wait for the next showing. This, along with box office numbers (US$50 million by the end of it's first theatrical run), led to a reconsideration of the film by critics, and it eventually received a very large amount of praise - Psycho was, by a large margin, the most profitable film of Hitchcock's career both in gross and critical acclaim.

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Ranked among the greatest films of all time, it set a new level of acceptability for violence, deviant behavior and sexuality in American films, and is widely considered to be the earliest example of the slasher film genre. In 1992, the US Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry and has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries. When the rights to Psycho were bought by Universal, and prompted by Richard Bloch also writing a sequel with the novel Psycho II, the studio began production on Psycho II (1983). The sequel had original stars Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles return, joined by newcomer Meg Tilly (originally producer's had wanted Jamie Lee Curtis - daughter of Janet Leigh - to star, but Curtis wanted to distance herself from her "scream queen" reputation and starred in Trading Places instead). Psycho III quickly followed in 1986, a spin-off Bates Motel in 1987 (the only film not to feature the Norman Bates character), and the made-for-TV film Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990) with Olivia Hussey as the younger Norma Bates and Henry Thomas as Norman.

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Eight years later, Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (1998) starred Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Robert Forster and Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. This version of Psycho received negative reviews; it was awarded two Golden Raspberry Awards, for Worst Remake or Sequel and Worst Director for Gus Van Sant, while Anne Heche was nominated for Worst Actress. On January 23, 2012, A&E announced that a television series called Bates Motel, the series taking place before the events of the original film and chronicle Norman Bates' early childhood with his mother and how she drove him to become a killer. Set in the modern day and stars Freddie Highmore as young Norman Bates and Vera Farmiga as Mrs. Bates, Bates Motel has aired for four successful seasons, with a fifth season ordered for 2017.

It just goes to show, audiences just can't get enough of Norman Bates and his "boys best friend" Mother!

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