MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Do you like this one, or the remake?

Do you like this one, or the remake?



hahahahahahahaha!

I'm sorry. Non-trollish tho I am, every now and then I must post a question like that!

(For ALBERT NOBBS, I posted "It's too bad she never found the right man"...then ran away.)
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Just watch the original considering the remake is basically a scene for scene copy.

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There are a few remakes that I feel are absolutely pointless and even tbough they are more or less shot for shot they completely fail to capture the magic of the origin for some reason.
My examples of this would be:-
Original The Omen/remake The Omen
Let the Right one In/remake Let me In
Manhunter/remake Red Dragon

I can't speak for any Psycho remake as I haven't seen it, I'm unlikely ever to!

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Manhunter/remake Red Dragon
Disagree on that one. Red Dragon is awesome in it's own right, and it's an adaptation that addresses Dolarhyde's side of the story.

I love Manhunter, and Petersen was definitely a better Will Graham. But Red Dragon is a better over adaptation of the book.

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We'll have to agree to disagree.
Red Dragon had a wonderful cast and the ending was definitely more authentic to the book but it disappointed me.
Norton, who I totally respect, was not right as Will Graham. Hopkins was at this point far, far too old to play a Lecter who was younger than his TSOTL incarnation and I felt he hammed it up outrageously creating a snarling Southern accent drawling, monster, not in keeping with the character who incidentally only had a very minor part in the book.
I also felt that Red Dragon missed a couple of really huge reveals, an example being when Will realises Dolarhyde has seen the films, it was a blink and you miss it moment in RD.

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Red Dragon had a wonderful cast and the ending was definitely more authentic to the book but it disappointed me.

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Restoring the ending of the book felt like "justice" to me.

I personally had a long history from Red Dragon(the novel) to Manhunter(the first movie from that novel) to the eventual remake(under the name Red Dragon) with Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal in between.

It goes like this:

I wasn't a big fiction reader in the 80's, and the concept of "the bestseller that is made into a movie" was fading fast, but Red Dragon was recommended to me (the cover of the paperback had a quote from Stephen King -- "The best popular novel since The Godfather"), I read the book, I was enthralled by it, and I couldn't wait for the movie. And even though he has a smaller role in Red Dragon, I dug IMMEDIATELY on the concept of "Hannibal the Cannibal" Lecter -- a genius, an animal, a killing machine.

The movie was given to Michael Mann, then hot for TV work(Miami Vice) but with one stylized good movie on his resume(Thief.) So I was further excited.

But when the movie was finally cast, made and released -- nothing. That really shocked me. The new title seemed generic(Manhunter -- because the studio tought "Red Dragon" felt like Kung Fu movie.) The release was throwaway(spring.)

And quite frankly, the cast was filled with unknowns, I don't care how good they were: William Peterson(before CSI); Brian Cox as Lecter(fine then, known now, but not known then.) Tom Noonan as The Tooth Fairy. Even Dennis Farina wasn't too known then(though Mann was using him in a TV show, too.)

I thought that Manhunter caught a lot of the book, but I was astonished at how little it caught on with audiences. And I was very mad that the crackerjack thriller finale was removed.

Even with Michael Mann at the helm, Manhunter/Red Dragon seemed almost a crime to me -- a potential classic blockbuster thrown away via a lack of at least some star casting, a title change, and no studio support.

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Red Dragon author Thomas Harris must have been disappointed by the failure of Manhunter too -- because a few years later he gave us Silence of the Lambs, and I watched to my amazement as the movie that SHOULD have been a classic in 1986 became a different movie classic in 1991. Its as if Hannibal the Cannibal was given a second chance, and THIS TIME, everybody saw the greatness of the character.

Personally, in novel form, I liked Red Dragon better than Silence. I thought the Tooth Fairy was a terrifying villain because he picked his victims -- entire families with beautiful mothers killed while sleeping in their homes -- by "auditioning" their family snapshots at the photo lab where he worked. This angle is now kaput in the age of digital camera and cell phones, but it was terrifying then. I also like the conflict between Will Graham and Lector...none of the "mutual respect" of Lecter and Clarice. And I liked how Hannibal "teamed up" from his cell with the Tooth Fairy to "get" Will Graham.

Anyway, Silence became the blockbuster, the Best Picture, the classic...and then was soon leached away with sequels. Hannibal...not even Jodie Foster came back(putting Julianne Moore in such a classic Best Actress role -- didn't work.)

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And then, almost inevitably, we finally got the star-studded, properly-titled, hit Red Dragon we should have gotten in 1986. But now it was passe. Now it was, at once, a "sequel" to Silence of the Lambs(the movie), and yet also a "prequel" to Silence of the Lambs(the story). Now Hopkins had to play the character with young-man brown dye in his hair. Now, Red Dragon had to play second fiddle.

But I'm glad they restored the ending. And I'm glad Ralph Fiennes played the Tooth Fairy. And I'm glad Philip Seymour Hoffman played the most gruesomely dispatched victim(he's Arbogast, kinda/sorta.)

And I love the last lines of the film, as the institution boss tells Lecter he has a visitor waiting, a young female FBI recruit.

Says Hannibal:

"What's her name?" Sudden fade to black.

The remake of Red Dragon and how it came to be is a very unique Hollywood story...its a remake that is also a sequel that is also a prequel!

