Why does this get an R rating? - Psycho (1960) Discussion

But, it's a tittie, Hippo, plain as day.

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

Ever see Airplane? There was a set of titties that were on screen for a good 3 seconds and it was impossible to miss, and that gets a PG. Did you see Clash of the Titans?

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[–] jasonbourne (1027) 6 years ago

Aww, man. Did I miss it playing in theaters again?

It was rated R because of the flushing toilet scene.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

There was no MPAA ratings code in 1960 when Psycho was released.

In America at least, it could be seen by all ages.

Indeed, in a 1960 review of Psycho in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the critic wrote that he attended a first-day matinee where the theater was filled with..children. Evidently their parents had dropped them off thinking this was a "mild" pre-teen horror movie in the William Castle tradition. The kids were screaming non-stop wrote the critic, and "one child fell into the aisle." Whatever that means.

In Britain, this was not the case. I believe that the movie got "Certificate X" status and was age-prohibited. Same in New Zealand and other countries.

The first version of the MPAA ratings code emerged in November 1968. It was like this:

G
M (like a PG)
R
X

There were ads in movie theaters with the announcer saying "Jim-Rex? What's Jim-Rex?" GMRX.

When Psycho got a re-release in early 1969 ("See the version of Psycho that TV Dared Not Show!") it was given...an M. (PG equivalent.)

People confused the M with the X, so soon the MPAA created the GP for the M. That was confused with the G, so it was flipped to PG. In 1984, after Temple of Doom proved too grisly for its PG, Steven Spielberg himself recommended the creation of the PG-13.

How and when Psycho got its "R" rating remains very mysterious. The "R" started appearing on VHS tapes for sale around 1984; there was no theatrical re-release of a movie that was shown on a lot on local TV in the 70's, and shown UNCUT (the breast, the toilet, the murders in full.)

One guess is that Universal REQUESTED the "R" to make Psycho seem more scary than it was.

Another guess is that the main event in Psycho -- the stabbing of a defenseless naked woman -- was deemed by a more sensitive MPAA as too sexual and sexist and needing an "R." (The Wild Bunch almost got re-rated NC-17 in the 90's for similar reasons.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In any event, Psycho on its first release in 1960, its first re-release in 1965 and its second re-release in 1969....NEVER had an R rating.

The only "true" Hitchcock film rated "R" was his 1972 sexual psycho shocker Frenzy, which had an extended rape-strangling, nudity, cussing, the works. THAT movie earned its "R."

These were the ratings given to the three Hitchcock films released after the GMRX MPAA code came out in 1968:

Topaz(1969) M
Frenzy (1972) R
Family Plot (1976) PG

Psycho got an M in 1969 and an R in the 80's.

All 5 "lost Hitchcocks"(made in the 40s and 50s) re-relased in the 80's, got "PGs": Rope, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo.

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

The VHS tape I used to have said R and my blu ray after the movie is over a blue screen comes up and it says "This motion picture has been rated R by the MPAA"

That is where I am getting this from and I gotta say there is barely anything in this film that justifies and R rating. Again Temple of Doom gets a PG and Pinocchio/2001 A Space Odyseey/Planet of the Apes get a G.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The VHS tape I used to have said R and my blu ray after the movie is over a blue screen comes up and it says "This motion picture has been rated R by the MPAA"

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Yes. I have seen that "official" blue screen shot of the R for Psycho and it would indicate that the MPAA itself "officially" gave Psycho an R.

Around 1984.

In 1969, the MPAA gave Psycho an "M" (PG.)

Of course, "everything's relative."

When Psycho came out in 1960(so I've read in many an account), it was PARENTS, not the ratings system, that forbid kids from going to it. That LA kiddie matinee recounted in the LA Herald Examiner was maybe an anomaly, once the word was out on Psycho, it became "forbidden" in many households, for kids to see.

And in 1960, Psycho felt like an "R" to many older folks who were used to Doris Day and Disney and John Wayne -- and even more sedate Hitchcock films like To Catch a Thief and The Trouble with Harry. The sheer length of time that Janet Leigh spends "under the knife" was sickening, nightmarish, the Worst Horror Ever Put into an American Studio Film. The screaming shock of the attack on Arbogast was a massive jolt to the nervous system and the knife gash to his face (said young friends of mine) had the remembered-wrong impact of "his face being split open and spurting blood"(it wasn't that bad unless you IMAGINED it so in retrospect.) And the reveals? That Norman killed his own mother, gutted her, STUFFED her? Became her. This was probably an NC-17 movie to some folks in 1960.

But by its 1969 second re-release, it had been shown on TV pretty close to uncut. And "Night of the Living Dead" had come out in '68 (ahead of, and without, any MPAA rating.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

That is where I am getting this from and I gotta say there is barely anything in this film that justifies and R rating.

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In 1969, The Wild Bunch got an R rating, almost entirely for the gore of the shootouts (but also, a little nudity and some cussing.)

In 1995, The Wild Bunch was re-submitted to the MPAA(some non-violent cut material from '69 was added in), and the MPAA gave the film an "NC-17." There was a lot of outrage from Scorsese and others and the film was re-rated R. But the movie had not changed in terms of violence, at all. The TIMES had changed.

