Fascinated by this one man called Alfred Hitchcock!

I had heard a lot about this fellow called Alfred Hitchcock during my ‘Understanding Cinema’ lectures in college. So I picked out this movie named Psycho (forced by my keen interest in the subject psychology from my junior college days) .Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Janet Leigh. The screenplay by Joseph Stefanois based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The novel was loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein, who lived just 40 miles from Bloch.

As i googled about this man what i found was that in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. The acknowledged master of the thriller genre he virtually invented, Alfred Hitchcock was also a brilliant technician who deftly blended sex, suspense and humour.

The plot goes like this. Phoenix office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother. The Master's most notorious film is still terrifying after all these years, as larcenous Leigh picks the wrong place to spend a night: The Bates Motel (12 cabins, 12 vacancies and 12 showers), run by a peculiar young man and his crotchety old "mother."

What amazed me was Hitchcock's murders set-pieces are so potent, they can galvanize (and frighten) even a viewer who's seen them before! With its casual depiction of sex outside marriage, fleeting nudity, bursts of shocking violence, killing off a major character less than halfway through the movie, and focus on the psychological subtext of the murderer's personality, as well as the geometric imagery of Saul Bass's credit sequence and the percussive strings of Bernard Herrmann's score.

Some amazing and funny facts i read about this movie and sir Hitchcock:

Hitchcock bought the rights to the novel anonymously from Robert Bloch for just $9,000. He then bought up as many copies of the novel as he could to keep the ending a secret.

The blood in the shower scene is actually chocolate sauce.

The shot of Janet Leigh flushing the toilet is believed to be the first such shot in American cinema history.

The MPAA refused to pass this film because they claimed to be able to see Janet Leigh's nipple during the shower scene. Hitchcock didn't edit it out, but merely sent it back, (correctly, it seems) assuming that they either wouldn't bother to watch it, or miss it the second time.

Hitchcock insisted that audiences should only be allowed to see the film from the start so as not to ruin the surprise. This was unheard of back then as people were used to just coming in at any point during a movie.

After the film's release Hitchcock received an angry letter from the father of a girl who refused to have a bath after seeing Diabolique and now refused to shower after seeing Psycho. Hitch sent a note back simply saying "Send her to the dry cleaners".

So if you happen to watch this movie make sure you don’t refuse to shower the next day!!!!(have borrowed some more Hitchcock movies)


Read more about this great man:

http://hitchcock.tv/