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I don't rate Manhunter all that much, I think Red Dragon did things better overall. That's pretty good considering Brett Ratner was the one behind the camera.

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❤️️
I'll always like this one just a bit better.
I do confess that I like the remake. It's a guilty pleasure. While a remake wasn't necessary, I was interested in the shot for shot idea..... like seeing a play with different actors. This was sort of fun because there were a few subtle changes. It was updated. I found it all very interesting.
I still come back to this one though. This version is and will always be the best one in my book.

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I read two Gus Van Sant interviews on the net in the past few weeks.

In one, he discusses "all of his movies" -- but leaves out the Psycho remake. So I figured: well, he's not going to claim THAT on his resume anymore.

But in another, he zeroes in totally on the Psycho remake. Much of what he says tracks with how I take the film.

I always say "Psycho is an experiment that succeeded by failing."

And Van Sant says he wishes people understood that it was an experiment. He was more specific: "Could you make exactly the same movie in 1998 and generate the same box office?"

In a word, no. Not with Psycho. What was shocking and censor-busting in 1960 was pretty mild in 1998. And of course, the other big failure with the Psycho remake was the cast. Good actors, all -- but generally miscast and also not terribly interested in the project (Julianne Moore and William H. Macy actually worked on the film with contempt of the original.)

In his interview, Van Sant says how he kept wanting to remake a movie shot for shot("And somehow Psycho always seemed like the right one to remake this way") and how he finally got his wish when he got his Oscar nomination for Good Will Hunting. He says "the production companies all like to lock down an Oscar nominee for his or her next picture...so I got the permission to remake Psycho."

But, says, Van Sant 'once I had permission to remake Psycho, I had to ask myself: SHOULD I do it?" He says he consulted with friend Danny Elfman, a musical composer(Batman) who would take on the task of re-orchestrating Herrmann's score. Elfman told Van Sant "Don't do it -- you'll be hated." Van Sant decided to do it and now says, "And yep, I was hated." (By the way, in another interview some years ago, Van Sant pointed out that no movie paid him more than Psycho.)

Well not by me. Its a fascinating experiment. And it succeeds by failing.

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❤️️
Well I admire Van Sant for trying it out.
As I recall, Hitchcock himself, experimented in shooting a little gem called Rope.
All of those Van Sant haters should put that in their pipes and smoke it. 😉

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Well I admire Van Sant for trying it out.
As I recall, Hitchcock himself, experimented in shooting a little gem called Rope.

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Yep. And he officially remade one of his own films -- The Man Who Knew Too Much -- shot by shot in some places - and he unofficially remade The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes and Saboteur(all mashed together) in North by Northwest.

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All of those Van Sant haters should put that in their pipes and smoke it. 😉

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I don't hate him...I hate what he's become....ha.

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❤️️
"Yep. And he officially remade one of his own films -- The Man Who Knew Too Much -- shot by shot in some places - and he unofficially remade The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes and Saboteur(all mashed together) in North by Northwest."

Thanks for reminding me!

"I don't hate him...I hate what he's become....ha."

👍 Que Sera Sera!

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I saw it when it was released, at a large theater in NYC. There was a lot of buzz about it among the people waiting on line, so I figured there were a lot of fellow 'Psycho' fans.

Watched the movie and when it was over, everybody just filed out. I didn't hear any complaints, just...people left. They weren't even talking about it. As if they didn't know what to think. I felt the same way. It wasn't until later that I formed an opinion.

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But it was not shot-for-shot, only when VanSant decided it would be. I am referring to the ending. So, that's B.S.

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But it was not shot-for-shot, only when VanSant decided it would be. I am referring to the ending. So, that's B.S.

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Oh, a lot more than the ending is not "shot for shot."

Van Sant:

Removed one scene in its entirety(the church with Sheriff Chambers.)
Cut one scene in half(the psychiatrist scene)
Removed lines from Arbogast in the phone booth so what Lila said later made no sense(She says "he said an hour or less" but he DOESN'T say that in the remake.)

Horribly dumbed down Arbogast's line "If it doesn't jell, it isn't aspic" into "If it doesn't jell, it isn't jello," and:

Famously had Norman masturbate while peeping on Marion.

Famously stuck oddball footage of a half naked woman and a calf in a road in the middle of the Arbogast murder(I'd like to see Van Sant explain THAT in an interview.)

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That said, a whole lot of Van Sant's Psycho DOES track with the original, so much so that one critic noted, "It isn't that bad, because it IS Psycho, after all." Which is true. Hitchcock had his greatest story with Psycho. Van Sant got a lot of it on screen again(but, as another critic wrote, "with none of the pressure-per-pound of the Hitchcock original.")

Nobody wanted to make a shot by shot remake of Topaz....

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I appreciate your detailing the key differences, Ecarle (there are further differences, of course). Here’s some feedback…

The psychiatrist sequence NEEDED shortened for the current generation.
The “hour or less” line was cut because movies always condense events; otherwise we’d have to endure characters going to the bathroom and sleeping for 8 hours. It’s simply assumed Sam made the statement sometime during his call with Lila, whether the film shows it or not.
Dumbed down or not, Arbogast’s “jello” line was amusing and more modern.
The point of the masturbation sound I think was to suggest that Norman was doing this in the original, but of course they couldn’t convey it back then. Personally, I could do without it.
Van Sant obviously didn’t just throw in the pic of a scantily clad babe and a calf during the Arbogast murder for nothing. He had a reason. It’s something to chew on.

