I
STAFF
’m surrounded by Psycho. I go to a movie downtown and the theatre lobby has a mural featuring the film. I watch The Simpsons and see the relationship between Norman and Mother spoofed by Principal Skinner and his mom. I read a magazine article about the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone film A Fistful of Dollars and read a pull quote in which Eastwood says, “To me, Psycho was 30 times more violent.” While all this demonstrates the film’s pop culture staying power, it’s the Eastwood quote that I find the most
intriguing. The star/director pairing of Eastwood and Leone was very similar to that of Anthony Perkins and Alfred Hitchcock in the way that both changed an entire genre by re-imagining it through violence – swift, brutal, ni- hilistic violence carried out by a loner. The differences are that Eastwood played a mega-masculine anti-hero, meting out a dirty justice to scumbags with his gun, while Perkins played a cross-dressing sympathetic villain, attacking women with a knife. But both characters are psychopaths, if you go by the dictionary definition (from
dictionary.com): “A person
afflicted with a personality disorder characterized by a tendency to commit antisocial and sometimes violent acts and a failure to feel guilt for such acts.” But wait, Norman Bates is absolutely riddled with guilt, making him technically less of a psycho than our utterly remorseless cowboy. Then there are the actual body counts in the films. According to the Internet Movie Database Parent’s Guide,
73 people are killed in A Fistful of Dollars, while Psycho has two deaths during its entire running time. That’s a difference of 71 kills, so by Eastwood’s math, you’d have to multiply that by 30, requiring 2130 people to be killed in order to make Fistful as violent as Psycho! The point here is that viewers tend not to perceive violence based on body count as much as they do the nature of the violence portrayed onscreen. Although A Fistful of Dollars has its share of brutality – beatings, a slicing, some prolonged gunshot deaths –
in general, as in most westerns, when someone gets shot, there’s a bit of blood and they die immediately. We don’t dwell on the midpoint between life and death, like we do in Psycho, and that’s what feels so violent, so ut- terly horrific. We’re placed so firmly in that prolonged moment of violence that Hitchcock forces us to experience it from the viewpoint of both the victim and the killer (making us directly complicit), and, for the first time in cin- ematic history, audiences literally witnessed the life drain out of someone – all to the nightmarish strains of Bernard Herrmann’s shrill string section, for maximum impact. And not only are we forced to watch the entire act, the camera lingers on Marion’s dead face, so we contemplate the consequences. (It’s important to note that in Joseph Stefano’s original script, we were to see Marion’s entire naked, lifeless body draped face down over the edge of the tub, with stab wounds in full view, but Hitchcock knew censors wouldn’t let it pass, so ap- parently he didn’t film it – though Gus Van Sant re-inserted the shot in his 1998 remake.) Hitchcock, through one of filmdom’s most elaborately staged sequences, used the illusion of cinema to destroy
the illusion of death. He showed audiences that between life and death, there is dying. It’s an emotionally dev- astating moment that changes you permanently – like the first time you ever see a dead body at a funeral. But Hitchcock did that to millions of people, and the fact that Psycho made him a millionaire goes to show
that audiences, fifteen years removed from the real-life horrors of the last World War, were ready for a shift. The imitators, from Hammer to William Castle, flooded the market with rip-offs that played the one-upmanship game with violence and blood. But those productions didn’t have the talents of the rotund, bald man in a bank man- ager’s suit and his collaborators. (Nor did the scores of A Fistful of Dollar imitators have the talents of Sergio Leone and his crew, for that matter.) They didn’t have the technical prowess mixed with the rich subtext and artful sensibilities. (Aside from the symbolic “The Rape of Lucretia” painting that Norman peers through into the hotel room, Psycho was directly influenced by the art of Edward Hopper and Salvador Dali.) And they certainly couldn’t replicate the shock value of that shower scene that took place in the Bates Motel, halfway between that Old Dark House on the hill and the modern highway. As David Thomson has made clear in his writings on Hitchcock, the filmmaker made damn sure that once that shower curtain was torn away there was no turn- ing back. If we could, we wouldn’t still be surrounded by Psycho,
50 years later.
publisher Rodrigo Gudiño
ManaGinG eDitor Monica S. Kuebler
art Director Gary Pullin
office ManaGer Jessa Sobczuk
MarketinG/aDvertisinG ManaGer
Jody Infurnari PH: 905-985-0430 FX: 905-985-4195 E:
jody@rue-morgue.com
CONTRIBUTORS
BRAD ABRAHAM STUART F. ANDREWS BRENTON BENTZ A.S. BERMAN LYLE BLACKBURN JOHN W. BOWEN PHIL BROWN JAMES BURRELL PEDRO CABEZUELO PAUL CORUPE JASON DICKSON JAMES FISHER HANNAH GARCES-SLOANE THE GORE-MET MARK R. HASAN
CLAIRE HORSNELL ALYX KENDLE LAST CHANCE LANCE ANDREW LEE AARON VON LUPTON JOSEPH O’BRIEN GEORGE PACHECO JESS PEACOCK JASON PICHONSKY SEAN PLUMMER STACIE PONDER APRIL SNELLINGS ASHLEY THORPE ERIC VEILLETTE
RUE MORGUE #105 would not have been possible without the valuable assistance of: Jason Allentoff of
thepsychomovies.com, Ray Costa and Alea Walker at Costa Communications, Robert Gal- luzzo, Mick Garris, Colin Geddes, Brett Hall, Mary-Beth Hollyer, Livia Jonaitis, Kate Hutchinson, Beth Krakower at CineMedia Pro- motions, Marie-Ève Larin, Patrick “Babylegs” McBrearty, Serena Morrison, Al McMullan, Nicole Pullin, Zinka Shankland, Garry, Linda and Tricia Tuminski, Marc Vienneau, Dave, Stephanie and Lucas Wright, our awesome Festival of Fear volunteers and Mother.
R.I.P. Lucky
Cover:PSYCHo ’60 Designed by Gary Pullin.
Rue Morgue Magazine is published monthly (with the exception of Febru- ary) and accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photos, art or other materials. Freelance submissions accompanied by S.A.S.E. will be seriously considered and, if necessary, returned.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the Canada Magazine Fund, toward our editorial costs. RUE MORGUE Magazine #105 ISSN 1481 – 1103 Agreement No. 40033764 Entire contents copyright MARRS MEDIA INC. 2010. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN CANADA.
dave@rue-morgue.com RM6
eDitor-in-chief dave alexander
associate eDitor trevor tuminski
Graphic DesiGner Justin Erickson
copy eDitor Liisa ladouceur
financial controller Marco Pecota
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