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Again Temple of Doom gets a PG and Pinocchio/2001 A Space Odyseey/Planet of the Apes get a G.

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The MPAA ratings system has always been "subjective." There was a good documentary about 10 years ago that made the accusation that when a powerful studio or director needed an "easier" rating(an R instead of an NC-17, which rules out advertising and promotion in some newspapers) - they get it, whereas a powerless indiefilm maker does not.

The MPAA started its 1968 rating system unsure of itself. The Italian Job with Michael Caine was given a G even though it opens with a released convict being offered a roomful of hookers as a homecoming present. True Grit with John Wayne was given a G even though there's a scene where a man gets his fingers cut off and is then stabbed in the heart. The MPAA seemed to think that "G" meant "all those movies we used to release with some sex and some violence" and that R and X were to be saved for nudity, etc. Soon the G was moved to kiddie movies only -- and some cartoon movies put in one cuss word just to GET a "PG" (G being seen for pre-schoolers.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Planet of the Apes and 2001 were released in 1968, but before the MPAA code came out in November. I expect that they got their ratings on "re-release."

Just as "Psycho" evidently did in 1984 (M to R.) I assume that to be released on VHS for sale, Psycho had to be re-submitted to the MPAA and that triggered the R. I'm still willing to bet that some Universal executive told the MPAA, "why don't you give this an R so it seems competitive with Friday the 13th and The Thing."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

barely anything in this film that justifies an R rating.

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This is an interesting point, isn't it?

Keeping in mind that the MPAA voters are pretty much subjective in their decision making, you would think that Psycho should have stayed a PG(M in 1969):

There are no cuss words.

We never see anyone having sex(though Gavin and Leigh can be assumed to have had it.)

That nudity is pretty damn hidden in the shower (though if two nipples get you an "R" -- there they are.)

Compared to most slasher movies, the two killings hardly show anything, and there is minimal blood.

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But still, its sort of like the brouhaha over The Wild Bunch in 1995: What we are defending here are scenes of violence being inflicted on people in very cruel and brutal ways. Who is to say that the killings of Marion and Arbogast didn't disturb SOMEONE given what they are REALLY about(the victims are stabbed over and over and over; knife death is among the most painful to be experienced.) Why not say: this should not be viewed by a child without their parent there?

And there's this: Psycho is about (at heart) a SEX killer. Norman as Mrs. Bates is committing a sex crime when he kills Marion; it is triggered by his sexual arousal after he peeps on Marion nude(not shown, but implied). There is reason for concern not only about this as content for "a child" to see -- but in the risk that sexual killings are considered a danger for real life "copycats" to emulate(both Psycho and Frenzy "helped" inspire some real life killers to kill, it is said.)

So I dunno. Psycho gets shown on TV all the time, day or night, uncut now, but maybe in the spirit of the times, declaring the movie as "not for kids to see alone" is a good moral thing to do.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

BTW, that remains the funniest thing about the MPAA ratings code to me: It is really about whether or not films can be viewed by "kids," with cut-off ages of 17 (R) and 18(NC-17) after which age, you can see any movie you want(including porn.)

As someone for whom 18 is decades behind me, I find it funny that I STILL notice if I am viewing an R rated movie("Hey, there's some nudity and a sex scene, this must be rated R.") I might add that now that when I go to movies, I don't look up the rating at all -- it doesn't show up on screen til the end, so I find myself guessing DURING the film("Oh, this must be an R.")

These are ratings designed to protect children from sex and violence but that still clue adults in to the fact that there IS sex and violence in these films.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

I recall that in the early days of movie ratings, most films were rated G or R, G for most films that would have been made under the old studio system and R for new Hollywood. Relatively few PGs.

2001 was a roadshow and still in release in November of 68, so it was rated.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I recall that in the early days of movie ratings, most films were rated G or R, G for most films that would have been made under the old studio system

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Like the John Wayne True Grit? Sure, it seems. Like the Michael Caine Italian Job? A little less obvious.

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and R for new Hollywood.

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Well, the New Hollywood filmmakers were the ones who leaped right in with cussing, sex, ultraviolence.

Still-working directors like Howard Hawks(Rio Lobos) and George Seaton(Airport) weren't having the R.

But...in 1972...both Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder "embraced the R." The sex-killer shocker Frenzy for Hitch; the nudity-and-adultery love story "Avanti!" for Billy.

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Relatively few PGs.

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This was a weird category. It went from "M" to "GP" to "PG," and was then given the additional level of "PG-13" to accommodate FUTURE movies like "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

Back in those years, Spielberg did seem to get away with a lot. He bore some attacks about Jaws getting a PG. Wrote LA Times critic Charles Champlin "The first thing to say about Jaws is that the rating is grievously wrong. This should be an R." The MPAA eventually responded that the film got a PG because an animal, not a human, was doing the killing(perhaps this explains the re-rating of Psycho to an R almost a decade later.)

