Part Two and Check-Out

Further Psycho Babblings

John McIntire plays a great listening scene as Sheriff Chambers. Again we get a whole essence of this man's life from two brief bits, home and church, that he has in Psycho (McIntire comes back for final explain of Mother/Norman, listening again but with no dialogue). There were few active in the 50/60's with this character actor's authority, and he seemed to live at Universal, where Psycho was filmed even though Paramount released it. I love McIntire's phoned "We got worries here" to Norman, and his enunciation of Ar-bo-gast, as if he never heard a name remotely like that in his life. There's reference to Chambers/McIntire offscreen visit to the Bates Motel and thorough questioning of Norman, who I'm sure cooperated fully with the sheriff (no knives here). Chambers remembers what happened with Mrs. Bates ten years before, of which Gavin's Sam Loomis seems not to have a clue. Had Loomis but recently moved to Fairvale? You'd otherwise assume he'd lived there all along and took over the hardware store from a father whose debts Sam has been trying to pay. Would he have been too young to recall the "bad business" out at the Bates place?

Tension reaches summit when Sam and Lila check in the motel to do their own sleuthing. Normanis suspicious and even those who didn't realize he was Mother knew this guy was dangerous. Sam is aggressive with him and we're poised for something awful to happen, especially in light of what's already been shown. Marion's trek up the hill and into the house must have been almost unbearable for 1960 audiences. Sam jabs Norman about the $40,000, Norman not knowing what the hell he's talking about. Sam and Lila had found the slip of paper with the figure written by Marion, so it's confirmed she was there. That fragment must have fluttered out of Marion's hand when she tossed remnants into the toilet, although I'm surprised other scraps didn't survive considering what a weak flush that commode had (wonder what cost was for Hitchcock and Revue to plumb that corner of a soundstage to equip Psycho's shower and loo).

Lila's tour of the Bates house is what we've waited the whole of Psycho to share. Here is where the film's deluxe trailer with Hitchcock makes a perfect companion, even if AH plays his tour largely for laughs. We want to see every inch of this place. So much detail and character revealing stuff. Mother's room is stately and solidly furnished, assuming you could live with statuary and replaced that mattress. But considering Mother's present state, wouldn't her room stink to heaven? A realist treatment would have had Lila throwing up the moment she stepped in. Of course, Hitchcock wouldn't go that far, thank heaven (but what of 1998's not-seen-by-me remake?). And then there is Norman's room. He apparently had dolls as a child. Most of decor reflects that long-before, though Norman does still sleep in the room, his sickly and unmade boy-bed not dissimilar from ones I used to see in homes of film collectors. There is a classical record (Beethoven's Eroica) on the phonograph, not dusty so we can assume Normanplayed it recently.

The shrieking part comes when Norman clonks Sam on the head and heads for the house. When I ran Psycho to a University crowd, they cried out in unison as Lila went toward the fruit cellar, "Don't go down there!!." We don't worry of mechanics that permit Mother's corpse to turn all the way around in her otherwise stationary chair. The moment is just too classic to split hairs over. A swinging light bulb and Norman/Mother's entrance still disorients for its suddenness and ferocity. And those sound effects. Were they a combination of everyone's screams? For me, they are most unearthly of everything heard in Psycho. This is where memory of the movie ends for majority who've seen it, but in 1960, someone had to explain what had made Norman and Mother tick. We're hep to the psycholgy today because Psycho has been imitated so much. I wonder how many switch off at this point, or head back to DVD menu for extras. Ever wonder who holds a record for times seeing Psycho? For myself, I'd say fifteen at least. Does that seem excessive, even allowing for nut I am about this stuff? And yet I'd suspect there are ones who make my 15 viewings look punk. Anybody out there crossed the hundred mark?