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I saw it when it was released, at a large theater in NYC. There was a lot of buzz about it among the people waiting on line, so I figured there were a lot of fellow 'Psycho' fans.

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I saw it opening night with a big crowd, but not in as "sophisticated" a city as NYC. I recall a few early walk-outs(boredom) and nobody much got into the movie.

Except -- natch -- when Arbogast got it. There was some of the "jump screaming" and some gasps when he got slashed one, two, THREE times on the face(in the Hitchcock, its only once.)

I recall mild laughter at Norman's fruit cellar reveal.

But yeah...not much reaction at all.

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Watched the movie and when it was over, everybody just filed out. I didn't hear any complaints, just...people left. They weren't even talking about it. As if they didn't know what to think. I felt the same way. It wasn't until later that I formed an opinion.

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It just didn't work like the original in terms of generating screams. And I believe the multi-track sound really MUTED the screaming violins during the murders. They are much more loud and grating on the nerves in the Hitchcock.

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That ending was bad. Instead of ending "nice and clean" on a fade out of Marion's car emerging from the swamp, Van Sant expended minutes and minutes of footage showing a scuba diver, cops, reporters gathering up the car and towing it away...then a lingering shot of the swamp. All as a very eerie version of the music played based on "Lila's climb up the hill." It was interesting in its own way(and a match to the long "ice skater" end credits scene in "To Die For" also by Van Sant)...but it rather ruined Hitchcock's classic ending.

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One of the spurs that pricked Hitchcock into making first Vertigo and then Psycho was the critical and commercial success of Clouzot's twisty 'shocker' Les Diaboliques (1955). [Clouzot actually nabbed the screenplay rights to the Boileau-Narcejac novel just hours ahead of Hitch making a bid, leading B-N to write their next but one novel specifically to be made by Hitch as Vertigo.]

It's therefore of interest that two years before van Sant remade Psycho, Jeremiah Chechik remade Les Diaboliques expensively w/ top stars Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Kathy Bates. It bombed. (Chechik's next film, an even bigger bomb remake, The Avengers (1998) w/ Uma Thurman & Rafe Fiennes would end his Hollywood film-directing career. Indeed 1998 had quite an odor of stinkeroo remakes between Godzilla, Psycho, The Avengers, Lost in Space, etc..).

Put off by its awful reputation, I never saw Diabolique (1996), but I recently came across a copy and, soon after, I came across a fanedit of it in B&W (the editor claims that this was Chechik's original intention) downloadable here:
https://tinyurl.com/yat5azpa
So, partially in response to this thread, I've got the following viewing project for this week:
Les Diaboliques (1955) [my 3rd rewatch I believe], Diabolique (1996), Diabolique (1996) [25 mins shortened fanedit in B&W]. I'll report back any findings.

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OK, I don't have much of interest to say about Les Diaboliques (1955), Diabolique (1996), and Diabolique (1996-fanedit). I'm not the hugest fan of LD55 - I don't think it has nearly the rewatchability of Psycho for example - but D96 puts its achievements in perspective. D55's basic twist first time through is very well worked and Clouzot has everything straight, does not cheat. This actually allows Clouzot to drop a couple of late ambiguity-introducing twists as it were just for fun in the last few minutes of the film. Everyone, even those who saw the main twist coming - easier to do after the next 50 years or so of twisty story-telling - come out of LD55 first time with lots to talk about. It's a great water-cooler film, maybe even *the* great water-cooler film.

Chechik's D96 *completely* blows the basic twist by adding lots of stuff in the first 30 mins that is *absolutely inconsistent* with the motivations of the characters that will be revealed by the twist later. Since much of the audience for D96, including all critics, knew the basic twist from LD55, most viewers of D96 were scoffing at it from the beginning. If D96 was completely new to you you had to get to the end of the film to figure out that the film completely undermined itself, but everyone else knew that the game was up literally 5 mins into the film. Films with twists that don't work are of course a dime a dozen, but rarely do you get a Film whose twist doesn't work that's a remake of a film whose twist does! Arguably then the remakers simply didn't understand LD55, which is shocking.

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D96-fanedit solves *some* of D96's problems, both by omitting *some* of the material from the beginning of the film that's inconsistent with the basic twist and by lopping off most of D96's post-basic-twist material. But D96-fanedit has to leave in the key early inconsistent material (Adjani's character's near death) because otherwise there's no beginning to the film, and while dropping D96's ludicrous end-material may be the best move with that material, LD55 of course got great mileage out of its own late ambiguity-introducing twists, so improving D96 in the ways D96-fanedit tries still leaves it well short of being in LD55's ballpark. There's still really no point in watching it unless you're carrying out a completeness-exercise the way I am. The B&W of the fan-edit works quite well but it's not a cure for most of what ails D96.

