Just lately, I saw Psycho, a film by Alfred Hitchcock.
I was forced do watch it for English class.
I will also be forced to write an essay – “Is Psycho Still a Masterpiece: Discuss”.
I do not usually write essays. I have to write five essays for history, you see. I have done one of them, and I consider that a lot. I will probably fail History, but who gives a shit? Not me. I don’t do work. I’m a lady of leisure.
But just lately, I found my mind engaged. I found myself wanting to write this essay. You see, Psycho had an effect on me nothing else I have seen, or read has ever had. Sure, films have excited me, have made me have nightmares. But no big screen feature length production has ever actually made me feel …sick. Sick and a bit terrified, and a bit amazed. I was doing fine up to the bit when Lila Crane tapped on Mrs. Bates’ shoulder, and the corpse turns around and you see that face with the shriveled skin, and then the man dressed as his mother comes in and you hear that horrible screeching noise again, and then it looks back at the skull and you see the lamplight flickering in the eye sockets…
The shower scene. The famous shower scene. First time I saw it, I was fine. Or I thought I was. Then that veiled figure looming larger and larger started getting to me. It reminds me of speeding death, the unknown, looming larger and larger behind you, like a bird of prey. (Hey, a bird of prey! All them stuffed birds in the parlour… that’s another thing. The more you think about it, the more you see the details.) And then the shower curtain is drawn back and the menace is real, suddenly there. Along with that screeching noise. And then she gets killed, and you see how a human being turns slowly into a corpse.
A week or so back, I stayed in a hotel. I was just about to draw the shower curtain when this awful feeling of fear came over me. It stays with you, this film.
The thing is, it’s just creepy. Worse than those horror flicks you have nowadays, the ones that dwell on violence like it’s a great pleasure. They make you feel physically sick, like you want to vomit. This film makes you feel sick in the head. Somehow the images, like when Lila is running up the hill to the house, or when Mr. Bates is coming after her, and the way he stands next to the house, a long lean figure, and the way he turnes his head like a bird of prey, make you want to turn away. Reject them. Say no, this would never happen, not to me. But you can’t, because unlike most other horror movies, the monster is not a hairy green beast with claws. It is not a chainsaw obsessed maniac that you happen to meet on your travels. The monster isn’t even the murderer.
Let me explain myself. The antagonist was disturbed, but it wasn’t his fault. He was disturbed, mad, had been since childhood. This madness led him to murder. He was an innocent victim, not the monster. The monster was inside his mind, like a maggot at the core of an apple. The film seems to say, this could happen to anyone. Remember the shot of the blood going down the plughole? That plughole is pulling innocence into it, until the innocence turns into darkness.
Psycho, indeed.
