Line #24 Trivia/Psycho


1	* ActingInTheDark: Creator/AlfredHitchcock withheld the ending from the cast and crew until it was time to shoot it.
2	* ActorSharedBackground: Creator/AnthonyPerkins lost his father at the age of five and was raised by his abusive mother, like his character Norman.
3	* BillingDisplacement: Done deliberately by the advertising, which promoted Creator/JanetLeigh as the star of the film. Ironically in the credits she is given AndStarring - whereas she still has more screen time than Creator/VeraMiles and Creator/JohnGavin, who get second and third billing.
4	* BlackSheepHit:
5	** The original book was this for Creator/RobertBloch, most of whose horror fiction involved the Franchise/CthulhuMythos.
6	** It was also a BlackSheepHit for Hitchcock, whose movies before and after ''Psycho'' were sophisticated thrillers with high production values, crossing the line between action movie and drama. He was inspired to make this film as a result of his fondness for Creator/WilliamCastle's films. As such many who come to see ''Psycho'' (which is often the first, and in some cases only, Hitchcock film people see) can leave with an impression that Hitchcock made cheap slasher films with shocking twists when in all of these cases, ''Psycho'' was an exception and Hitchcock generally disliked plot twists and averted them for most his career.
7	* ChannelHop: The film was first distributed by Creator/{{Paramount}} Pictures, then in 1968 was sold to Creator/{{Universal}} Studios due to studio Shamley Productions getting acquired by Universal parent MCA and Paramount wanting to get their name off the movie as soon as possible (see TroubledProduction below).
8	* CompletelyDifferentTitle:
9	** Hong Kong: ''Shock''
10	** Taiwan: ''Horror''
11	** Turkey: ''Pervert'' (a SpoilerTitle, since it starts out being about Marion stealing the money and the pervert doesn't show up until the second act).
12	* CreatorBacklash:
13	** Averted with Creator/AnthonyPerkins. While acknowledging that starring in the film led to him being [[TypeCasting typecast]] as a maniac killer, when he was asked if he still would have taken the role knowing what it would do to his career, he replied with a definite "yes".
14	** Alfred Hitchcock apparently disliked the performance of Creator/JohnGavin, who played Sam, and referred to him as "the stiff".
15	** Creator/VeraMiles was unhappy while making the film, disliking Lila's "matronly" wardrobe. She was convinced that the unflattering clothes were Hitchcock's way of punishing her for being unable to star in ''{{Film/Vertigo}}''.
16	* DistancedFromCurrentEvents: The first TV airing of the film was to have happened on September 23, 1966, as a Creator/{{CBS}} Friday Night Movie. Three days before, Valerie Percy, the daughter of Illinois senate candidate Charles H. Percy, was killed in a stabbing. CBS postponed the broadcast (already advertised in ''TV Guide'') as a result, but eventually decided not to air the film. Creator/{{ABC}}'s New York City affiliate, WABC-TV, ended up being the first U.S. television station to air the movie on June 24, 1967.
17	* DoingItForTheArt: Hitchcock went to a ''lot'' of trouble to try and avoid the film's twists being revealed. Most notably, he went about buying up copies of the source novel out of his own pocket.
18	* EnforcedMethodActing: Guides at the Universal Studios tour tell the story that when shooting the shower scene, Hitchcock switched off the hot water and made it ice-cold, ensuring that Creator/JanetLeigh's screams would be real. Leigh, however, has denied this.
19	* ExecutiveMeddling:
20	** The censors wanted to cut the shot of the toilet flushing. But Hitchcock insisted that it was important to the plot – the torn-up paper proving that Marion stayed in the motel. And so the film is the first to show a toilet flushing on screen.
21	** Another shot cut by the censors was of Marion removing her black bra before taking the shower. It's included in the UK release, and the 60th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray Discs have the option to watch the movie with or without it.
22	** Creator/JohnGavin was cast as Sam Loomis at the insistence of the studio.
23	* GenreKiller: Many film historians consider ''Psycho'', alongside ''Film/TouchOfEvil'' (which inspired it) to be the movie that killed FilmNoir. Others go further and insist that it ended UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood altogether, because the film's utter lack of idealization, the fact that most of the characters are AntiHero at best, that the sympathetic male lead (played by Creator/JohnGavin) is himself a SympatheticAdulterer, that the villain Norman Bates is someone the audience is ''intended'' to identify with on some level, and the fact that the film's two distinct halves joined together by the famous shower-scene utterly shatters the Hollywood narrative and three-act structure. More to the point, the film did all this, and ''became a major global box-office hit''.