Raiders of the Lost Ark was almost "Disney meets Peckinpah." Men got shot through the head and the arm(Indy), and that guide famously got spikes through the head at the beginning. But it had a "kiddie" feel to the sheeny-shiny Disney-esque visuals...and Spielberg got a PG again.

Finally, in 1998, Spielberg went for full-tilt-gore of a most realistic sort, with Saving Private Ryan, and he never really went back. Minority Report and Munich are very savage R-rated violent films.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

2001 was a roadshow and still in release in November of 68, so it was rated.

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Articles are appearing right now on the 50th Anniversary of 2001, citing an April 1968 release date.
It would be interesting to think that, as it was still in release when the MPAA ratings came in November -- the rating would be ADDED. I recall seeing the film on February 10th, 1969 at a Cinerama theater, because it was the birthday film of a friend.

True Grit and The Italian Job(both 1969 films) remain the most violent and sexual of films I know to have gotten the "G." But the MPAA guys and gals were quite rusty back then.

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As has been famously noted, the modern-day MPAA is more touchier about sex than violence. "Show a man fondling a breast," said Jack Nicholson, "and you get an R, but show him cut off that breast and you get a PG."

The documentary about the MPAA censors got downright hilarious in specifying how many "thrusts" could take a sex scene from a PG-13 to an R to an NC-17. It is as if sex in modern non-porn movies only passes the censors when the sexual thrust(literally or figuratively) has been removed.

I try to think of some movies where the sex was graphic but consensual and loving, and only a few come to mind: Goodbye Columbus(but the couple breaks up at the end), Don't Look Now(kinda/sorta, but the couple were mourning a murdered daughter), North Dallas Forty(an early scene where Nick Nolte is cheating with his boss' fiancé, very raw), and that one just a few years back with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal( but after establishing the couple as nude and constantly lusty, they deal Hathaway a Ruinous Physical Disease.) I can't say that any of these movies were committed to happy endings, just some great sex before the bad things happen....

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

...which reminds me: Basic Instinct, of course. Consensual as all get out, but one of the male partners get gorily killed...DURING sex. (Which also happens in Gone Girl.)

Speaking of Basic Instinct, its screenwriter, Joe Esterhazas, wrote of seeing Psycho as a teenager in Ohio. He said "it was the most exciting movie I ever saw in my life."

So someone else who was inspired by Psycho -- surely Basic Instinct has a psycho and some bloody murders (including a cop who gets Arbogasted.) But Basic Instinct wasn't written nearly as well as Psycho.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

ANd whe nthe 5 missing Hitchcock films were rereleased to theaters in 1983 they were rated PG. Probably would have been a G iin 1968.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

ANd whe nthe 5 missing Hitchcock films were rereleased to theaters in 1983 they were rated PG. Probably would have been a G iin 1968.

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Yes, this is probably another instance of the MPAA "helping the movie get an audience" by rating it a little more risqué/violent than it really was. All five of them.

THAT said, Rope opens with a pretty brutal murder( at the end of it, a strangling with definite sexual analogies; one of the killers bespeaks his pleasure when the victim went limp), Rear Window features an off-screen dismemberment of a body; The Man Who Knew Too Much has a fairly graphic stab to the back and the threat of a young boy getting strangled by his kidnappers(one of them tests a rope in his hands), The Trouble with Harry has a fair amount of sexual innuendo and the "distasteful" moving around of that body, and Vertigo has a suggestion of elicit adulterous sex to it.

But...all of them played on TV in the 60s(save Rope) with no edits. So G would make sense, too.

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[–] LetThemEatCake (2717) 6 years ago

they didn't overreact.

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

Gotcha, so children sold into slavery/beaten with whips/drinking and smoking is OK but a flushing toilet and an out of focus shot of a nipple is just too much, makes sense.

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[–] Retromogul (1082) 6 years ago

I take that the judgements of the MPAA are as subjective and flimsy as the classification board in my country (Australia), where films also go decades and forgotten without a classification revision which could be the case for Psycho. That could easily pass a PG 13 in my view.
In Australia it has been classified an M (Only Reccomended for Mature Audiences 15 years and over) since the advent of home video in the 1980's. M is the umbrella equivalent for PG13 and lesser R rated fare. The two higher ratings are MA (Mature Audiences Only 15 years and over) and R (Adults. 18 over). NC17 and heavy unrated fare would fall under our R.

As mentioned, films go decades without a ratings revision and downgrade. Examples in my country are the Dirty Harry series and Halloween, still classified with the highest rating (R), when they should be an M in my opinion.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Interesting information about Australian differences (and equivalences) to the ratings systems.

The American ratings system is of some fascination to me.

I literally grew up as the ratings changed -- the "R" rating hit a few years ahead of my teenage years and I spent those teenage years playing "hide and seek" to see "R" films. Sometimes my dad would take me to an "R" if I begged -- and what embarrassment for both of us. When a sex scene came on, HE would have enjoyed it if I wasn't there, I would have enjoyed it if HE wasn't there -- but sitting together, it was embarrassing(maybe the "R" rating was designed to foment such parent-child embarrassment: "You can't see this movie without your parent sitting right next to you and both of you being embarrassed.")

