MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > A Field Trip to My "Psycho" Past

A Field Trip to My "Psycho" Past

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Without covering the whole distance on the story, I will note yet again that my lifelong adventure with Psycho began not with its 1960 release, but with its 1965 RE-release, which triggered all manner of neighborhood discussion(from the older kids and parents who had seen the 1960 release, or read the book, or both) about how horrifying -- and sick -- it was.

I wasn't allowed to see that 1965 theatrical re-release. And my attempt to watch Psycho in September 1966 on the CBS Friday Night movie was dashed with millions of others when CBS pulled the broadcast over the knifing of US Senator candidate Charles Percy's daughter that week.

Psycho disappeared into the mire of the "talked about and unseen" until November of 1967, when large billboards started to appear around Los Angeles(where I lived) trumpting that Psycho would air LOCALLY on a late Saturday night(November 18.) Its that billboard that chilled me to the bone, and created an "image" of the still-unseen Psycho that never really matched the movie as I finally saw it. The "image" was scarier in my mind. "Psycho" was worse in my mind because of my vision of that billboard.

The billboard (a merge of Tony Perkins covering his mouth with one hand and holding his other hand out; and the Bates Mansion with Perkins' shadowy Frankenstein-like figure standing in front of it) became a TV guide print ad and a slide for TV commercials where the announcer said: "See the movie that gave the nation nightmares: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho!"

It was quite a time. And when Monday arrived two days after that Saturday night November 18 broadcast(sweeps month for ratings)...kids on the schoolyard split into two groups: (1) Those who got to watch and (2) those who didn't. I didn't. I asked a guy who did:

Me: So did you get to see Psycho?
Him: Yes. And I wish I DIDN'T.

Boy did it scare him.

Etc.

All of this boils down to a phrase I use around here: "My Psycho isn't your Psycho." My Psycho comes with all that 60's late childhood angst, awe and wonder attached.

And this week, I went back...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I get to Los Angeles from time to time, usually only about once or twice a year.

But within those trips I am not always able to visit the LA suburbs of my youth.

This time, I was. I drove around the old neighborhood -- looked at my old house, my old elementary school, my old junior high - and took in the nostalgia.

Part of it -- but hardly all of it -- are those Psycho memories. How can they not be on my mind, given how often I drop by here.

The billboard tower is gone. As is the gas station that had been under it. One year when I came down, the billboard tower was up -- and the billboard was in Spanish language. But now that's gone, too.

I drove by the schoolyard where key "Psycho" discussions took place...many of them on the running track during P.E. The time, the place, the "feel" of those childhood years came back strongly.

There were plenty of non-Psycho memories in driving around that town, but those aren't really memories to share here. Suffice it to say that parents and siblings and long-lost friends were part of it. It wasn't a hard trip to take, but it had its emotion.

Truth be told, the same playground where Psycho got talked about, I realized as I drove past it, had driven playground discussions of Rear Window and Vertigo and North by Northwest in those days too. Or other horror movies like House on Haunted Hill and Straigt-Jacket. As well as The Magnificent Seven on TV and The Sons of Katie Elder and The Professionals at the movies, or whatever else was driving TV-based movie conversation in those days.

Anyway, just a report. The drive into the "Psycho" territory of my youth did this time -- as it has before -- have an interesting effect: a memory ever on the edge of being lost to time(how Psycho hit me and everybody around me in that corridor of 1965-1967), came back. Strong.

My Psycho isn't your Psycho....