| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Just initiated my kids into the weird world of this movie (I was probably younger than them when I saw it). When Arbogast got to the top of the stairs and - well, you know... Billy yelled out 'Fucking hell!' - and he never swears! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
They liked it very much, btw. | ||
| Adriana (Adriana) Username: Adriana Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.230.239.233 |
 I can't wait to have kids. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Yeah, Psycho blew me away when I was a youngster. I envy them the experience. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.198.99 |
I wonder if that hospital scene in Exorcist 3 was influenced by the stairway scene in Psycho? They both shock in a similar sort of way. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
A - it's like watching your life play out, only tailored to your tastes. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I only saw this film a year or two back I was surprised how modern it felt, it was the psychological build up rather than the overt violence that did it. What's the remake like. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.108.37.61 |
The original. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
The sad thing is, the print of the film was awful. They'd cropped it to make it widescreen. Anyone know where the best copy is, what cover to look for? The print was fuzzy and the intimacy was shot. The movie is possibly Hitch's best in retrospect, and a far richer film than I remembered. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.166.218 |
I have a recent DVD that seems OK – came out in 2005. There's a great bonus item: the American Film Institute honouring Hitchcock with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He was old and shaky – while speaking, he stood up twice and had to sit down again after a few seconds – but he gave a wonderful speech, including a bit of silent comedy that broke me up completely. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Hmm.... that's the widescreen one, the one I have. Why do they do this? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.83.68 |
I presume because more and more folk have widescreen tv's, and they like the entirety of the screen to be filled - unfortunately this can lead to cropping of very wide films too, so that films with ratios similar to 2.35:1 get the edges cut off so the film fits 16:9 TVs 'perfectly'. I guess "widescreen" has marketing benefits too. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.103 |
"he gave a wonderful speech, including a bit of silent comedy that broke me up completely" Wasn't that when he pretended not to recognize Sean Connery? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Here's a comparison - always try the Rewind site! http://www.dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=363 I'm not clear on the point about widescreen, though. Wasn't the film made that way? It would surely have been projected in that ratio in 1960 and subsequently. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.83.68 |
It probably was, but there were still films I recall seeing at the cinema in the late 'sixties/early 'seventies that I vividly recall being shown in Academy ratio, unless my failing memory is playing tricks (again). | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.83.68 |
Plus, films were (and maybe still are) often shot in 4:3 but matted for projection - maybe this was the case with PSYCHO. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Call me a heretic, but I simply can't understand why many people regard Psycho as Hitch's best film. I'd argue that Vertigo is far superior. Then again, I don't think I ever got to see Psycho properly. That is, I knew the story before seeing the film. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Psycho is an absolute revelation if you see it "cold", Gary - I'll never forget my first viewing as a youngster. I honestly couldn't believe what I'd seen, and almost wore out my VHS copy (taped from TV). However I prefer Vertigo and The Birds. The former because I think it's a slightly better film all-round; the latter for purely personal reasons of taste and because it scared the shit out of my when I first saw it (before I saw Psycho). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
I'm responding really on the level of how much they've lingered in my memory, and Vertigo burns there, whereas Psycho doesn't so much. I think you're probably right in saying that without a 'cold' viewing of Psycho, my feelings about the film are affected. That first viewing is oh so crucial, I guess, even with regard to something as multi-layered and repeatedly rewarding as a Hitch film. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Yep. We've also discussed bet of seeing these things at a young age, haven't we? I saw Vertigo, the Birds, Psycho and Frenzy when I was very young, and they all scarred me to different degrees. I became obsessed with vertigo; another one where I wore out the VHS. :-) It's such a subervise film. Awesome stuff, really.} | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Psycho is perhaps damaged by the juxtapositional overlap of lesser types of slasher film, which the sequels pandered to. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Yes, the age at which that first viewing occurs is also crucial. Although, I did see The Birds as a kid, but it was far more powerful when I watched it a few years ago. Maybe because in the latter case I was taking the attack at more than a literal level. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Psycho is one of those films which now seems unoriginal on the basis that it's being ripped off too much. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Here's a great slasher film: Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. Read it and tell me it isn't about a supernatural serial killer. It's true! Weird experience watching it the other week. It was like Friday the 13th with good dialogue. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Jason in a toga? | ||
| Adriana (Adriana) Username: Adriana Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.230.239.233 |
I saw most of them as a kid, and the weird thing is (even though most of them aren't) I remember all of Hitchcock's films in Black and White. Donald is always shaking his head at me about that. Some of his films so brilliantly use colour, but in my mind they're always black and white... Actually, we watched VERTIGO again just last night! It's got to be one of my all time favorites, and not just because Jimmy Stewart is one of the most brilliant performers that ever lived. The whole thing is just so finely crafted. The story, the pacing, the visuals - dear god the composition and long takes! It really is cinema (and Hitchcock) at its finest. And in colour too. ha ha I often wish I could have been alive in the 50s and 60s to have seen these films at their birth. It really was the high time for Cinema in my books... Sigh. Oh Time Lord, where are you when I need you??? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.83.68 |