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D96 is about 10 minutes shorter than LD55 and as we've seen it adds quite a lot of (inconsistent) material. So a lot of other stuff has to be given the shaft. All the detail of school life that's in the original is lost, so that we never really believe for a minute that Stone and Adjani are teachers or indeed that the story is happening in a real place and milieu. Put that together with the much more expressive (Hitch would be horrified by all the twitchy mugging), sitcommy, one-linery acting styles adopted throughout the cast (it's clearly the directors choice - even Kathy Bates is its victim here) and there is perhaps some campy fun to be had with D96 as an unintentional comedy, but that's about all. Nothing rings close to true.

In sum, while D96 should perhaps have warned Universal away from Psycho (1998), one has to say that Psycho (1998) is a much more credible remake than D96 is. D96 currently has a much higher IMDb score than P98 does which baffles me. Psycho (1998)'s current IMDb score is 4.6. Here are the films that get that score ordered by US Box-Office:
https://tinyurl.com/y8kdzffz

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Thanks, Margo; I can't believe the hate this film gets.

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Thanks, Margo; I can't believe the hate this film gets.
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It's not hate , as much as "so what". When a director makes a sequel to an iconic film made for 1960 sensibilities , it's rather pointless, except for him to find admirers of his technique. On the other hand, if an audience (and pays) goes to such a film expecting I-don't-know-what, we can also blame our curious selves.

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❤️️
I don't blame myself or anyone else for paying to see it. It's there to watch or not to watch.
The original will always be there to enjoy as well.

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It's not hate , as much as "so what". When a director makes a sequel to an iconic film made for 1960 sensibilities , it's rather pointless, except for him to find admirers of his technique. On the other hand, if an audience (and pays) goes to such a film expecting I-don't-know-what, we can also blame our curious selves.


It's a good point. However, it's not a sequel, but rather a genuine remake (as opposed to a "reimagining"). As such, it presents the same story with different actors in more modern times IN COLOR with marginal differences. It appeals to people who aren't very keen on Hitchcock and loathe B&W, like me.

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I made an error with typing "sequel".
You said for those who aren't keen on Hitchcock, but it was a remake (shot-for shot) by VanSant who revered Hitchcock's Psycho, and why he remade it. I'm confused there.

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Ok, that explains it. I meant "keen" in the sense of not being particularly familiar with him and his works, usually people who weren't alive or old enough to see his movies in the theater or on TV. Devotees of Hitchcock, by contrast, are more inclined to be anal about safeguarding the purity of his works (or however you want to put it) and not being open to remakes or even outright hating the very idea, not to mention anyone who would dare to do so.

I'm a good example as I've only seen four of his movies and, while I liked all four, I'm only a fan of "The Birds." As such, I wasn't inclined to automatically loathe Van Sant's remake, which doesn't mean I'm an uber-fan either. It just means I'm more open to appreciating it. It probably helps that I don't like B&W (but can bear with it when there's no other recourse).

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I see what you meant by "keen" now. I haven't see many of his classics. actually. The problem with re-making certain films is that you subconsciously may expect to be shocked since it's a remake of a shocking film (at one time). It's like remaking The Exorcist or even Deep Throat; you could appreciate it on an intrinsic-level (and dont' care about being shocked), but not as the "breakthough'' project it was--which is what you're basically saying. I suppose I have shock too much on my mind. (however, there were risque shocking films before 1960, but were mostly unseen and obscure, underground films)

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In some cases, remakes are vastly superior to the originals, like "The Last House on the Left" (2009) and "Ben-Hur" (1959). The original "Last House" was crap, script-wise, whereas the remake wisely fixed the blatant flaws.

Of course, there's a difference because the "Last House" remake wasn't a shot-for-shot remake, like Van Sant's "Psycho." And, arguably, that's where he went wrong, not to mention he probably should've waited another 20 years.

Nevertheless, his color remake is a well-intentioned homage to the original and opened the door for people to see Hitchcock & Bloch's story who would unlikely watch a B&W flick, a heralded classic or not.

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In some cases, remakes are vastly superior to the originals, like "The Last House on the Left" (2009) and "Ben-Hur" (1959). The original "Last House" was crap, script-wise, whereas the remake wisely fixed the blatant flaws.
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Your 'vastly superior' adjective is interesting.
The Ben-Hur remake received horrible reviews, though I haven't see it. I have not seen the LHOTL remake, and likely won't since I saw the original when it was released and it left an indelible impression on me, despite it's low production values. May I ask your approx. age? I've a feeling we are decades apart, and are perceiving things from a different sensibility (which can't be helped), since I can't be objective about today's films--unless I could "forget" I ever saw the originals. That's not to say that I'm a fan of black & white, necessarily.

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You must've missed it, but I cited the 1959 version of "Ben-Hur" as a superior remake of the previous classic from 1925. I've seen the 2016 version as well and liked it a lot -- despite the curious critical hate it has received -- but it's not as good as the '59 version IMHO. Nevertheless, it's probably a good choice for the current generation to appreciate the same great story.

I highly recommend the remake of "Last House" as it's a nigh masterpiece of adventure/horror/thriller and, like I said, it fixes the flaws of the original -- the goofy parts of the score, the incongruous bumbling policemen and the eye-rolling implausibility of the storyline. I'm willing to bet that if you viewed the '72 version today with fresh eyes it wouldn't leave the same impression and you'd probably roll your eyes at it. I'm not saying it doesn't have any merits, but -- as far as I'm concerned -- it's a joke and I don't get how people say it's "disturbing" or whatever.

