Most people identify Hitchcock with Psycho, even though it is nothing like any of his other films. This is probably the combination of Hitchcock becoming very famous from his popular TV show and Psycho being his biggest hit ever (which really says something -- his first US film, Rebecca, won the Best Picture Oscar back in 1940).  At the time, low-budget horror films made by people like William Castle were popular, and Hitchcock thought it would be fun to make one. The plan was to make it cheap, using the crew from his TV show, between seasons, and the backlot at Universal. I believe he also used his own money  and kept the budget under $1 million. The film is based on the best-seller by Robert Bloch, who, along with Richard Matheson, is one of the great horror novelists, and I believe Hitchcock spent $100k for the rights (10 percent of the budget!). The screenplay is by Joseph Stefano, who created The Outer Limits TV show. Continue reading ...

Screenplay by Joseph Stefano based on a novel by Robert Bloch

Experiment: Hitchcock loved to experiment in films. He understood the medium like nobody before or after him, but wasn't satisfied to just make a movie using that knowledge. Instead, he was always pushing and finding new ways to do things, attempting things that had never been done before (wait until we get to Rope). Though Topaz is a failed experiment, the idea of telling four short stories, with some of the same characters, which add up to a larger story, its concept would be later perfected in Pulp Fiction. The novel Psycho does some things that work fine in a novel, but don't work at all in a movie.  The solution to the main problem may have been solved by Hitchcock or Stefano or both of them working together, but it's a very successful experiment in strange storytelling.

Psycho switches protagonists a couple of times. That's easy to do in a novel, but in a movie the audience becomes the protagonist for two hours, so swapping characters usually just loses audience identification completely. Hollywood is littered with movies that tried this and failed, and landfills are filled with screenplays that tried it and failed. So, lets take a look at how they cracked it in Psycho ...

Nutshell: Psycho opens with location, date and time -- almost documentary-style. The film is shot in black and white in a time when most films were shot in color. The B & W was an artistic choice -- to make it look more "real." Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and Sam Loomis (John Gavin) are in a cheap hotel, post sex. She's in white bra and white slip. They are not married. This was 1960 -- when you couldn't do things like that on film. Sam is divorced and broke -- living in the back room of his dead father's hardware store. He can't afford to get married. Marion is too old to still be single. They need to find some money so they can live happily ever after, but this is the real world.

After the "nooner," Marion returns to the Real Estate office where she works. An old, wealthy old client hits on her -- there’s nothing subtle about it -- while brandishing a few bundles of hundreds he's using to buy a house for his 19 year-old daughter. She's getting married, his wedding gift is a house, he's paying cash. Marion's boss tells her to take the money to the bank right away -- he doesn't want that kind of money in the office safe. Marion takes the money ... home with her.

Marion, black bra and black slip (bad girl), packs suitcases at her apartment and packs the big bundles of money in her purse. She gets in her car and drives toward Sam's place, but gets tired and stops at the Bates Motel for the night. With this much money, she can pay off Sam's debts and they can live happily ever after. Though she's stealing, we completely understand it, and the horn-dog rich guy kinda deserves to get ripped off. Why should his spoiled 19 year-old daughter get a free house when Marion and Sam are working hard just to live on the edge of poverty? 

At the Bates Motel, Hitchcock and Stefano find the key to the protagonist switch experiment. In the novel, Norman is a fat, nasty hick. In the film, Norman is a fragile young man with too many responsibilities, trapped in a life he doesn't deserve. We feel sorry for Norman. After Marion checks in, Norman invites her to dinner up at the house but Marion overhears Norman's mother yelling at him -- verbally abusing him, belittling him -- for inviting a strange woman to the house. Marion is eavesdropping and knows she shouldn't be listening to a private conversation, but does anyway. 

Later, Norman brings sandwiches and milk down from the house, and has dinner with Marion in his parlor behind the office. Here is where the baton is passed from one protagonist to the next, and it's a brilliant scene. Norman and Marion talk about being trapped in their lives -- and we find out that poor Norman has been stuck in this motel his entire life, taking care of his mother. He has no life outside the motel. His mother is demanding, abusive, and a little crazy, but he can't just abandon her. He can't afford to send her to a private sanitarium and the state-run facilities are, well, looney bins -- he can't send his mother to someplace like that. We wish Norman could find some way out of this trap. 

At the end of this scene, we don't leave with Marion, we leave with Norman. Norman has become our new protagonist. Before she leaves, Marion hints that she's going to drive back home and return the money -- resolving her plot problem. But Norman still has a problem -- his abusive mother -- and we're gonna stick around and see how he escapes his trap. 

Just as Marion eavesdropped on Norman, Norman pulls back a painting, uncovering a peephole in the wall, and spies on Marion as she undresses for a shower. But, just as she gets down to bra and slip, Norman turns away, re-covering the peephole with the painting. There's something almost innocent about this -- he's a lonely, virgin man ... he will spy on a girl in her bra, but seeing her naked is taking it too far.  Strange as this seems, when he turns away and replaces the painting, we kind of admire his restraint. And we couldn't have that admiration unless he was peeping in the first place. It's like Marion wanting to return he stolen money.

