Fans will be screaming about PSYCHO’s fiftieth anniversary screenings at Film Forum (courtesy Photofest)
PSYCHO (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 29 – November 4
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org/films/psycho.html
Yes, it’s now been fifty years since Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO first started scaring people silly, especially those considering taking a shower. (Rumors that Americans smelled pretty foul in the early 1960s have never been substantiated.) The master of suspense turned to horror in 1960, transporting Robert Bloch’s novel, inspired by the case of serial killer Ed Gein, onto celluloid for all time. Anthony Perkins is at his creepy best as Norman Bates, the owner of a motel in the middle of nowhere who has a thing for stuffed birds and his mother. He gets somewhat titillated when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) shows up one night; she is on the run with a wad of cash that isn’t hers. Marion’s sister (Vera Miles), boyfriend (John Gavin), and a private detective (Martin Balsam) are trying to find her, but they’re not gonna have much luck. PSYCHO became the blueprint for psychological terror, a thriller that doesn’t stab you in the back with red herrings and gore and violence. Instead, it gets deep inside your head — where it will stay the rest of your life. Film Forum is celebrating the film’s silver anniversary by showing it wrapped around Halloween weekend, just to make things extra frightening. Film critic David Thomson will introduce the 7:45 screening on October 29 and sign copies of THE MOMENT OF PSYCHO and THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM afterward.