Thursday, March 20, 2014
Psycho Response
Although Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” is classified as a scary film, I personally do not think that it is a scary movie. A scary movie has many unexpected things and has parts that make you jump. Psycho has does not have either of these. It does have a few unexpected things happen but because of the hype around the film everyone knows for the most part what is going to happen. The “shower murder” scene for example shows this well. During the scene Hitchcock does well to make the viewer very tense. The high-pitched strings that are played during the murder plus the sound of the knife going into the flesh are tough to hear without being tense but they do not make the scene scary. You can see this murder coming from a mile away, so that reduces the scare factor dramatically. The door opens slowly, you see the shadow, and then shower curtain is pulled. The viewers are given a huge amount of time to prepare themselves for the gruesome murder. As for the unexpectedness, there is not much of that either. The only thing that really comes as unexpected is the scene where you realize that Norman is the killer dressed up as his mother. Although it is not very scary now, it can be speculated that it was a scary movie for its time.
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You have to imagine yourself in the 1960s. There would definitely be screaming in the audience. This thing was revolutionary. The reason we all know what's going to happen (the murder scenes) is because its so deeply ingrained in popular culture. When my mom saw this movie as a teenager, for months afterward, she was terrified while taking a shower. She hates it when I bring up the film in conversation.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you Daniel. I also agree with what Tyler said. The audience nowadays, have seen so many horror films and horror film techniques that you can expect what is going to happen. When Alfred Hitchcock created this film, it was one of the first films to have the jump scare tactic and the creepiness to it. I believe that the shower scene and the scene with Aborgast are scary. The intense music builds up suspense in the viewer. I also believe that the final scene, when the corpse of the mother turns around, was unexpected and the audience was scared.
ReplyDeleteI kind of agree with you that the movie wasn't in-your-face scary. Considering his audience, I think Hitchcock made a conscious decision to make the murder scenes and "scary" scenes pretty obvious. You just intuitively know that something is going to happen. We are also used to seeing horror movies, so we can pick up on this stuff quicker than the audiences of the 1960s. I do think he did a great job in making the film creepy, though. Norman is super creepy right from when he has that conversation with Marion in the parlor, and I personally found the scene where the chair turns around revealing the skeleton to be pretty unnerving as well.
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