And everything would be happy ever after, except for Norman's mom ...

Because she's afraid that a woman like Marion might lure her son away and then she'd have no one to take care of her (and no one to verbally abuse). So, she does what any mother in the same position would do ... she brutally kills Marion. Now, poor Norman must clean up the mess -- blood all over room #1's bathroom, a dead naked woman, her car, her belongings. Norman must get rid of all of it before anyone discovers what his mother has done. 

Great Scenes: No shortage of great scenes in Psycho -- this is the movie that made people afraid of the shower. But before we get to the shower scene, there are a couple of other scenes that deserve mentioning.

Driving Out of Town: As Marion is driving out of town, with a purse full of stolen money, she stops at a light and crossing the street to see her boss! She's supposed to be at the bank! He sees her -- they lock eyes -- then he finishes crossing. The light changes and she tears out of there. This scene parallels the one in Pulp Fiction, in the Bruce Willis story, with Ving Rhames crossing the street.

As Marion drives, we get an interesting variation on voiceover narration. Instead of Marion telling us what she thinks and fears, with narration, we get dramatic V.O. of what Marion imagines other characters will say when they discover she's stolen the money.  What will Sam say? What will her boss say and do? What about the wealthy old guy she stole from? As these voices rattle around inside her head, we get drama instead of an exposition dump. 

Marion is exhausted, pulls to the side of the road for a nap and wakes up with a Highway Patrolman pounding on her window. He asks to see her license (also in her purse -- under all of the bundles of money) and she just wants to get the hell out of there. This is a great suspense scene, centered around the bundles of money in her purse -- she can't let him see them! After he lets her go, he follows her ...

High Pressure Car Sales: I have this thing I call The Rule of the Logical Opposite -- the idea is to do the exact opposite of what the audience expects in a scene, but make sure it's still 100-percent logical. Marion is afraid the Highway Patrolman will remember her car, so she decides to go to a used car lot and trade it. We are used to seeing a used car salesman pressure a potential customer, trying to close a deal. That is what the audience expects in a scene like this, but we get the opposite. Marion pressures the car salesman, trying to quickly close the deal, making the scene different and interesting. It also makes the car salesman suspicious. Add to that: When Marion isn't looking, the Highway Patrolman spots her, pulls across the street from the car lot, and watches the entire transaction take place. She doesn't know he's there -- but we do. That's called "audience superiority" and it's a great way to build suspense. You just want to yell at the screen, "The cop is right across the street! Get out of there!" but she can't hear you. 

Shower Scene: Once Marion steps into the shower -- where she is naked and vulnerable -- Norman's mother attacks her with a very sharp knife, slashing her and killing her. Here's where Hitchcock's amazing control over angle and composition comes into play. There are 70 shots in the shower scene. The censors were sure that they had seen Janet Leigh naked (both breasts) and that they had seen the knife actually penetrate the body. In fact, when you see this scene, you will think you see those things, too. Especially the knife entering the flesh -- everybody sees that. It's right there, on the screen. I saw Psycho on the big screen a couple of years ago -- some anniversary -- and that knife cuts through skin. Except, it doesn't. There are no breasts shown, and the knife never even touches the skin. Everything you think you see is created by selecting specific angles, movements, framing and juxtaposition of images. It's the Kuleshov Experiment all over again (more on that, when we get to Rear Window) -- by juxtaposing specific images you can make the audience see things that are not there. Here, we think we've seen a brutal murder, but the knife never touches the body. 

The Clean Up: After Norman's mother kills Marion, Norman is stuck cleaning up the mess. And that's just not fair. She's abusive, she's ruined his life and now she's killed Marion and left Norman  to clean up. We get a great, messy, clean-up scene -- that will later be plucked by the Coen Brothers for Blood Simple (where another character is stuck cleaning up the mess after someone he loves commits murder).  By the way, Psycho is the first Hollywood movie to show a toilet in the bathroom. Before this film, every single bathroom in the movies had no toilet! This clean-up sequence ends with a great bit -- sinking Marion's car (with her corpse and belongings -- including the money -- inside). At this point we care about Norman and don't want him to have to pay the price for this murder his mother has done. So when the car stops sinking in the swamp, we gasp -- what if it doesn't sink? What if it's just stuck in the swamp like that, where everyone can see it? We want that car to sink! And eventually it does -- after drawing out the tension to the breaking point. 

Arbogast's Death: Sam and Marion's sister, Lila, hire private eye Arbogast (Martin Balsam) to find Marion, which means he's poking around the Bates Motel. The great thing here is that Norman is our protagonist, so we worry that Arbogast will uncover some clue to Marion's murder and this will ruin Norman's life. The entire time Arbogast is interrogating Norman, we are hoping he finds nothing ... but Norman keeps slipping and Arbogast keeps hounding and, soon, we fear that Arbogast suspects something happened to Marion at the motel. There's a great bit with the motel register -- evidence that Marion was there -- which Norman wants to hide and Arbogast wants to look at, creating suspense. It's strange, because we are not on the "cop's side" we are on the "criminal's side" in this scene. We really don't want poor Norman to get into any more trouble -- his life is already hell.

