Psycho (1960) Facts
| Director(s) | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Producer(s) | Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited) |
| Featured Cast | Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam |
| Total Facts | 98 |
Immediately prior to the closing sequence of Norman Bates in his jail cell, as the camera moves down the hallway to where police have confined him, the uniformed guard at the cell door is Ted Knight, best remembered as pompous, dim-witted news anchor Ted Baxter on Mary Tyler Moore.
In Robert Bloch's novel, Norman Bates is short, fat, older, and very dislikable. It was Alfred Hitchcock who decided to have him be young, handsome, and sympathetic. Norman is also more of a main character in the novel. The story opens with him and Mother fighting rather than following Marion from the start.
In 2006, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon created a 24-hour slow-motion version of the film titled "24-Hour Psycho" that played at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #14 Greatest Movie of All Time.
In an interview on The Dick Cavett Show, Alfred Hitchcock said of the shower scene, "...everything was so rapid that there were 78 separate pieces of film in 45 seconds."
In order to implicate viewers as fellow voyeurs Alfred Hitchcock used a 50 mm lens on his 35 mm camera. This gives the closest approximation to the human vision. In the scenes where Norman is spying on Marion this effect is felt.
In the Collector's Edition DVD documentary, Janet Leigh says that a nude body double was used in portions of the shower scene. The DVD notes include a quote from Alfred Hitchcock, in an interview with François Truffaut, in which he says the same thing.
In the murder scene in the shower, there are two split second frames of the knife touching the body
In the novel, the character of "Marion" was "Mary" Crane. The name was changed because the studio legal department found that two real people named Mary Crane lived in Phoenix, Arizona.
In the opening scene, Marion Crane is wearing a white bra because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to show her as being "angelic". After she has taken the money, the following scene has her in a black bra because now she has done something wrong and evil. Similarly, before she steals the money, she has a white purse; after she's stolen the money, her purse is black.
Marion's white 1957 Ford sedan is the same car (owned by Universal) that the Cleaver family drove on Leave It to Beaver.
Norman Bates is ranked the second greatest villain on AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains.
On February 8, 1960, exactly one week after he finished "Psycho," Alfred Hitchcock directed an episode of TV's Startime ("Incident at a Corner", #1.27), that also featured Vera Miles and much of the same crew that worked on "Psycho".
On set, Alfred Hitchcock would always refer to Anthony Perkins as "Master Bates".
On the Interstate 99 that eventually turns into Pacific Ave. near the Fife/Tacoma boarder in Washington State, there are several older hotels up along the strip. One of the former owners of one of the hotels is a horror movie buff and puts on costume parties in his retirement. Being a fan of the horror movies, he renamed the motel, Bates Motel.
One of the reasons Alfred Hitchcock shot the movie in black and white was he thought it would be too gory in color. But the main reason was that he wanted to make the film as inexpensively as possible (under $1 million). He also wondered if so many bad, inexpensively made, b/w "B" movies did so well at the box office, what would happen if a really good, inexpensively made, b/w movie was made.
Parts of the house were built by cannibalizing several stock-unit sections including a tower from the house in Harvey. The house was the most expensive set of the picture but came to a mere US$15,000.
Ranked #1 on the AFI 100 Years... 100 Thrills film series.
Ranked #14 on the AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies 10th Anniversary Edition, up 4 places from #18 in 1997.
The Bates house was largely modeled on an oil painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The canvas is called "House by the Railroad" and was painted in 1925 by American iconic artist Edward Hopper. The architectural details, viewpoint and austere sky is almost identical as seen in the film.
The blood was Bosco chocolate syrup.
The car dealership in the movie was actually Harry Maher's used car lot near Universal Studios. Since Ford Motor company was a sponsor of Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show the car lot's usual inventory was displaced in favor of shiny Edsels, Fairlanes and Mercury models from Ford.
The film only cost US$800,000 to make and has earned more than US$40 million. Alfred Hitchcock used the crew from his TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents to save time and money. In 1962 he exchanged the rights to the film and his TV series for a huge block of MCA's stock, becoming its third-largest stockholder).
The first scene to be shot was of Marion getting pulled over by the cop. This was filmed on Golden State Freeway (number 99).
The first U.S. TV station to show "Psycho" was WABC-TV (Channel 7) in New York, on their late-night movie series "The Best of Broadway" on 24 June 1967.
The last shot of Norman Bates's face has a still frame of a human skull superimposed on it, almost subliminally. The skull is that of Mother.