If you don't mind, I'm not going to give away my age because it's irrelevant to the conversation. Some people are mature even while they're physically young and some people are immature even though they're physically aged. That said, I can guarantee you we're not decades apart.

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Yes, I did miss it, probably because you mentioned both films within the same sentence, as if the same context. No disrespect meant by asking your age, by the way.
The reason the original LHOTF affected me is because it was so before-it's time-, and it had a way of being extremely realistic. If a film affects you that much, it's hitting too close to home, since the things that happened in the film "taught" me ( because I was a young teenager) that these events happen in real life. So I can't dis-lodge the impact it had on me. I thought the acting from the 2 female victims was excellent, and it didn't feel like I was watching a film, but more like a documentary. This may be why Roger Ebert is the only critic (that I know of) that praises it. Yet, when watching Friday the 13th when first released, it was "watching a slasher film"

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No disrespect meant by asking your age,


It's all good. Thanks for the explanation. :)

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.. maturity (or lack thereof) is different than conditioning.

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the flaws of the original -- the goofy parts of the score, the incongruous bumbling policemen and the eye-rolling implausibility of the storyline.
I just watched LHOTL 1972 right-the-way-through for the first time, and agree that the three problems you identify are very real (the basic implausibility of the crims ending up back in the parent's neighborhood, indeed right outside their house/at the end of their driveway doesn't come up in the medieval country trail/village setting of the original Swedish story....because in that ultra-sparse setting there are few places to stay or get a meal, so crims ending up with the lodge-keeping parents is very plausible).

Beyond those problems the ultra-low budget makes it a very rough, grimey, barely acted, barely written experience (part of its appeal to some). It's also hard to think of even one memorable shot or visual idea. Let's face it, studios were making pretty ferocious stuff at this time themselves: Deliverance and Straw Dogs and Clockwork Orange etc. still horrify and hold up very well. Stylish indie horrors from the time like Texas Chainsaw and Black Christmas are similarly out of LHOLT's league, and LHOTL isn't buoyed up by the sort of gleeful perversity that makes John Water's ultra-low-budget films from the time still a kick (tho' not to everyone's taste).

I'm glad LHOTL kickstarted Wes Craven's career, but that's about all. I'll now check out LHOTL 2009. I see that that had (even adjusting for inflation) about 100x the budget of the original. That should fix *some* problems.

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the remake of "Last House" as it's a nigh masterpiece of adventure/horror/thriller
While I don't agree that LHOTL 2009 is a masterpiece or even especially close to it, I agree with your original contention that it's a significant improvement on the 1972 version.

LHOTL 2009 is a slick, professional piece of work with good actors from shows like Breaking Bad and Deadwood almost across the board. It removes the egregious flaws of the original we've discussed elsewhere, e.g., by fully-embracing a small-town/isolated setting from the get-go. Aside from its very last plot-point and shot there's nothing exploitation-like about 2009 (e.g., no forced urination! no mom fellating daugter's killer en route to supposedly killing him with a bite! no Dad turing into McGyver and electrocuting people! no ripping out intestines shots!). Instead almost everything is treated pretty realistically and many of the dots from the original film that recur are rethought and connected up in much more satisfying ways. The crims are much less cartoonish than in 1972, and their malevolence feels more situational and opportunistic. LHOTL 2009 is also 30 mins longer but doesn't feel it - a good sign. Indeed, 2009 feels a lot less padded out than 1972 does, and in contrast to the original's scattershot, look-at-me editing, 2009 has a good, invisible flow. Worth seeing whereas the 1972 version is only for horror buffs with a historical bent.

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I appreciate your feedback, Swan.

I was impressed with the way the 2009 remake juxtaposes the beauty of nature & people/family with the hideousness of human evil. Take, for example, the opening scenes of the beautiful woods & music followed by the thug's murderous escape and the later sequence where a fleeing girl is shot while swimming through a lake.

The character of Justin was another interesting element. Through no fault of his own he's the teenage son of the main scumbag. It's clear that Justin hates the perverseness and hypocrisy of his "family life" and craves normalcy and genuine love. He's in torment but is too afraid of his father to overtly act (and understandably so), but he does what he can, when he can. The message of Justin is that people are not cursed to follow the wicked or foolish ways of their bloodline. Simple wisdom and force of righteous will breaks the curse. Redemption is there, if you want it.

I also liked the way the film depicts the duplicity of the criminal gang, particularly the leader Krug. He's the ultimate POS but watch him cover-up his intrinsic wickedness with his knack for social acclimation -- a fake smile, innocent smalltalk and a well-placed "Amen." The film successfully shows how some people aren't what they appear to be; they're the express opposite! Not to mention the flick is a good reminder to always be on your guard. Don't be naïve; not everyone's like you or me. Some people will happily abuse, rape and kill without a second thought. They're scum, pure and simple (by their OWN foolish choices).

There are a couple of clichéd horror aspects I could do without, specifically the scenes involving a garbage disposal and a microwave. They're a bit silly and needlessly stretch the believability. But then it struck me that they're types of universal/divine judgment & justice; so it's all good.

In ways it's even a masterpiece (for its genre), a brilliant showcase of beauty and the beast.