I first saw VERTIGO at the cinema, in the early 'eighties. Five of Hitchcock's films - VERTIGO, REAR WINDOW, ROPE, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY and the remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH - were re-released into the cinema after many years of being unavailable, and I saw all five for the first time in London's West End. Although his other films (unfairly, in my opinion) overshadow HARRY, it's a real favourite of mine and, I think I read, Hitchcock's too. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
I saw Psycho at the cinema in the 80s and I'm sure it was 'square'. Even my old video recording off the telly was better looking than this! I like Vertigo but Psycho felt gutsier. And honestly, they are two different, brilliant works in their own way. Why give one more marks than the other? (oops - I did!) | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Hitch's favourite was mine, too; Shadow of a Doubt. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
anyone have fond memories of black and white tellies? To me they were colour, and when colour finally came along it was almost too intense, and deeply amazing; like seeing colour itself for the first time. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Vertigo has too many bum notes, I think, great as it is (stay calm!), while Psycho has none at all. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Tony, Can you be more specific? I think Vertigo is an almost flawless film. Not a bum note in evidence. I've always felt that the ending of Psycho (Bates' internal monologue), though, is a huge bum note: an explanotary note for the idiots in the audeince. It almost spoils the film for me. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.240.32 |
Black n'white tellys? Yup. I do believe we may have been one of the last families in my town to get a colour telly -about 1976. One of the first things I saw in colour was Space 1999...Can you imagine how great that was! gcw | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Vertigo had the Airplane! bit at the end, with the nun. I've mentioned it before and no-one was happy but there were titters in the audience when I saw it - and I was one of them. Maybe that was the sole bum note. You see watching Psycho again for what must have been the first time in decades I realised I needed that bit at the end just to calm me down. To have ended abruptly would have been too blunt. Then, at the end, he gets you again... | ||
| Adriana (Adriana) Username: Adriana Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.230.239.233 |
I used to have a tiny black and white that I salvaged from my basement and brought to my bedroom when I was around 13. I was sick quite a bit, and would lay in bed and watch it - the whole experience was surreal- and otherworldly almost in my memory. The shows. The times I'd turn it on (either in the middle of the night, or on afternoons when I should have been in school.) It only got 2.5 channels, and I swear that .5 channel was something designed for me... ;) | ||
| Adriana (Adriana) Username: Adriana Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.230.239.233 |
I agree about PSYCHO and VERTIGO -- apples and oranges. And both brilliant. I'm really in the mood to re-watch REAR WINDOW now - another fav. | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
VERTIGO, and especially Herrmann's *score, haunts me in a way that other Hitch films don't. I was pretty young when I first saw it (cable TV) and the scene where Novak points to the tree rings and says, "Here I was born, and here I died" really frightened me. Then it became clear that she was mad, which was even more disturbing. Then deceitful. And then... well, you know how it ends. It's the psychological torment that affects me - the way the characters torture and destroy each other. I later got to see it on the big screen in 70mm - stunning! *I hear an echo of it in the "Knights' Dance" in Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
>>>I've always felt that the ending of Psycho (Bates' internal monologue), though, is a huge bum note: an explanotary note for the idiots in the audeince. It almost spoils the film for me. I still insist that this is a joke on Hitch's part. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.18 |
But look at Perkins' expression! It works for me. | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
Absolutely works for me too. That smile gives me chills. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
My son Bill was scared by that expression. He actually covered is eyes. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
There were titters at the nun in Vertigo the first time I saw the film (in black and white 16mm in 1967!) but none from me. Among the films I've seen tittered or jeered at by audiences are L'Eclisse, Gertrud, Skammen (the opening scene in each case), Yi Yi, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, A Passion and - yes - Psycho (the final scene). | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
I'm not saying it deserved titters, or that I found what was happening funny btw, just that it rose up out of me, a gut thing. I did feel guilty, if that means anything.  And that last shot of Psycho is funny in an uneasy kind of way. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Actually, it was the final scene of Psycho, not the final shot. There certainly are gags in the film (most of them, as Joel points out, from Bob's original novel). Interestingly - I may have said this here before - we went to see Death Line when it opened in Liverpool We were expecting a hilariously bad film on the basis of the reviews. What we got was remarkably powerful, we thought, and more to the point, a packed Liverpool audience didn't laugh at it (except for the final cry of "Mind the doors", which does seem to be a black joke, and some of the byplay with Pleasence). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.156.18 |
Actually I like the closing scene – felt it was an attempt to restore mystery after the prosaic 'explanation'. It suggests – but no more than suggests – that Norman is actually possessed by the ghost of his mother, thus closing on a note of ambiguity and strangeness. I've long since stopped going to see horror films in mainstream cinemas except at less well-attended times, because the whole film will just be dominated by audience playing up: screams followed by conspicuous laughter, cheering of the hero/heroine, grunts of approval as the 'monster' is destroyed, etc. And if the film isn't a rollercoaster of gory 'action', they talk loudly all the way through it and go out for popcorn every ten minutes  . These problems have eased a little with the growing prevalence of big plasma-screen sets that allow people to recreate the cinema experience at home. Even so, remarkably few cinema-goers seem aware that how they behave in the cinema might be different from how they behave when watching TV. And don't get me started on people who talk during gigs. There were no witnesses to those so-called garotting incidents anyway, and what if I do take a curtain cord with me when I go to hear live music? You never know when they'll need some help with the curtains. I'm thoughtful like that. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.83.68 |