Other times, I would just walk right in to an R film at an indoor without parents. Or most often, a group of teens including me would go to the drive-in, where the R rating wasn't enforced either.

On a "global" scale, the coming of the "R" rating(more than the limited "X") suddenly set the American and international screens afire with all sorts of forbidden pleasures -- AND tortures. Its funny how, more often than not, the "R" rated film traded on murder and rape as the core of the film: Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Frenzy, Deliverance, Chinatown. Its as if showing sex as a normal, healthy consensual thing was considered more taboo than showing violent rape (well, the incest in Chinatown was supposedly consensual -- but was it?).

Around 1977 and the famous "Star Wars" debut, the fever of "R"-rated ultraviolence and kinky sex faded away as "PG" and special effects became more of the norm(you can make more money without an "R.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Comparatively in the age of Psycho: wheras later the debate would be "should this movie get an X and be seen by few people or an R and be seen by more people" in the year of Psycho, the censors were about "should this movie be released at all to the public at all?"

There was a 1979 article in the LA Times about the first time the censors looked at Psycho in a screening room. After the movie was over and the lights came up, the head censor said: "Well, this movie cannot be released." THAT's how bad Psycho looked to the censor professionals IN 1960. Hitchcock had to go to battle, using superagent Lew Wasserman and lawyers for the battle, to get Psycho released with the MPAA seal at all.

And yet, the movie that censors at first said "cannot be released" looks like a PG today.

Or does it?

One of the weird things about Psycho to me is that while the violence may be minimal today, the film still has an overall feeling of creepiness and of a sordid world we'd rather not visit in real life, secrets that really ARE bad. And a line like "If any of that money's gone, I'll replace it with her fine, soft flesh" strikes me as just as bad as any profanity or obscenity would be.

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[–] Retromogul (1082) 6 years ago

Some fascinating insight there. Also interesting that you mentioned the appeal of the new R rating at the time that attracted you as a minor to see those films. I had similar experiences as a teen, always on the lookout for horror and action movie videos specifically rated R.

Completely get where you're coming from with Psycho. It's theme, tone and impact doesnt seem to fit within the standard, light PG13 fare even if the violence and gore is minimal.

In Australia, an R rating wasn't introduced until 1971. Prior to that, censorship was very restrictive and a variety of films were banned here without a rating to accomdate them. In contrast, sex and nudity was rampant in Australian films throughout the 1970's - with much more liberal attitudes towards sex on screen than the US. We even had a major network soap opera - "Number 96" - that featured full frontal nudity and gay and lesbian love scenes.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Also interesting that you mentioned the appeal of the new R rating at the time that attracted you as a minor to see those films. I had similar experiences as a teen, always on the lookout for horror and action movie videos specifically rated R.

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It was an interesting dichotomy: these movies were rated "R" ostensibly to keep pre-teens and teenagers out(without their parents), but they created a desire to get IN.

It had been the same thing with Psycho, really. Parents who made the movie forbidden(including mine), created a strong desire to "taste the forbidden fruit." Took me a few years, but that's because Psycho went "unavailable on TV" for a few years before hitting regular syndication in 1970.

Its a mixed deal on the "R" rated movies. They taught me about sex and showed me how naked women looked "in motion," but the subject matter was so lurid and brutal often that this was no preparation for the REAL issues of sex that lay ahead in young adulthood.

I would note here that my friends and I chickened out on the early "X" movies like Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange. Not to mention Fritz the Cat and "What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?" where Allen "Candid Camera" Funt used real naked ladies in Candid Camera-like situations.

I think Midnight Cowboy was eventually "down-rated" to an R. Was A Clockwork Orange, as well? In any event, I waited until after I was 18 to catch up with those films. It was a little like my years-long quest to see Psycho. I waited a few years and caught all the "regular" X rated movies I could -- this wasn't porn, by the way. This was Hollywood and International Product.

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[–] swanstep (2619) 6 years ago

I would note here that my friends and I chickened out on the early "X" movies like Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange. Not to mention Fritz the Cat and "What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?"

I just got around to seeing Pink Flamingos (1972). It struck me - a pretty jaded adult! - as *still* pretty shocking in both content and attitude. I imagine it was the ultimate Dare/Can You Take It? film for a certain sort of rowdy teen/post-teen in the '70s. Evidently with the full end of censorship in the late '60s, film quickly went as far out as it is possible to go, and having gone there, some pulling back from that edge was inevitable.

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[–] Retromogul (1082) 6 years ago

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

Yes, ACO was rerated R with two very small changes to the scenes with the fast speed sex in Alex's room and the rape scene in one of the films shown to Alex during his treatment. At the time, some critics noted that if there's so little difference between an r and an X, something is wrong with the system.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Completely get where you're coming from with Psycho. It's theme, tone and impact doesnt seem to fit within the standard, light PG13 fare even if the violence and gore is minimal.

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Very strange, isn't it? PG to PG13 fare is considered pretty tame. Psycho is NOT tame -- I chalk it up to Hitchcock's rather arty and formalistic way of making films. All of Marion Crane's initial driving scenes feel like a nightmare in the very real sense of the term: not abstract images(ala the nightmare in Vertigo) but "real life" ratcheted up and made oppressive, "bigger than life" and paranoia-inducing (the cop, California Charlie).