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[deleted]

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It probably helps that I don't like B&W (but can bear with it when there's no other recourse).
I'd urge you to give B&W a bit more of a chance! We went through some of the technical details about what makes B&W film special and interesting in this thread:
https://moviechat.org/tt0054215/Psycho/5af2ac7ad6f1e00014ab93d8/Psycho-in-4K

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Some of my favorite films are in B&W, e.g. "King Kong," "The Young Lions," "The Ride Back," "Tarzan and His Mate," "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Wizard of Oz." I just prefer color for reasons explained elsewhere on this thread.

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It's a good point. However, it's not a sequel, but rather a genuine remake (as opposed to a "reimagining").

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There does seem to be a need to differentiate between a sequel and a remake, especially with Psycho.

Remakes of PLAYS are done, on Broadway, all the time. They are called "revivals." So folks in the 21st Century can see new versions of plays like "Death of a Salesman" and "Oklahoma" from the 40s.

And its been noted that folks have been "remaking" Shakespeare on stage for centuries.

So "revivals" of Psycho and other classic films would seem to have a lot of support.

On the other hand, movies are different than plays. Hitchcock's Psycho has 1959(and a little of 1960, it was shot from November to February) in its very DNA. Move it to 1998, and something goes a little wrong.

Moreover, director after director after director has said "if you cast your movie right, you have a great shot at a great movie." The Godfather was cast right. Gone With the Wind was cast right. Hitchcock's Psycho was cast right(with Anthony Perkins, uber alles.)

The Psycho remake was not cast right.

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As such, it presents the same story with different actors in more modern times IN COLOR with marginal differences. It appeals to people who aren't very keen on Hitchcock and loathe B&W, like me.

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Van Sant and Psycho producer Brian Grazer both cited the black and white factor as reason alone to remake Psycho. They contended that a new generation would not watch the original Psycho because it was in black and white.

I'm intrigued that you "loathe" black and white cinematography, but you're clearly not alone.

What's interesting is that, of all of Hitchcock's films from 1953(Dial M for Murder) to 1976(Family Plot, his final film), all of Hitchcock's films were in color except two: The Wrong Man(to give the film a documentary feel and underline its bleak and depressing story) and Psycho(to avoid red blood in the shower scene, said Hitch, but also, I think, to make Psycho look and feel like the b/w horror thrillers of the time, from William Castles' House on Haunted Hill to Diabolique.)

In short, Hitchocck went out of his way to make Psycho in b/w for specific reasons. A color version has its own rationale: to get people to see the "Psycho" story who never would have watched it in b/w.

OK by me....but I kinda like b/w. I grew up on it, its not strange to me.

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I'm intrigued that you "loathe" black and white cinematography


If one has the option of filming in B&W or color, who in their right mind would choose the former (unless they have a legit reason for doing so, e.g. the Kansas portions of "Wizard of Oz")?

Remember those "Essential" collections of Marvel comics where they'd offer numerous back issues in a bulk B&W edition for a low price? Compare the stories in those collections -- like Don McGregor's Black Panther -- with the original color issues and this explains why I greatly prefer color. There's no contest. Color makes everything COME ALIVE.

Furthermore, B&W can prevent you from taking the events in a movie as reality; and make them almost alien (not that the events necessarily happened in real life, of course, but I mean make them reality to YOU). Say you watch a WWI flick in B&W. You'll likely write it off as ancient history where what goes down isn't really driven home, but watching it in color makes the happenings come alive and you think, "Wow, this kind of sh** really happened and it actually wasn't that long ago."

Imagine viewing the 1992 version of "Last of the Mohicans" in B&W and it'd generally ruin the experience and take away from the film's impact.

I like Coppola's "Tetro," but sure wish it were in color.

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I think B and W can give a film it a depressing tone, which helps. Or with TV, I don't even think about I Love Lucy being in color...it almost gives the show a "classic" feel, as if to enhance it, if anything.

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If one has the option of filming in B&W or color, who in their right mind would choose the former (unless they have a legit reason for doing so, e.g. the Kansas portions of "Wizard of Oz")?

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Well, I think we're all pretty familiar with movie history here. Black and white was the "default" way most movies were made from the beginning of film to at least "the coming of television" in the early 50's. People had no visual images to watch at home; they only had radio, they were grateful to SEE something at all -- color or b/w -- so the cheaper and less difficult to process b/w was the norm. Thus classics like The Philadelphia Story, Double Indemnity, pretty much every Bogart movie made before the 50s; all Hitchcock movies until 1948(Rope was his first color picture)...b/w.

But there WERE color pictures, of course. Most of The Wizard of Oz. Gone With the Wind. Many Judy Garland musicals of the 40s. But they were anomalies.

As the 50s came, color (and wide screen) was used to lure people away from their B/W TVs, but b/w seemed to have been chosen -- almost invariably -- for "gritty dramas"(even on an all-star scale as with From Here to Eternity and On the Waterfront) and most "New York stories"(Marty and 12 Angry Men, both from black and white live TV productions.)





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It gets interesting in the 60s. Now, color was the default mode for movies , so directors CHOSE to go b/w for various reasons.

Hitchcock had the best reason, I think. He felt that the censors would reject Psycho if there was red blood in the shower, and that audiences would be repulsed.