24	* LifeImitatesArt: The shower scene ended up genuinely frightening Janet Leigh when she saw it back. Realising how vulnerable a woman was in the shower, she only ever took baths for the rest of her life.
25	* TheLivingDead: In the original cut, Janet Leigh swallowed when she was supposed to be dead. Only Alma, Hitchcock's wife, noticed the error and pointed it out to Hitchcock, who changed the lingering shot of Leigh lying on the bathroom floor to a still image, so that she could not possibly be seen moving. This still is what appears in the theatrical release.
26	* LyingCreator: Hitchcock lied to the press that he intended to cast Helen Hayes as Mrs Bates. Several actresses wrote to him looking for the part as a result. He even kept a chair on set with 'Mrs Bates' marked on it to fool people even further.
27	* NoBudget: Paramount studios had a real distaste for the source material. Hitchcock agreed to make it on a low-budget and take a pay cut in exchange for a percentage of the film's gross (and given the phenomenal success and high profit margin, he was laughing all the way to the bank). The film is still a little more expensive than actual low-budget films of the time, such as Creator/WilliamCastle's films and [[BMovie B movies]] which inspired it, but at $800,000 in 1960 dollars[[note]]roughly equivalent to $8.01 ''million'' in 2022 dollars[[/note]] it only cost about one-fifth the budget of ''Film/NorthByNorthwest'' the year before.
28	* NotScreenedForCritics: Hitchcock actually played this card and then some in order to conceal the film's classic plot twist. This makes ''Psycho'' a rare example of a film NotScreenedForCritics that is acclaimed by them later.
29	* OneHitWonder: An unusual case of this applying to a cinematographer; John Russell, who was hired in lieu of Hitchcock's usual cinematographer Robert Burks after the latter proved unaffordable for the film's meagre budget, ended up earning an Oscar nomination for his work here. All of Russell's credits either side of this film were on TV shows and B-movies.
30	* OneTakeWonder: The speech by the psychiatrist at the end was considered an extremely important part of the film, since it provided the detailed {{exposition}} needed to understand everything that had happened up to that point. But since the speech was so long and full of nuance, by all expectations it should have been a struggle to film. Instead, actor Simon Oakland did it perfectly in the first take, leading Hitchcock to stand up, shake his hand, and say, "Thank you very much, Mr. Oakland. You've just saved my picture."
31	* TheOtherMarty: There were rumours that Creator/GeorgeReeves was originally cast as Arbogast and had already filmed some of his scenes by the time he died. As the script wasn't even started until four months after Reeves's death, this is quite unlikely.
32	* PlayingWithCharacterType: Bates initially appears to be the same sort of character that Creator/AnthonyPerkins was known for playing up to that time – a likeable, if socially-awkward, supporting role. This makes the TwistEnding all the more shocking, especially since it was drastically different from how Norman was in Bloch's book.
33	* RealLifeRelative: Marion's co-worker Carolyn is played by the director's daughter Pat Hitchcock.
34	* RealLifeWritesTheHairstyle: Creator/VeraMiles wore a wig for her role, as she had to shave her head for her role in ''Film/FiveBrandedWomen''.
35	* RealitySubtext: Part of Creator/AlfredHitchcock's love for the story was because he sympathised with Norman - having also grown up with a rather domineering mother. Thankfully she was not as bad as Mrs Bates. Likewise the screenwriter, Joseph Stefano, wrote the screenplay while he was in therapy, dealing with the troubled relationship with his own mother, and was drafted by Hitchcock to specifically highlight the Freudian nature of the story.
36	* SameContentDifferentRating: When the film was re-released in 1969, it was rated PG by the MPAA. 15 years later, in the midst of a moral panic that saw the MPAA crack down harder on violent content, the film was rated R. If submitted again today, there's a sizeable school of thought that believes it could be PG-13.
