Psycho

[School of Movies 2024]

For this rather special episode, we firstly welcome to the show for the first time, director Alfred Hitchcock, as we examine his most famous and most revisited film, Psycho (1960). This became the wellspring from which modern-day detective thrillers emerged. But it also has tangled roots in Horror and the grubby stepchild of its sub-genres, the slasher. While other films like Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter (1955) and John Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962) -both weirdly starring Robert Mitchum- were also hugely important, Psycho was less about the stalking killer as it was a torrid dive into the swampy waters of their mind.

Deriving from a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, who lived down the road from Ed Gein as he was being arrested for trying to make a woman-suit, this story, along with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs (1988) assisted greatly in the lurid, pulp sensationalism of the twisted deviant killer-man-in-a-dress mythology. Despite quiet, clear, firm, researched and experienced protestations from trans folk and their allies who keep having to remind the world at large that they aren't toilet-lurking monsters.

We also look at the stunningly ill-advised shot-for-shot remake of the Hitchcock film, directed in 1998 by Gus Van Sant. Superficially, these are exactly the same film, but the devil is in the details. Next week we will be returning to Bates Motel with the far less well-known, but actually pretty good Psycho II, which more pronouncedly paints Norman as a victim.