[deleted]

Just thought I'd spin this off into a separate thread so as not to get lost in the mix.

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That's a good idea. It also gets you individually into the OP slot. We need you.

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In the "landmark" thread, I mentioned descriptions (and depictions) of violence in early films, particularly comedies. Interestingly, I haven't found much evidence of the public being all that shocked by these things, though some angry parents complained about The Three Stooges when they started getting shown on television. ecarle brought up an old Hitchcock quote about how a person falling down a manhole is funny if you don't see them down there covered in blood. That, along with the victims in "Psycho" being innocent seems to be what makes these things different in the eyes of the public.

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I think the use of violence in slapstick speaks to something in human nature which "isn't very nice," but there anyway.

The Stooges certainly pounded each other, with Moe as the mean, sadistic main tormentor of the other two(who got their licks in, nonetheless.) My parents laid out the Stooge routines pretty directly to me: "If you do any of that in real life, you will kill the other person and go to jail for the rest of your life." So I never did it. But I laughed at it.

And certainly all the Chuck Jones cartoons -- from Bugs Bunny to Road Runner to Sylvester versus Tweety and on and on -- relied on violent hammers on heads, explosions that left blackened faces, all sorts of HILARIOUS violence.

The Home Alone films, while pitched to kids, made plenty of parents laugh at how painful the two burglars were tortured: paint cans to the head, thumb tacks on the floor...

When you think about it, it'd be pretty disturbing to see the Stooges covered in blood, as they'd inevitably be in a Hitchcock film.

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I read a 1960 review of Psycho that said the detective, "falls down the stairs, covered in blood." As we know, he isn't really covered in blood. But that great big slash down his face created the IMPRESSION(in many eyes, both young and old, that he was covered in blood.) It was all in the mind, exaggerated in the memory.

I trust not a drop of blood was shown on any Stooge at any time. It would have ruined the comedy effect.

I would like to point out that I found The Three Stooges to be a big hit in both high school and college circles -- for GUYS. The meanness of Moe pointed to the mean comedy eventually come to come out of Hollywood in general(MASH the movie, Animal House, all the way to The Hangover, where one guy says to another "You know, you're too stupid to insult"), and guys just love it. The meaner and more violent, the better.

I would also like to point out that the greatest 3-D film I ever saw was a Three Stooges 3-D short that I saw along with the 3-D version of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. Whereas Hitchocck was discreet in his use of 3-D(Grace Kelly's hand reaching for the scissors, the chandlier in the flat), the Stooges went nuts: bad guys chased them and threw things at them -- at US -- in 3-D, and it was incredible: pies, hammers, spears, meat cleavers!

But they sure did get violent. I'm thinking specifically of a scene where one of them gets a spike of some kind right in the eye.

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As my parents warned me of this maneuver: "You will blind the other person for life."

Which reminds me: I've been watching the old HBO series Deadwood and one particularly brutal fight between two men -- totally realistic -- ends when one uses his thumb to claw the eyeball out of his opponent. The eyeball hangs from the socket by its optic nerve, or something. Not funny at all. The opponent remains alive, but screaming -- until beaten to death with a wooden stump.

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Of course, compared to "Psycho," were talking cartoonish sound effects vs. screeching violins and the screams of a helpless woman. Still not too far off.

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Well, its like Hitchcock's manhole cover story. Context is everything. Marion's innocence. The long build-up to the murder. The screeching violins. The lingering look at her slow slide to the floor. The sound effects are anything but funny -- we can HEAR that knife puncture flesh even if we don't see it. (NOW we think its funny because casaba melons were stabbed, but we didn't know that.)

Indeed, after awhile Hitchcock even decided that his murder scenes had been too tame (as comedy scenes would be), and he made sure to make the killings in Torn Curtain and Frenzy as brutal, lingering, extended, and realistic(no music) as possible.

Again...context.

Laurel & Hardy also had their moments (spoiler alert). In "The Midnight Patrol," they're actually shot dead (offscreen) after accidentally arresting the chief of police. It's funny, and they did screw up big time, but did they really deserve it, any more so than Arbogast for sneaking into the Bates house uninvited?

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Probably not, but in both cases, we kind of understand the sentiment of the killer.

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FYI, Hitch was apparently a fan of Laurel & Hardy, and it was suggested on another board that he may have had 1930's "The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case" in the back of his mind when he made "Psycho." If you haven't seen it, it does involve a knife-wielding man in drag.

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I"ve heard The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case mentioned in relation to Psycho, and I realize now that its the knife-wielding man in drag. Many times, "ideas are out there but not used to their fullest." We can figure that Hitchcock had that memory of the drag knifer in his memory when he "designed" the look of Mrs. Bates(who looks much different in the movie than as described in Bloch's novel -- in the novel, she wears only a head scarf and her dress is clingy material.)

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A thought: Often folks writing about "Jaws" note for how much of the movie we don't SEE the shark, he only reveals himself in ever-increasing screen time.

Well, that's kind of how Mrs. Bates is presented in Psycho. We see her once "moving past her window," and once "sitting in the window." The only other times we see her are when "she comes out to play"(kill.) And then finally a long approach to her sitting in the chair in the fruit cellar. But for the most part, Mrs. Bates is unseen, worried about, feared. When will she pop up next? She only seems to pop up when she wants to kill somebody. She's rather like the shark in Jaws.

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It's worth mentioning that The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930) is available on youtube, e.g., here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXBqK6y9R8
Unfortunately it's in something like 1.78-1 asp. ratio not the correct 1.33-1 or 4-3/Academy ratio. If you want to see that vid. undistorted you'll have to figure out some way to download the vid. (either via a download-assist website or an extension/add-on to your browser) then watch it locally on your computer with an application like VLC that allows you to choose the desired 4-3 asp. ratio.

Update: OK, the sub-youtube, more Wild-Westy site dailymotion has The L-H Murder Case in the right asp. ratio here:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26gcpa
Make sure you use the HD button to select the highest quality (480p) to watch it in, the print's a beauty (pat's self on back for finding it).