One critic wrote that Hitchcock's films left "a bad taste in the mouth," and titles like Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Rope, Rear Window, and The Man Who Knew Too Much have a weirdness, a "sordid beneath the surface' feeling that would only accelerate once the 60's/70's came and Hitchcock could go all out: Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain(Gromek), Topaz(ALL the deaths in the film, not grisly but oppressive), Frenzy....

Psycho definitely leaves a bad taste in the mouth. "R" -ish.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In Australia, an R rating wasn't introduced until 1971. Prior to that, censorship was very restrictive and a variety of films were banned here without a rating to accomdate them. In contrast, sex and nudity was rampant in Australian films throughout the 1970's - with much more liberal attitudes towards sex on screen than the US. We even had a major network soap opera - "Number 96" - that featured full frontal nudity and gay and lesbian love scenes.

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Nations make their decisions for varying reasons, I guess, where censorship enters in.

The American studio filmmakers felt they were being hit from two sides -- color television now kept fewer people from needing to "go to the movies" and "Eurofilms" were hitting the art houses with plenty of nudity and sex. I've read that the studios were ready to start making "dirty movies" one way or the other -- but rather than confront local governments and police with "dirty movies"(cussing, sex, nudity, ultra-violence), they negotiated with the federal government(LBJ's -- Wasserman was his pal and he lured LBJ aide Jack Valenti to run the new GMRX program through MPAA) to "self-police" with GMRX. The barricades had been slowly falling down anyway, under the rubric "Suggested for Mature Audiences." Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate --though I think Virginia Woolf was released with a self-imposed age restriction.

The GMRX movies were also a reminder that in the free-love countercultural 60s, "the times they were a changing," and also that the grip of the church on all Americans (much like the draft-based grip of the Draft on all Americans) was going to be broken.

One story I've read: as Sam Peckinpah went into production on The Wild Bunch in mid-1968, he was told by Warner Brothers that an "R" rating would be in place for movies by 1969 at the latest -- so he was told he could go ahead and make his movie as bloody, profane and sexual as he thought an R rating could hold(but not an X). He was given his freedom BEFORE he shot his film.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

By the way, the 1968 "GMRX" theater spots ("Jim-Rex? What's Jim-Rex?") can be found on YouTube.

I went looking and -- whoosh! -- it was 1968 for me, all over again.

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[–] Retromogul (1082) 6 years ago

Both A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy were downgraded to an R - possibly as a result of the X rating coming to be identified with porn. We had the exact same situation in Oz although I'm not sure which big studio films were oringinally classified as X.

Like the UK, A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn from distribution in Australia until 2000. Never been sure why we followed Britain's lead there. Pink Flamingos continues to be banned, or at least in its uncut form, as is Caligulia, Baise-Moi, Ken Park, and A Serbian Film. Our OFLC seems to have long history of objection aganist depictions of extreme sexual violence in films, although a significant amount of time has passed since the likes of Caligulia and Pink Flamingos were submitted for review. Other films from the same era as those two titles with similar content, such as Salo and Cannibal Holocaust have been unbanned within the last decade.

It's quite possible that the maintenance of the R rating for Psycho increases its appeal, as we've discussed in relation to other films. Of course as mentioned, it doesn't seem to fit into the typical PG13 light fare, with its dark and suspenseful tone. Despite that, I still could see it re-rated PG13 - a still somewhat unusual inclusion by modern standards.
Are there other PG13 films in the same genre matching its tone and intended impact? Isn't Jaws still rated a simple PG despite being more gory?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Both A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy were downgraded to an R - possibly as a result of the X rating coming to be identified with porn.

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I think that was part of it, and of course, years later, we had the invention of "NC-17" to break free from any X-rated porn conotations. But the problem was: just as certain newspapers wouldn't advertise studio X movies -- they did the same to "NC-17." It was just a re-statement of the same rating.

Back in the fifties and early sixties, a few daring filmmakers elected not to cut certain things in their films, not to get "MPAA approval" and to get release through art house distribution. One such movie was Preminger's "The Moon is Blue." Another was Wilder's "Kiss Me Stupid." Given that Hitchcock, Preminger, and Wilder were the big "envelope pushers" of the 50's and 60's, it is interesting that Hitchcock never had to go that route. I assume with Psycho, he came close.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Like the UK, A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn from distribution in Australia until 2000. Never been sure why we followed Britain's lead there.

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As I understand it, Kubrick himself requested the ban in the UK -- too much copycat gang violence. Kubrick died in 1999...which might explain the 2000 lifting of the ban in Australia?

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Pink Flamingos continues to be banned, or at least in its uncut form, as is Caligulia, Baise-Moi, Ken Park, and A Serbian Film. Our OFLC seems to have long history of objection aganist depictions of extreme sexual violence in films, although a significant amount of time has passed since the likes of Caligulia and Pink Flamingos were submitted for review. Other films from the same era as those two titles with similar content, such as Salo and Cannibal Holocaust have been unbanned within the last decade.

