I’m going to try to recommend a new movie each day until Halloween.
Psycho is the Citizen Kane of horror dramas. That’s true, as it was revolutionary and broke new ground in many ways, paving the way for the films that followed. It’s also true in that it has a huge spoiler that is spoiled for the general public even though they haven’t watched the film. If you are lucky enough to watch Psycho knowing nothing about it, you are supremely lucky.
For this reason, if your kids haven’t seen Psycho, show it to them. That may sound an odd thing to say about a movie that was once considered one of the most gruesome and terrifying movies, but the censors in 1960 were a timid bunch who saw nudity and gore that wasn’t there. The notorious first onscreen murder in Psycho (I won’t even call it “the ______ scene” as many do, because the whole point is to not spoil it) is a masterpiece of suggestion, sound effects and image manipulation. The rapid cuts at just the exact frame allow the human mind to complete sequences that are not there. Horrified viewers insisted they saw gory moments of weapons penetrating flesh, but you could slowly go through the sequence frame by frame and not find any actual offending elements. The 2012 movie Hitchcock focuses on the making of Psycho and the difficulty of the editing and getting it past the censors.
The point is: your kids see more gruesome stuff in PG-13 movies. If they don’t know what Psycho is or they’ve never heard of “the HMM-hmm scene”, show it to them before they see “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” and it’s spoiled for them.
Alfred Hitchcock wanted to keep spoilers from ruining it for people so badly that he bought up copies of the novel. The movie contained a plea to not tell your friends the big surprise. And yet, now spoilers from Psycho are throughout the culture. For one thing, they keep making movies and TV series to mine Norman Bates and the Bates Motel. And then you have that one scene referenced everywhere. Long before I managed to see Psycho, I had it spoiled for me by, of all things, an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The spoilers were so bad that the lamentable remake featured the spoiler on the poster.
I don’t feel I need to tell you the plot. You’ve either seen this movie and know it by heart, or you haven’t seen it and I’d be spoiling it. The movie holds up very well, despite it having some old film-making methods in it, such as echoey soap opera voices going through Marion Crane’s head as she drives.
The most dated element is at the ending, where a psychologist over-explains what has happened. That goes on a while. But it is redeemed by that final shot. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly!”
