Hooray for Hitchcock

Last night, we discovered a movie we’d missed since its 2012 release. Hitchcock with Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins is great fun, a well-acted, fictionalized account of the creation of the thriller Psycho.

James d’Arcy uncannily recreates Anthony Perkins’ voice and mannerisms as the young actor playing Norman Bates, Psycho‘s notorious nut case.

And Anthony Hopkins is amazing, instilling just the right amount of humor in his performance as the great director. Those of us who grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents on our black-and-white console TVs in the late 1950s knew a comedian lurked behind Alfred’s somber face. His punch lines were often sly and self-deprecating. He enjoyed poking fun at himself.

That’s all captured in this flick, now streaming on Netflix.

Hitchcock was a trip down memory lane for another reason.

Ted and I remember the audience oath of secrecy, one of the PR tools that shrewdly created the buzz around the movie’s release in 1960. It was one of Hollywood’s first “spoiler alerts,” and it got attention. Ted didn’t see the film until years later, but, to the best of my memory, I saw it with my older sisters when the movie made its way to the Polk Theater in Columbia, Tennessee, in the summer of 1960.

Today, I find it hard to believe that my parents let me see Psycho at the tender age of nine. It wasn’t only that my family had heard the movie was shocking in its depiction of violent murder and steamy (at least for 1960) bedroom scenes between actors Janet Leigh and John Gavin. The word on the street was that the tale of Norman Bates and his mother could inflict serious psychological trauma.

To underscore the point, a story flew around Columbia that the father of one of my friends had seen the movie on an out-of-town business trip … and kept his motel room light on all night long afterward. The kicker was that Mr. Stephens was an FBI investigator, the very model of a tough, fearless dude.

Perhaps my parents’ leniency was due to the fact that I was a big Hitchcock fan, even though, in those days, my Alfred fix typically came from tamer fare, like the book featured above.

Published in 1962, it was hands-down my favorite gift under the Christmas tree that year.

My dad and I took turns reading the stories together before bedtime. I loved being spooked, all the while knowing the terror was soft-pedaled for younger readers.

Not so with Psycho.

It lived up to the hype.

Inflicted trauma … for real.

I’m living proof.

And I’m not the only one.

Because who doesn’t check to be sure the bolt is on the door when traveling alone and preparing to take a shower, whether the room is in a small-town motor court like the one where Janet Leigh as Marion Crane met her demise, or a high-rise hotel in a big city?

Who doesn’t turn on all the lights and leave the bathroom door ajar, closing the shower curtain only part of the way so we can be ever-vigilant in case Norman intrudes while we shampoo?

All these decades later, the shower–at least when I am traveling alone in a strange town–is still a chamber of horrors. In fact, I entertain the theory that the shower curtains with a gauzy, see-through material at the top and a heavier fabric down below were designed by someone whose parents let him see Psycho when he was nine. Why else would one need a shower curtain with a window?

We’ve got to hand it to you, Hitch. You were good. You hit a nerve.

The film with Mirren and Hopkins pays a fitting, glossy tribute.

And makes us want to see the original all over again.

A 1960 newspaper ad for Psycho

Note: For a different critical assessment of Hitchcock, here’s a review that takes issue with the movie’s light-handed approach. I can see the author’s point. And yet I’ll stand by my opinion that the film is an entertaining and nicely performed piece of weeknight entertainment.