The Shower Scene

78/52: written and directed by Alexandre O. Philippe: Eli Roth, Richard Stanley, Elijah Wood, Peter Bogdanovich, Bret Easton Ellis, Walter Murch, Danny Elfman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Mick Garris, and assorted other film types offer their opinions on Hitchcock's seminal thriller Psycho. The movie frames the discussion within the formal context of the Shower Scene (78 camera set-ups, 52 shots). 

Things get a little too breezy at points, but it's nonetheless a treasure trove of information and opinion on Psycho, Hitchcock, and the film's status as both a deceptive, boundary-pushing hit and a movie-changing movie. Recommended.

High Anxiety (1977)

High Anxiety: written by Mel Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, and Barry Levinson; directed by Mel Brooks; starring Mel Brooks (Richard H. Thorndyke), Madeline Kahn (Victoria Brisbane), Cloris Leachman (Nurse Diesel), Harvey Korman (Dr. Charles Montague), Ron Carey (Brophy), Dick Van Patten (Dr. Wentworth), and Howard Morris (Professor Lilloman) (1977): Mel Brooks is all over the place figuratively and literally in this parody of the films of Alfred Hitchcock. He sings. He dances. He stars. He directs. He co-writes. It's probably no accident that Brooks' films became decreasingly popular as his ego moved him from supporting roles in his own films to lead roles -- this is his second turn as the lead, and the rot has begun to set in, lightly but inevitably.

Still, there are some killer sequences parodying both the specific and the general in Hitchcock's films, from some complicated camerawork under a glass coffee table to a ridiculous riff on Janet Leigh's driving problems in Psycho. And there are killer performances, none moreso than Cloris Leachman as a nurse/dominatrix with truly peculiar line-readings and physical mannerisms. Recommended.

His Dark Materials

Psycho: adapted by Joseph Stefano from the novel by Robert Bloch; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates), Janet Leigh (Marion Crane), Vera Miles (Lila Crane), John Gavin (Sam Loomis), and Martin Balsam (Arboghast) (1960): Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece still shines undiminished, a sinister puzzle-box. Taken from an already strong source (Robert Bloch's novel of the same name), Psycho improved upon it by making hotel-owner and mother-aficianado Norman Bates thin and sympathetic.

It's the movie's generation of sympathy for Norman I'll deal with here. Anthony Perkins should have won some sort of acting Oscar for this performance. Jittery, occasionally creepy, put-upon, repressed: and a lot of other emotions, all of them pitch perfect.

Camerawork amplifies the greatness of the performance, again and again staging Norman Bates in an inferior position to other male characters. One great blink-and-miss-it moment shows Perkins flinching almost unnoticeably as Martin Balsam's private detective deliberately leans into Norman's envelope of private space. The camerawork runs parallel to similar set-ups involving Janet Leigh's Marion Crane, her space invaded by lecherous oil-men and looming, sun-glass-obscured cops. Crane and Bates are twins in many ways, light and dark.

Oh, and it's the first American movie to show the inside of the bowl while a toilet flushes. Really, how much more do you want? A nearly subliminal use of a skull superimposed on a major character's head? One of the most distinctive scores of all time? Highly recommended.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974): written by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper; directed by Tobe Hooper; starring Marilyn Burns (Sally Hardesty), Allen Danziger (Jerry), Paul A. Partain (Franklin Hardesty), William Vail (Kirk), Teri McMinn (Pam), Edwin Neal (Hitchhiker), Jim Siedow (Old Man), Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface) and John Dugan (Grandfather) (1974): 

One of the remarkable things about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is how little graphic violence actually appears on screen. The makers pretty much manage what Alfred Hitchcock did in the shower scene in Psycho in terms of tricking the audience into believing it's seen terrible things that never actually appear on screen, but they do so for 90 minutes, not 17 seconds.

It's a terrific movie, filled with dread and grotesque comedy, terrible images, and sudden action. Reviewers who compared it to a nightmare were quite right, I think -- the suddenness of occurrences in nightmares, and certain things all people dream fearfully of, especially flight from something dreadful and perhaps inescapable. And then they woke up. Maybe.

Made for very little money, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre nonetheless doesn't seem low-budget. The acting is solid throughout; the grainy 16 mm film stock perfect for the grunginess of the environment the five unlucky travelers find themselves in. Hooper and company also conjure up a nightmarish soundscape meant to suggest what cattle would hear in a slaughterhouse. That works too.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre made an astonishing multiple of its production budget in several theatrical releases in the 1970's and early 1980's. It kick-started what I tend to think of as The Bad Road-trip sub-genre in horror movies, one which thrives to this day. It also pretends to be a re-creation of a "true story" (it isn't), and it gives us one of the first iconic monsters in post-classical horror movies, the human-mask-wearing Leatherface. Who keeps a pet chicken in a bird cage. Seriously. And it's a weirdly disturbing moment, the revelation of that chicken.

Another reason I think the film disturbed so many is its attention to suggestively occult set design. There's nothing supernatural about the monsters in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but their interior decorating (well, and exterior decorating in a nearby cemetery) gestures towards a baroque world of fetishized death and decay.

Nearly 40 years after its release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains an influential classic in any film genre. It's a work of transformative brilliance that ends with what feels like one long scream climaxing in a chase sequence that's like a horrifying Keystone Kops routine. John Laroquette supplies the opening voice-over narration, for which he was paid one marijuana joint. Groovy. Highly recommended.