The
story has been told often. Marion Crane
[Janet Leigh] embezzled $40,000 from her employer, a real estate agent. She and her boyfriend lamented they didn't
have enough money to get married. When a
customer buying a house came by the real estate office, he brought $40,000 cash
for a house. Marion saw the shot and she
took it. She ran off with the
money. She stopped on the roadside to
sleep, where she's awakened by a cop.
Nothing is wrong, but she's spooked enough to ditch her car for another
one. She ends up at the Bates Motel,
where she meets Norman Bates [Anthony Perkins].
While they have dinner he tells Marion his mother is not all there. Earlier she heard Norman's mother having
sharp words with Norman. When she
suggest the mother be institutionalized, Norman gets a little pissed. Marion went back to her room. She was going to shower, then go back home
and give the money back.
Whoa! Moment #1 - The shower
scene, of course. You don't get a look
at who is doing the stabbing, but it looks like a woman. For a stabbing there isn't much blood
involved. Marion doesn't blink - yup,
she's dead. Who kills off a main
character only 1/3 the way into a movie?
Hitchcock didn't have a problem with it.
It was in the original story, so he decided not to take any liberties
and left it the way it was originally written.
After
Norman finds dead Marion in the shower, he wraps her up, throws her, her stuff
and the money in with her, and pushed the car into a swamp.
Marion
had a sister, Lyla [Vera Miles]. She and
her boyfriend knew Marion was in some kind of trouble. They had a detective named Arbogast [Martin
Balsam] on the case. He traced Marion to
the Bates Motel. He questioned Norman
about Marion. When he mentioned that
Marion met his mother, Arbogast demanded to see her. Norman refused. When Arbogast came back to the hotel to look
for Mrs. Bates, he too is stabbed to death.
I saw that one coming, so there's no surprise there. Arbogast doesn't really fall down the stairs,
but it looks like it.
Lyla
and the boyfriend had a feeling something happened to Arbogast. They told a local sheriff that their private
eye was looking for Mrs. Bates. The
sheriff thought this was odd because Mrs. Bates had been dead for 10
years. After Lyla and Sam get to the
motel, they found Mrs. Bates in the hotel's basement. This is Whoa! Moment #2.
Whoa! Moment #2 - Mrs. Bates is
a decomposing corpse. Not only that, her
voice is coming out of Norman, who is dressed like her. That's taking the Oedipus Complex to an
extreme degree. So, Norman gets carted
off to the loonie bin.
Joe Bob Briggs
rating
- 3 dead bodies, 3 more dead bodies off-screen, shower-fu, 1 car in a swamp,
and one wigged-out hotel clerk. Oddly
enough, there are no gallons of blood.
I've seen the result of stabbings - they're pretty messy. Not so the stabbings in this movie.
What Came After - 3 sequels [II
& IV were ok], 1 remake from Gus Van Sant [don't bother - I'm still
wondering "why?"], and a very nice prequel series on A&E called
Bates Motel. I highly recommend Bates
Motel.
Very cool notes - not once did
the knife that killed Marion Crane touch her.
Such was the brilliance of Hitchcock's filmmaking. You think
you saw her get stabbed, but it didn't happen.
Janet Leigh later developed a fear of showers. Hitchcock filmed the movie in black & white with his television crew, not his movie crew. It made what little gore there was more believable.
The
late Roger Ebert put it best about Psycho
- "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."
I
can't argue with that...
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