And don't get me started on people who talk during gigs. Now that we hardly go to the cinema, this is the bane of my life. Tossers. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Mind you, Joel, some audiences have behaved that way ever since I started going frequently to the cinema (in 1960). Screams followed by several minutes of laughter - Horrors of the Black Museum and Psycho both got those. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.197.59 |
Yes, DEATH LINE is terrific: grimly comic (in just the right way) and scary at the same time. I did wonder if it had been influenced by Robert Barbour Johnson's 1930s story 'Down Below' (about the New York subway system), but it seems unlikely that there was a connection. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.18 |
Or people who don't switch off their mobile phones. I could KILL them. Nowadays most house sound systems are loud enough to drown out conversation, but the jolly electronic music from mobile phones cuts through everything. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.203.130.180 |
I still think on the whole the cinemagoing experience is better now than it was 30 years ago. You can read all about my youthful experiences in darkened auditoria in the introduction to Coffin Nails (go on, I bet you can't wait to now), but going to a small town cinema as a boy was bloody awful. I remember trying to watch Don Sharp's remake of 'The 39 Steps' through a haze of cigarette smoke so thick it was as if the film had been shot in sepia. The film would break and no-one would know how to fix it. My mum took me to see 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad' and the film never turned up as it had been 'lost on the way back from Newport'. And as for the toilets... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.197.59 |
I never found a cinema as dodgy as the one described in Tennessee Williams' story 'The Mysteries of the Joy Rio'. Despite years of trying. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.18 |
Or the one in "The Show Goes On". | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.183.77 |
I would stay out of the old theatre in The Grin of the Dark as well... | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
I'm fairly certain that the internal monolog at the end of Psycho is lifted word for word from the end of the book. They both finish with the line "She wouldn't hurt a fly" at any rate. I've not sat there with the book to check the accurarcy of the rest of it. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.230.18 |
I recall a 'psychiatric' explanation by someone at the end of the book - Norman becoming Norma - but I can't be sure about the "wouldn't hurt a fly" line. It's probably close to 35 years since I read the book . . . | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
I'm definite about it, I have the book at home. That's the last line of both versions of the story. (Well my copy of it anyway) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
>>>Actually I like the closing scene – felt it was an attempt to restore mystery after the prosaic 'explanation'. It suggests – but no more than suggests – that Norman is actually possessed by the ghost of his mother, thus closing on a note of ambiguity and strangeness. I like that interpretation. It can be seen as Hitch sticking two subliminal fingers up at those members of the public who want to be 'reassured'. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
It's the psychiatrist's and then Bates' explanitory speeches I'm referring to - I like the grinning skull. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
Psycho was on Turner Classic Movies a few weeks back, and I sat and watched it with Tim, who loves old films. He knew nothing about it, and it was amazing to watch the film with someone for whom it was completely fresh. He thought it was excellent. He also really enjoyed Hitch's The Lady Vanishes, which we watched on the Criterion DVD, pausing it when Hitchcock makes his cameo in the train station at the end. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.108.4.117 |
No-one got my 'connection' joke. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
It's not always easy to follow your train of thought. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.96.124 |
Right. Just found out I might have had a fluke when I had my old Psycho video cassette in the early eighties. Apparently Hitch shot the film with his tv crew then matted the film himself for the cinema; so the image was cropped, but by HIM! I reckon my video was unmatted, square, and that now widescreen will be all I'll ever see, which saddens me as that old format was so initmate, felt right, and the images was very sharp for tape. Shit. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
The remake was on TV recently. I was puzzled by this, couldn't imagine why it should be done at all. I don't mind the closing monologue at the end and the grinning skull is fantastic in the original. Regarding old movie theatres- In Malta, the 800 year old capital Valletta (which is built in now corroded sandstone), had an amazing ancient theatre called the Alambra I believe. In any case, the frame around the screen had faces carved into the wood, and electric bulbs for eyes, and the walls were handpainted with strange landscapes. A pair of swinging doors to one side had tinted windows, with red light seeping into the theatre. It was of course rumoured to be haunted, and bulbs fell off the frame and shattered on two occasions when I was there. It was closed in the nineties I believe, but remains the most amazing movie theatre I have ever been to. I watched loads of films there when I was a kid, and I remember a screening of Nightbreed in that space very fondly. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.79.141 |
Reminds me of what my little Penistone paramount could be. http://www.penistoneparamount.co.uk/index.asp Cute little place. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
Thats quite a name for a movie theatre! | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
Going back to Psycho, I believe an American avant guarde filmmaker actually had the whole film threaded on a massive system of spools and cogs etc, so that the whole strip of film looped constantly until the film started to disintegrate from wear. The installation was supposedly massive, as all the reels of the film had to be edited together into one long section of film that constantly played on this massive system. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
Another Swiss filmmaker digitally removed both actors from the bathroom stabbing scene. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
That would make a good first line to a surreaLiszt book. |