Billy Wilder determined that if the period cross-dressing romp "Some Like It Hot" were in color, the whole story would become too garish and campy. It was also filmed like a movie of the 30s(though set right at the end of the 20s.) On the whole, Billy Wilder much PREFERRED working in b/w; all of his movies from 1957(Love in the Afternoon) through 1966(The Fortune Cookie) are in black and white EXCEPT Irma La Douce. As for the rest, what a group: Love in the Afternoon, Witness for the Prosecution, Some LIke It Hot; The Apartment; One Two Three, Kiss Me Stupid. "The Apartment" in particular, is unimaginable to me as a color film. What Wilder did there was to turn the "fluffy New York romance" into something grim.

Interesting: Otto Preminger did Anatomy of a Murder in b/w; then Exodus in color, then Advise and Consent in b/w. Just as the mood struck him, I guess.

The "execution year" for black and white was: 1967. The Black and White categories were removed from the Oscars. Movie studios were told by the TV networks that, because everybody was buying color TVs -- they only wanted to buy color movies. And that was that.

From 1968 on, black and white was very rarely allowed by the studios. Usually, only hit filmmakers with "worthy projects" got to use it, though tyro Peter Bogdanovich proved to his counterculture producers that b/w was necessary for The Last Picture Show. Then we got Young Frankenstein, Manhattan, Raging Bull...eventually Ed Wood.

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One memory I have, growing up and going to the movies in the 60s, is that if the movie was in b/w, I felt a bit of a let down -- oh, this was going to be "realistic and depressing" -- and somewhat claustrophobic.

I remember feeling that especially when I saw Wilder's The Fortune Cookie. The story felt like a horror movie to me, with Lemmon and the mean Matthau and Lemmon's unfaithful ex-wife trapped in a Cleveland Ohio that was made to look like a dump. I wanted OUT of that movie so bad. I recall when one character said he needed to get home in time to watch the "Batman" TV show -- it felt like an "escape rope to the world of fantasy and color."

All that said, b/w seems absolutely natural for movies of the 30s and 40s -- I can't imagine a single Bogart 40s movie in color(he got there with The Barefoot Contessa and The Caine Mutiny, but even most of his 50's movies are in B/W.)

And I do like the weird power of "black and white Panavison wide screen movies of the 60s": The Apartment, Lonely are the Brave.

Its funny about Psycho. Its only Hitchcock's original that is IN black and white. All three sequels are in color(with the house interior done in the colors of the killer's flat in Hitchcock's Frenzy -- green wallpaper and orange drapes.) the Van Sant is in color(with the "Frenzy" colors thrown out in favor of a weird "pastel pink and orange look.) The bad Bates Motel busted pilot of 1987 and the successful Bates Motel series of the 2010's are in color.

But...the one that COUNTS...is b/w. And it plays to both "strengths" of that mode. The early scenes (hotel room, real estate office, car lot) are bleak and realistic and lightly grim. The Bates House is Gothic and noirish. Arbogast brings memories of Bogart. Etc. And the big bloody scene in the shower tricks us: was that blood...or just shadows...in the water? (BTW, the Van Sant Psycho of 1998 gave us a kind of ORANGE blood that wasn't disturbing at all.)

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I guess I've got too many b/w favorites from my youth as a filmgoer to "loathe it": the original Psycho, the orginal Cape Fear, the original Manchurian Candidate...Lonely are the Brave,Dr. Strangelove(and its b/w "serious" doppelganger Fail-Safe)....12 Angry Men, Marty, On the Waterfront...

But I sure do understand why some have no use for it.

And they -- you -- won. Its barely used at all anymore. I'm not sure the film stock is even much available anymore.

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Furthermore, B&W can prevent you from taking the events in a movie as reality; and make them almost alien (not that the events necessarily happened in real life, of course, but I mean make them reality to YOU). Say you watch a WWI flick in B&W. You'll likely write it off as ancient history where what goes down isn't really driven home, but watching it in color makes the happenings come alive and you think, "Wow, this kind of sh** really happened and it actually wasn't that long ago."

Imagine viewing the 1992 version of "Last of the Mohicans" in B&W and it'd generally ruin the experience and take away from the film's impact.

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Well, that's a great point. A well-made historical drama like Last of the Mohicans in color tells us "you are there, this is what it would have been like."

But the great irony of how b/w was used in the 50s and 60s when it was a CHOICE was: you use b/w when you want to BE more "realistic."

Its counterintuitive. But I think it worked like this: Technicolor movies were often TOO colorful, they created an eye-pleasing, almost fantasy level of color, and so color was usually used for fanciful musicals(like 7 Brides for 7 Brothers, where each guy has a different color shirt); or glamour(Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief) or "epics"(The Bridge on the River Kwai in the jungle; Ben-Hur 1959.)

The feeling was that to film a movie like On the Waterfront in color would be to transform a very grim part of America into "too pretty a setting."

Black and white movies could also subconsciously create a feeling of "documentary film" -- as with the WWII and Korean War newsreels that played in theaters.

And finally: black and white lent itself to noir, crime films, and horror, quite well. As swanstep has pointed out, there were very special cinematography and lighting demands FOR noir and crime films.



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An anecdote: Janet Leigh stepped on the soundstage sets of Psycho for the first time, looked around and thought: "Oh...this is a black and white film. I thought Hitchcock worked only in color."

