So whats it about Guy Strange?
I would love to see Psycho for the first time again...not knowing what is coming and letting it lead me around in circles.
Janet Leigh is Marion Crane who spends her lunch time bumping uglies with the guy from the hardware store. Trouble is he has an ex wife, debts to pay and she wants to marry. However until he pays his debt, wins the lottery or Marion steals money from one of her companies rich clients then she never will.
What can she do?
So she goes back to work, meets some sleazy old man who is despositing $40k in hard cash and Marion is assigned to take care of it.
Cooly Marion tells her boss she has a headache and does a runner with the money. With intent to take the money to pay off her lovers debt and get married.
So she sets off but not before the boss sees her in her car when she should be at home resting! She all kinds of thoughts are going through her head as she drives to Arizona to meet her man.
 |
| Its pissing down |
After sleeping in the car, a run in with a harsh looking cop and buying a new car she drives into the night and the rain comes crashing down..she can't see a thing..she'll have to stop..
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| Erm.. second thoughts I might sleep in the car |
Ah yes..hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So out of the rain she sees a lady's shadow in the master bedroom of the old house on the hill behind the motel, and down comes a gangly young man with a large adams apple and a winning warm smile. His name is Norman Bates and he runs the motel with his mother.
So Norman checks Marion in, then checks her out, invites her for some lunch.. just sandwiches and milk nothing fancy and Marion kindly agrees.
So Norman goes back to the house and gets the grub ready. Marion hears another argument from the house, basically the old woman calls her a whore! Anyway sheepishly Norman comes back with the food and they converse.
Norman throws some lines out to Marion such as 'you eat like a bird' - 'my hobby is stuffing things!' hubba hubba - Marion is not fazed though, she pecks at her sandwich and talks about regrets and trapping yourself in situations. Norman feels the same and discusses his mothers 'illness' and they seem to bond, Marion wishes him goodnight as she has internally decided to do the right thing, drive back and give in the remainder of the money.
Norman decides not to the do right thing by perving at Marion through a hole in the wall as she gets undressed to take a shower.
Norman now wanders back to the house and sits in the kitchen thinking about Marion in the shower I would wager.
So Marion is having a shower, when behind the shower curtain the figure of a woman dressed in black enters the room, pulls the curtain back and stabs Marion to death.
Norman comes screaming down the hill and finds the body and disposes of it rather neatly. So the woman we have spent the first half of the film getting to know has been taken away from us.. what now?
Enter Lila Crane, Marions sister played by the fiesty Vera Miles. She drops in on Marion's bloke at his hardware store.
They both search for the missing Marion with the help of a Private Dick who traces her back to the Bates Motel, he calls Lila and Sam to let them know he finally got a trace of her.
After grilling Norman, sending his adams apple into overdrive the Private Dick known as Arbogast decides to interview Normans mother, against his wishes as she is 'sick'.
Unfettered Arbo goes into the house and is murdered by the woman in black.
Back at base having not heard from Arbogast, stoic Sam and fiesty Lila go looking, Sam eventually goes to the police after visiting the motel only to see a woman in the window but not answer his calls.
The police find it strange he sees a woman in the window as Normans mother has been dead for years ... who is she then?
All is revealed in a tense finale as Sam and Lila decide to go to the motel and see for themselves!
The ending may not be shocking today but I imagine audiences back in 1960 would have shit a brick.
So Guy, is it a classic?
Of course, its excellently made. Anthony Perkins is sheer perfection as Norman Bates as is Janet Leigh who holds the first half of the film up herself.
The music by Bernard Herrmann is moody and chilling and the murders are quite shocking with excellent use of tension and build up, sound effects and music rather than just graphic violence.
Psycho was very clever in having its star name murdered half way through the film. Without the spoilers we have now audiences were not only shocked by the twist at the end, but had a shock halfway through when Janet Leigh, the star name of the film is (quite brutally for the time) stabbed to death in the shower.
Although I don't have a hard on for Hitchcock some people do, I do appreciate he was one of the very best.
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