37	* StarDerailingRole:
38	** Subverted yet played straight: History will tell you that the film was not a box-office nor a critical failure, and it's obviously considered one of the best films ever made. However, many consider it to be the film that simultaneously heightened and ruined Creator/AnthonyPerkins' career as an actor because he was subject to typecasting afterwards, and most moviegoers [[IAmNotSpock only knew him as Norman Bates]]. Perkins never had any [[CreatorBacklash backlash]] because of it, but plenty of his fans will vouch Perkins was one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood history, and ''Psycho'' is to blame. Ironically enough, at the time ''Psycho'' was Perkins PlayingAgainstType. After ''Psycho,'' if there was a movie where he wasn't playing a "psycho," it was him playing against type again. Especially notable is ''Film/MurderOnTheOrientExpress1974'', in which his character is given serious issues with his mother which aren't present at all in the book.
39	** The same applies to Janet Leigh. Although not subject to typecasting afterwards, pretty much all she is really remembered for was the shower scene. Movie buffs remember her as one of many promising actresses of the late fifties who appeared in films like ''Film/TheNakedSpur, Film/TheVikings'' and of course ''Film/TouchOfEvil'' (which is what inspired Hitchcock to cast her in this film), and even for appearing in memorable films afterward including ''Film/TheManchurianCandidate'', but none of them were as famous and culturally influential as this film (though of course there are very few films that are as famous and culturally influential as this one ''period'').
40	* ThrowItIn:
41	** Location shooting (for the scene where Marion drives out of town with the money) was done in downtown Phoenix in December 1959. After [[DidIMentionItsChristmas Christmas decorations]] were discovered to be visible in the footage, a graphic was added to the beginning of the film setting the date as "Friday, December the Eleventh".
42	** Also, Norman's CharacterTic of eating candy was a suggestion of Perkins's that Hitchcock happened to like.
43	* TropeCodifier: For DeadStarWalking, courtesy of Janet Leigh getting killed off after only forty or so minutes of screen time.
44	* TroubledProduction: More like troubled ''pre''-production. Hitchcock was repeatedly mocked by executives at Creator/{{Paramount}} who refused to fund the film because of its controversial subject matter, going as far as refusing to grant him access to their soundstages by ''falsely'' claiming they had all been taken up. This caused Hitchcock to take the bill for the movie himself and finance it through his company, Shamley Productions, and shoot the movie at the Universal lot. When the movie was finished, Paramount reluctantly agreed to distribute the film, but only for eight years since MCA had bought Hitchcock's stake in Shamley in 1964, allowing Paramount to clean their hands of the movie and pass it on to Universal four years later.
45	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
46	** Hitchcock originally wanted the shower scene to play without music, but Herrmann begged him to try it. Yes, the TropeMaker for PsychoStrings very nearly didn't come about at all.
47	** He also wanted the opening zoom in to Marion's afternoon delight to be a [[TheOner single continuous shot]] a la ''Film/TouchOfEvil'', but the technology to do this didn't exist at the time. Restoring that idea now that it did exist is pretty much the only legitimate reason for the existence of the Gus van Sant remake.
48	** Hitchcock held exclusive rights to ''Psycho'' and he very well could've taken it out of circulation soon after its release, like he did with other films he controlled[[note]]''Film/{{Rope}}'', ''Film/RearWindow'', ''Film/TheTroubleWithHarry'', ''Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch'' and ''Film/{{Vertigo}}''[[/note]], but instead he sold the rights to Universal in 1963 in exchange for shares of studio stock.
49	** Hitchcock toyed with the idea of showing the film across two episodes of ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'' in heavily bowdlerized form as a last resort if Paramount pulled out of distributing the film. Part 1 would have ended after Marion's murder. Coincidentally, much of the crew was made up of people working on his TV show.
50	** Creator/AngieDickinson, Creator/PiperLaurie, Creator/EvaMarieSaint, Creator/LeeRemick, Creator/MarthaHyer and Creator/LanaTurner were among those considered for Marion Crane. [[note]]Angie Dickinson would eventually play a woman subjected to similar fates as Marion in ''Film/DressedToKill'', which heavily homages to ''Psycho''.[[/note]]
51	** Creator/RobertLoggia (who would later play Doctor Raymond in ''Film/PsychoII''), Creator/JackLord, Creator/LeslieNielsen, Creator/CliffRobertson and Creator/RodTaylor was among those considered for Sam Loomis.
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Context Trivia / Psycho