50 Years Of Psycho

A half century has blown by since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho hit the theaters, today is the 50th anniversary. Few movies have impacted a half century of movie making the way this movie has. And it continues to do so.

The real separator for Hitchcock films from the rest of the pack then, and now is simply this. He knew what scared you. And if you pause and think about it, you have fears in your own life, and somehow he knew them too. His signature scene form Psycho, and maybe his entire career, is the shower scene where Janet Leigh is killed. We still talk about it, we still reference it, and the whole "taking a shower in a strange place" thing.....still crosses our minds. It was powerful stuff. In a lonely hotel room in the middle of nowhere, vulnerable, with no defense at all. Not even clothes, being stalked and stabbed by some unknown person repeatedly. Sound scary in written form? Think about 1960 and seeing it in the movies. And speaking of sound? That music? Who among us doesn't know it, and it still sound scary!

Psycho was different than any other movie that was made until then. Hitchcock dared to kill a beautiful, young woman on screen. Unheard of at the time, even though he never showed us the actual murder. He didn't need to. We knew what happened. All of this was so cutting edge at the time, taking into account mainstream entertainment at the time was watching Leave It To Beaver on TV. And Psycho still holds up. I understand this all sounds so ridiculous today. But at that time, it was a real film making risk.

I know too Psycho can look a bit dated. But I say so? It's only dated in it's technology, not in it's message. Most of today's movie makers rely on the special effects to frighten us. Blood, gore, guts, doesn't do it. It may make us queasy and hard to watch, but it doesn't really scare us.

Hitchcock's brilliant film making bled over to many films over many years. He continually understood what scared us, and would put us IN the film. Imagining that some of these things could really happen to us, was his greatest attribute in film. Virtually every horror film maker since has learned of his secret, but almost none of them has taken it to heart or been able to capture it.

Psycho changed films forever. The black and white classic that took a classic thriller tale and made it so much more. Very scary.