Arbogast breaks into the Bates house to question Norman's mother. This creates a great conflict in the audience, because we don't want any more trouble for poor Norman, but we also worry about what mother might do if Arbogast finds her.  So, we are afraid for Norman and afraid for Arbogast.  

We get a great suspenseful stair climb as Arbogast searches for Mrs. Bates, ending with a high overhead that makes us feel like Arbogast is a victim, even before mom rushes out of her bedroom with a knife and slashes at his face and body a dozen times. Arbogast then falls down stairs -- but doesn't tumble. It's a great shot where he just falls backwards until he reaches the floor. Then, Norman's mother stabs him again and again, leaving Norman another mess to clean up.

Lila Meets Norman's Mother: You know, there are only so many murders you can cover up for your mom before you begin to lose sympathy with the audience. After Arbogast's murder we begin to think Norman would be better off is his mom was in the state-run looney bin. Yes, it's his mother -- and none of us want bad things to happen to our mothers -- but she's freaking crazy! Norman would be better off with her out of the picture. This covering-up thing has got to stop! 

This is the perfect place to pass the protagonist baton once again.

We already know Sam Loomis, we know he's trapped living in that little room behind his father's hardware store, trying to pay off his father's debts. So he becomes our new protagonist. Now, think about Norman and his mother, Sam and his father, the wealthy old guy and his daughter, Marion and her dead mother's picture (talked about in the opening scene), the other girl at the real estate office and her nosy mother, and all of the other parents and children paired up in this film. 

So, Sam and Lila set out for the Bates Motel to find out what happened to Marion and Arbogast. They check into a room together as a couple (did Sam nail both sisters?) and while Sam keeps Norman busy, Lila breaks into the Bates house to talk to Mrs. Bates. 

Now, by this time we've had a reveal plus a great bit of misdirection. Sam and Lila have gone to the local Sheriff (John McIntyre) and told him everything. He reveals that Mrs. Bates died 10 years ago. Wait! If she's dead, who killed Marion and Arbogast? When Sam insists that Arbogast has seen Mrs. Bates (and Sam has, too), the Sheriff says, "If the woman in the window is Mrs. Bates, whose body is buried in Greenlawn cemetery?" Did crazy Mrs. Bates find some way to fake her own death? Is there another murder victim besides Marion and Arbogast? How long has this been going on? The great thing about the Sheriff's dialogue is that he tells us Norman's mother is dead, then gives us an alternative possibility to keep us from figuring out the truth.

So when Lila climbs those stairs, just as Arbogast did, we wonder what she'll find -- and who. She enters Mrs. Bates bedroom -- someone is living there. The closet is filled with clothes, makeup is set out on the vanity ... and there's an indentation in the bed. A deep indentation. But no mother. Norman's bedroom is a child's room -- complete with stuffed animals and a kid's bed. It's like he's living as a child. But no sign of mother -- we keep waiting for her to burst out of a closet and attack ... but it doesn't happen. When Lila tries to leave, Norman enters the house! Lila hides under the stairs as Norman goes upstairs. That's when she notices the fruit cellar door and descends. Here, she meets Norman's mother in the big shock scene ... a mummy! You know, in the scene between Norman and Marion, at the beginning of the movie, Norman says his hobby is taxidermy -- completely setting this up! Then, Lila meets Norman's mother again -- this time with a knife, and we find out that Norman is his mother. Sam grabs Norman/Mother before he can kill Lila and then we get that hellishly long scene with Simon Oakland as the shrink explaining why Norman was dressed in his mother's clothes. 

Don't miss two things at the end: Ted Knight (Caddyshack) as the cop guarding Norman's cell, and the subliminal skull superimposed over Norman's face.  

Hitchcock Appearance: Outside the real estate office -- you can see him through the window.

Sound Track: Great Bernard Herrmann score! Not only is the music in time with the windshield wipers of Marion Crane's car, but the strings in the shower scene are probably the first time anything like that was done. Now we expect strings in a horror film, but no one had done that in a movie before Hitchcock. By the way, the Herrmann score is 100-percent strings -- also kind of weird.

Psycho was a ground-breaking horror movie and Norman Bates is the Hamlet of the horror genre -- a young man we feel sorry for ... even after the final twist is revealed. But the film is also a great experiment in serial protagonists and how to pass the baton from one character to the next, without losing audience identification. 

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William C. Martell has written 19 produced films for cable and video, including three HBO World Premieres, a pair of Showtime films, the thriller Hard Evidence (Warner Bros.), and the family film Invisible Mom. He is the author of The Secrets of Action Screenwriting and can be reached at Scriptsecrets.net. A version of this post appeared on Scriptsecrets.net.     

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