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I've read of all those titles, read of their content -- and skipped them all. That remains the funny thing about me: Psycho was almost my "ceiling" on enjoyable horror...not the floor. That said, I handled Frenzy, The Exorcist, Jaws, Halloween, Friday the 13th and The Thing of '82 well enough. Gore, I could handle. Excrement, bodily fluid stuff...not so much. Especially if eaten...

Yecch.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It's quite possible that the maintenance of the R rating for Psycho increases its appeal, as we've discussed in relation to other films.

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This entire thread has been generated by this very mysterious fact, I think: SOMEBODY decided that Psycho should have an R. Decades after release with no such restriction. Just "out of the blue." It seems in tune with the other mysteries attendant to that "special" motion picture. But there's also this: who is going to ENFORCE that R? Psycho only gets shown in schools and what few revival houses are left, anymore. The rest of the time its on TV or can be bought or streamed.

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Of course as mentioned, it doesn't seem to fit into the typical PG13 light fare, with its dark and suspenseful tone. Despite that, I still could see it re-rated PG13 - a still somewhat unusual inclusion by modern standards.

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Maybe it would be best just to take ANY rating off of it. It wasn't rated in 1960. Just let it be -- a classic that at one time was considered "the sickest movie ever made" by one critic, and that inspired Walt Disney to forbid Hitchcock to film a movie at Disneyland.

That's powerful stuff.

I've read all sorts of reviews of Psycho circa 1960. A couple of reviewers didn't find it all that gory. But one wrote, "My wife kept covering her face with her hands and I told her to lower them, its not that bad, and then the next scene came, and it WAS that bad!"

Different strokes for different folks.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Are there other PG13 films in the same genre matching its tone and intended impact? Isn't Jaws still rated a simple PG despite being more gory?

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Well, Jaws came out 9 years before the PG-13 was invented(the connection is Spielberg: he recommended the PG-13 after Temple of Doom seemed too rough for a PG.)

Jaws was attacked in some quarters as deserving of an R; the MPAA said that the violence was done by an animal not a human, and that made a difference.

I'd be hard pressed to pick any PG or PG-13 horror movie with the impact of Psycho. It seems like, from The Exorcist on -- and with the notable exception of Jaws -- ALL horror movies had to have some R content -- blood, nudity, both.

Though I tell you: one of the biggest nights of non-stop screaming at the movies I had in my life was from "Wait Until Dark." The entire half hour was punctuated by screams -- including one GIANT ONE with minutes to go and nothing but screaming from there to the end(the audience, not the characters.)

Wait Until Dark was from '67, and I don't think it even had a "Suggested for Mature Audiences" warning. I've seen it many times since that night, and it is really rather gore-free, but the THREAT is always there, and a couple of guys die pretty violently, and then it is just Sweet Blind Audrey Hepburn versus Sick Psycho with a Knife Alan Arkin and....well, it FELT like a R in '67.

One review of Wait Until Dark said: "This provides the most screaming you've had in a movie theater since Psycho!"

Always and forever...

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[–] Truthtalker (1871) 6 years ago

What about the mommified corpse? Moron

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

That wasn't that bad and it was a 3 second shot or so. If you seriously think that is R-rated material you have problems and I would invite you to check out a film such as Scarface or Robocop which are considerably more violent and are standard R-rated films. If that is your big problem with the films content might I redirect you to Raiders of the Lost Ark which was a PG there is a scene where Marion is surrounded by mummified corpses and one even has a giant snake slithering out of its mouth.

For the record I don't think either deserve an R-rating, both are probably standard PG-13 material.

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[–] Martoto (4228) 6 years ago

Because the nudity/sex/death composition of the story is not something that a formative, pre-adolescent or even adolescent mind is likely prepared to appreciate with the requisite sort of detachment or objectivity.

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

So then I guess your standard James Bond movie also deserves an R rating. I mean in From Russia With Love they make it quite clear that the reason Tania was chosen for the mission was because she was a slut.

I saw Psycho when I was 11 and I was perfectly fine. The part in the cellar was a little scary but that was it.

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[–] Martoto (4228) 6 years ago

Marion was murdered because she aroused Norman and the other side of his personality.

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

First of all most younger audiences won't pick up on the sexual nature of that and secondly that isn't really anything that bad. Anyone over the age of 9 should be able to handle that even if it was directly stated in as graphic detail as possible.

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[–] Martoto (4228) 6 years ago

Then why are they watching it?

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

Because it's good you moron.

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[–] Martoto (4228) 6 years ago

It's only good because of the things that you say a child isn't going to appreciate.

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

What? Where did I say that? Why are you just making stuff up? I like it because it always keeps you guessing, you never quite know what's going on (at one point you don't know who to believe: Sheriff Chambers who insists that Normans mother is dead or your own eyes who have seen Norman interact with his mother despite not actually seeing her face). It has great build up and the payoff when you find out that Norman and the mother are essentially the same person is very satisfying.

I still have no idea what you're getting at, my guess is you are a troll.