The license plate on Marion's first car is ANL-709. The license plate on Marion's second car is NFB-418. The latter could be a Québec reference. NFB stands for National Film Board of Canada, the famous office in which Norman McLaren, Claude Jutra, Michel Brault and many others worked, and 418 is the regional phone code for the region of Québec city. Although the real regional code of the NFB is 514 and not 418, this could have been mistaken by Hitchcock, as he shot I Confess in Québec years earlier in the effective 418 area.
The movie in large part was made because Alfred Hitchcock was fed up with the big-budget, star-studded movies he had recently been making and wanted to experiment with the more efficient, sparser style of television filmmaking. Indeed, he ultimately used a crew consisting mostly of TV veterans and hired actors less well known than those he usually used.
The movie's line "A boy's best friend is his mother." was voted as the #56 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
The MPAA objected to the use of the term "transvestite" to describe Norman Bates in the final wrap-up. They insisted it be removed until Joseph Stefano proved to them it was a clinical psychology term. They thought he was trying to get one over on them and place a vulgarity in the picture.
The novel "Psycho", written by Robert Bloch, was actually part of a series of pulp novels marketed in conjunction with the popular spooky radio show "Inner Sanctum".
The novel upon which the film is based was inspired by the true story of Ed Gein, a serial killer who was also the inspiration for Deranged, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.
The score, composed by Bernard Herrmann, is played entirely by stringed instruments.
The shower scene has over 90 splices in it, and did not involve Anthony Perkins at all. Contrary to popular belief it wasn't due to a scheduling conflict Perkins had for the Broadway musical 'Greenville' but actually a deliberate decision on Alfred Hitchcock's part. On this subject Perkins states "Hitchcock was very worried that the dual role and nature of Norman Bates would be exposed if I were to appear in that scene. I think it was the recognizability of my silhouette, which is rather slim and broad in the shoulder. That worried him."
The sound that the knife makes penetrating the flesh is actually the sound of a knife stabbing a casaba melon.
The stabbing scene in the shower is reported to have taken seven days to shoot using 70 different camera angles but only lasts 45 seconds in the movie.
The strings-only music by Bernard Herrmann is ranked #4 on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.
The theatrical trailer shows Alfred Hitchcock giving a partial tour of the set located on the Universal Studios back-lot. It ends with a tour of the famous bathroom and Alfred Hitchcock pulling the shower curtain revealing the screaming Vera Miles. (Vera Miles was the stand-in for Janet Leigh because Janet Leigh was not available.
The trailer was shot after completing the movie, and because Janet Leigh wasn't available anymore, Alfred Hitchcock used Vera Miles in the shower sequence in the trailer.
There are several references to birds in this film : Marion's surname is Crane, Norman's hobby is stuffing birds and he states that Marion eats like a bird. Coincidentally Alfred Hitchcock's next film was The Birds
There is a rumor that the this film was not passed for release because it was claimed that Janet Leigh's nipple was visible during the shower scene. The nipple wasn't in the film at all, but the cinematography and score are so well performed here, it caused the release board originally to think that there was a nipple visible and send the film back for re-editing. The production team went through the shower sequence cut by cut to illustrate that there was not. Alfred Hitchcock made no changes (none were needed), but merely sent it back, assuming that they either wouldn't bother to watch it, or would realize their mistake.
This was Alfred Hitchcock's last feature film in black and white, filmed November 30 1959-March 1 1960.
This was Alfred Hitchcock's last film for Paramount. By the time principal photography started, Hitchcock had moved his offices to Universal and the film was actually shot on Universal's back lot. Universal owns the film today as well, even though the Paramount Pictures logo is still on the film.
This was voted the seventh scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
To ensure the people were in the theaters at the start of the film (rather than walking in part way through) the studio provided a record to play in the foyer of the theaters. The album featured background music, occasionally interrupted by a voice saying "Ten minutes to Psycho time," "Five minutes to Psycho time," and so on.
Visa d'exploitation en France : #23645.
When Alfred Hitchcock was off due to illness, the crew shot the sequence of Arbogast inside the house going up the stairs. When Hitchcock saw the footage, he complimented those responsible but said the sequence had to be re-shot. Their version made it appear as if Arbogast was going up the stairs to commit a murder. Hitchcock re-shot the sequence.
When the cast and crew began work on the first day they had to raise their right hands and promise not to divulge one word of the story. Alfred Hitchcock also withheld the ending part of the script from his cast until he needed to shoot it.