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[–] Martoto (4228) 6 years ago

Where did you say it?
In this meandering and contradictory post. "First of all most younger audiences won't pick up on the sexual nature of that and secondly that isn't really anything that bad. Anyone over the age of 9 should be able to handle that even if it was directly stated in as graphic detail as possible."

Why do you care anyway? Are you eleven years old and desperate to go to the theater to watch psychological thrillers without your mummy?

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[–] TheUltimateHippo (2250) 6 years ago

How did I contradict myself??? The sexual references were very subtle and even if they weren't simply talking about a guy getting aroused is nowhere near R-rated material. Again by your standard you every day James Bond movie should get an R-rating. You my friend are a complete pussy and I think you need serious psychological help.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But then we have Pinocchio where kids are sold into slavery and threatened with axes, children drink beer and smoke cigars and Pinocchio himself at one point dies and that gets a G.

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Belatedly: if there's one guy who got away with literal murder for a children's audience...it was Walt Disney. Add to the horrors above the death of Bambi's mother; the taking away in chains of Dumbo's mother; and Cruella DeVille out to kidnap, kill and skin 100 Dalmation puppies for a coat....Disney was far more cruel in his filmmaking than Hitchcock.

Which is ironic, because when Hitchcock had a film treatment written in 1962 for a Hitchcock film to feature a chase around Disneyland, Walt Disney refused to let Hitchcock film there...because he had made that "disgusting" Psycho!

The suggestion has been that Uncle Walt's nightmares(particularly in Pinocchio) helped America's moms and dads "keep their unruly kids in line." You don't want to lose your mama, do you? You don't want to be turned into an animal, do you?

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[–] swanstep (2619) 6 years ago

Most of the early Disney films are hard to watch these days because they're packed to the gills with very prescriptive gender roles and outdated cultural scripts of all sorts. The nightmarish older women figures that recur are especially unbearable, but almost every second scene in the early films is something like storks-delivering-babies-nonsense that just reads bizarrely now. I *completely* understand and endorse Disney's intention to remake essentially everything with a mixture of live action and CG.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Most of the early Disney films are hard to watch these days because they're packed to the gills with very prescriptive gender roles and outdated cultural scripts of all sorts. The nightmarish older women figures that recur are especially unbearable, but almost every second scene in the early films is something like storks-delivering-babies-nonsense that just reads bizarrely now. I *completely* understand and endorse Disney's intention to remake essentially everything with a mixture of live action and CG

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Well, I hear you in general on this swanstep, but I for one remain a little concerned about the need to evidently sweep our movie history clean of the realities it represents of the times in which these films were made.

Gone With the Wind looks to be "on the way out" as a film that can be watched or shown; in Disney's case, "Song of the South" was deep-sixed years ago(even as it has that great song zip-idde-doo-dah, or whatever. The issue there is race, always the most sensitive of American matters. With the other stuff, well, gender is next in line, isn't it?
Gay issues are in a different context, I've found. Whereas for most of the Hays Code years, gay characters were banned(even as Hitchcock was sneaking them in, in Rope, Strangers on a Train, and NXNW), when they WERE allowed in the early GMRX 1968-1970 years, they were portrayed as warped gargoyles in Sinatra pictures like Tony Rome and The Detective(if they weren't flat-out villains, they were presented as perverts beneath Sinatra's contempt.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

On gay matters: I was watching "Hitchcock"(the making of Psycho movie) the other night on IFC. They reached this sneering, contemptuous line from a 1959 Paramount mogul, to Hitchcock, about the story of Psycho and why the mogul didn't want to make it:

"Come on, Hitch -- isn't this still just the story of a queer who dresses up like his mother and kills people?"

But IFC bleeped out the word "queer."

I thought that was interesting. I thought that "queer" was an accepted term in the gay community("We're queer, we're here, get used to it") , but evidently, the IFC censors found the movie mogul to be using the word as a 1959 insult. So they bleeped it.

My point: these movies will indeed look out of time, out of place, and possibly insulting to new generations, and perhaps to make sure these things aren't said or thought about anymore, these movies need to be erased. But to my mind, movie history is history, and to look at some of these older movies from "then" and to wince "now" -- could be a positive look at how much we've advanced.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In a different, more positive direction:

I was watching one of my favorite monster movies from my youth the other night on TCM: "Them!" the one about the giant radioactive ants killing folks from Arizona to Los Angeles.

Its a highly respected 1954 SciFi film, directed by Gordon Douglas(who also made my fave "Rio Conchos" and unfortunately made Tony Rome and The Detective), and well written to play out for the first third as a tough, off-screen gory "desert noir" with overtones of the Phoenix section of Psycho. In the early stages of the film, the killings of an entire vacationing family(less one six-year old girl left alive) and a general store owner(whose bloody body we DO see; and this is a 1954 picture) are suspected to be the work of a psycho, not...giant ants. But then the truth comes out. Big Bugs.

Anyway, my point: a small team is assembled to investigate and hunt the ants: uniformed cop James Whitmore, FBI man James Arness(right before Gunsmoke; he's on the case because an FBI man was part of the murdered family) -- and a tweedy insect professor and his attractive scientist daughter.

The professor is played by Edmund Gwenn, just a year before The Trouble With Harry. The daughter is played by -- Joan Weldon, I think. Not much of a remembered star, but in this 1954 movie, the "lady scientist" is tough, assertive, and quickly gets the men to fall in line and let her go "down in the ant hole" to confront the giant ants and to direct the investigation. Her elderly father can't handle the physical stuff, see -- so the woman has to do it. And she has the scientific knowledge that Whitmore and Arness don't.

Joan Weldon as the smart, tough, attractive, "take charge" lady scientist in "Them!" is a reminder that even way back in 1954, there WERE good roles for women, and that it was not all the "Mad Men" fantasy(a rather wrong one, I would suggest) of women as being out only for their "MRS degree" and housewifery .

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But back to that mysterious "R" on Psycho.

Its a reminder that "Psycho" had one of the most bizarre trajectories of any movie in terms of how it was perceived and sold, and how it LASTED over time. Consider:

1959: Paramount went to lengths to stop the film from being made at all. They gave it a RED LIGHT, not a green light, and Hitchcock had to fight to get what Paramount backing and distribution he could -- he made the film largely "from his own pocket."

1960: The head censor sees Psycho in a screening room and announces: "This film cannot be released." This was at the end of the screening -- while the movie played, he announced to his colleagues that the opening hotel room scene, the toilet, and the two murders would have to be cut from the film. Funny story about this screening. Before Psycho rolled, the head censor told his team: "Remember, this a Hitchcock picture. Be ready for him to sneak things past us -- remember the lines about " a leg or a breast" in To Catch a Thief? After that introduction, the censors went into apoplexy as Psycho unfurled in all its sex-and-violence glory.

1960: And yet Hitchcock -- backed by Lew Wasserman and lawyers --- DID get Psycho released, with the MPAA seal intact. And no "Suggested for Mature Audiences" on the poster. Kids DID walk right in to Psycho...until, evidently, parents caught on and started forbidding it.

1964: NBC offers Paramount the biggest bucks ever to show Psycho on Saturday Night at the Movies. Paramount decides: if its that valuable, let's re-release Psycho instead.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

1965: Paramount re-releases Psycho...with these tag-lines: "Psycho, its blonde and its shower-bath are back!""If you were too young, too scared, or the lines were too long ..now is your chance to see Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of adult horror!" Some posters feature Tony Perkins -- not in drag -- wielding a knife(the arm and knife were grafted onto a stock shot of Perkins.) The twist ending was evidently no longer relevant five years later. The weirdest tag line: "The shower bath scene happens 47 minutes into Psycho." Here was an advertising campaign based on directing the audience TO its most famous scene, arguably the most famous scene in movies.

1966: CBS pays the big bucks to show Psycho on The CBS Friday Night Movie, and famously cancels the showing (even though Variety reveals that the movie would have had 9 minutes cut and the sound turned down on the screeching violins.) The cancellation was due to the knife murder that week of US Senator-to-be Charles Percy's daughter. A second attempt to show the film later in the season is also cancelled. (Thus Psycho becomes the first major hit movie NOT to play on network television -- though Showtime tired to claim the "first time on network television"(nationwide) when Janet Leigh hosted a showing of Psycho and the debut of Psycho IV on Showtime in 1990.

1967: Psycho gets high-rated showings on local TV late on Saturday night, in New York and Los Angeles(where billboards announce the coming broadcast, all over LA.)

1969: Psycho -- now owned by Universal -- gets ANOTHER re-release even though it has been shown on TV ("See the version of Psycho TV Dared Not Show -- Complete! UNCUT!")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

1970: Psycho goes into general syndication release as a Universal film(Universal bought Psycho and all Hitchcock TV episodes in exchange for making Hitch the 3rd largest holder of Universal MCA stock), and becomes a once-a-year staple on local TV across America -- even as Rear Window, Vertigo, The Trouble With Harry, Rope, and The Man Who Knew Too Much are soon REMOVED from syndication for ten years. This is perhaps why Psycho, The Birds, and NXNW became such famous Hitchcock films. They were all over TV in years when Rear Window and Vertigo were not.

1972: Hitchcock gets a comeback hit with Frenzy -- his only other film about a psychopathic killer made after Psycho. This psycho is a strangler, not a stabber, and he's British, not American -- but the links to the earlier classic are there, and this is Hitchcock's biggest hit since Psycho. But the topper: late in 1972, across the massive Southern California basin -- Frenzy(late in its run) is sent out WITH Psycho as the second feature. "See Hitchcock's two great shockers -- Psycho and Frenzy -- together!" Thus, Psycho gets its THIRD re-release.

1984: The VHS release of Psycho finds a film that started out un-rated(1960) and then got an "M" rating(1969) suddenly outta nowhere being declared an R.

Most movies get "down-rated" -- Midnight Cowboy from X to R. Is Psycho the only movie to get "up-rated?"

A most curious film, with perhaps the most curious voyage through release, re-release, network TV broadcast, local syndication broadcast, cable broadcast, and video ever accorded a major movie.

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