I guess actors can guess pretty quickly when they are on a set for a black and white movie.

I would expect they have to "re-set their mindset accordingly."

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I understand and appreciate everything you say, but I’d rather see every B&W movie in color (even the Kansas portions of “The Wizard of Oz”). After all, real life is in color. And there are plenty of color noirs that prove noir can (and should) be done in color.

Imagine seeing, say, “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown” or “The Hateful Eight” in B&W, it would suck. (Of course some people think the latter sucks anyway, lol).

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Imagine seeing, say, “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown” or “The Hateful Eight” in B&W, it would suck. (Of course some people think the latter sucks anyway, lol).

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The Hateful Eight? My personal favorite of 2015?

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Given that QT has made so few films, I think I can show which ones of his are my personal favorites of the year, and where the others land:

Reservoir Dogs 1992 (Number Three; First is My Cousin Vinny and Second is Unforgiven.)

Pulp Fiction 1994(Number One -- and it loses only to LA Confidential as my favorite of the 90s.)

Jackie Brown 1997 (Number Two -- LA Confidential is Number One..and Jackie Brown plays tight with Pulp Fiction as my favorite QT movie.)

Then QT takes five years off, something goes a little wrong with him, he "dips" in quality(but still better than many others) and slowly works his way back up:

Kill Bill 1 2002: (Number Three; Number One is Chicago; Number Two is Eight Legged Freaks)

Kill Bill 2 2003: (Number Two; Number One is Love Actually, my favorite film of the 2000s)

Death Proof, 2007(Not ranked, its my least favorite QT because it doesn't feel l ike a real movie to me, though all of Russell's and Rose MacGowan's lines are great and the final car chase is a lollapalooza; My one and two that year were Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd, respectively.)

And then QT started to get better again, film by film and he gets three Number Ones from me:


2009: Inglorious Basterds

2012: Django Unchained

2015: The Hateful Eight

Not necessarily because they are so good(though they are better than his midpoint work) but because no other movies excited me more in those years of release.

I'll make my case for The Hateful Eight some other time (not on its page; it gets murdered by mean people over there.)

These are, of course, very personal opinions. I leave to Oscar and Ten Best Lists the "real" great movies of those years.

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Imagine seeing, say, “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown” or “The Hateful Eight” in B&W, it would suck.
On a technical level, especially good candidates for B&W often involve lots of night-time or low light shots and/or lots of shots with very deep focus. Also, if you're severely restricting or distorting your color pallete then it might be worth going all the way to B&W.

And on a thematic level, B&W can both romanticize and nightmarize perhaps reflecting the dual possibilities of the night-time generally.

QT's films so far are mostly comedic, chatty, and neither especially romantic nor nightmarish, except for some of the Kill Bills which, unsurprisingly, both contain B&W sequences. Again, except for the Kill Bills, QT hasn't distorted color much or used a lot of lowlight or deep focus.

Obvious candidates for B&W over the last 20 years include:
Saving Private Ryan (when you drain away that much color...)
O Brother Where Art Thou (when you distort color that much...)
Requiem for a Dream (Bring on the nightmare...)
Minority Report (Ditto)
Dark Knight (deep focus, lower light possibilites - both romance and nightmare intensified)
Under The Skin, Son Of Saul, The Lobster, Toni Erdmann (four of my faves of recent years; all *feel* like they're almost in B&W - I sometimes seem to remember them as B&W!)
Dunkirk (which has really grown on me worked well in color but you'd have much more of a sense of being able to see 'all the way to France' in B&W so I'd bet Nolan was tempted by B&W there).

BTW, one ep. of the last season of Black Mirror (the one about being hunted by robot dogs) was in B&W. It worked very well. Black Mirror's stories (w. Twilight Zone roots) are often nightmarish, so I expect more B&W from them in future.

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It's worthwhile remembering that very fine films continue to be made in B&W (e.g., in the last decade, Frances Ha, White Ribbon, Ida, A Field In England, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Hard to Be a God, Nebraska) as well as some more mediocre efforts (Darling, Eyes of My Mother, The Artist, and so on). And even though B&W ceased being a normal exhibition option in about 1967, it still felt like a very live tradition up through the '90s. When I was in High School in 1980 many of the films I really wanted to see from Eraserhead and Manhattan to Elephant Man and Raging Bull were B&W, and most years over the next two decades saw young, ambitious, attention-seeking directors break through in B&W: Jim Jarmusch (Strangers in Paradise, Down By Law), Spike Lee (She's Gotta Have it), Matthieu Kassowitz (La Haine), Lars von Trier (Epidemic, most of Europa), Chris Nolan (Following), Darren Aronofsky (Pi), ahem Kevin Smith (Clerks), um, the Man Bites Dog guy, the Tetsuo guy. Even if people like Tim Burton and Spielberg and Wenders and Tarr and Guy Maddin and the Coens *didn't* occasionally put out B&W films, just staying in touch with what's what was new and happening in film through the '80s and '90s required some amount of passion for B&W (which, happily, is what you need for the history of film to come alive for you anyway).

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My daughter who's starting college in the fall thinks B&W movies are old-fashioned so refuses to watch. Eyeroll. I don't think she's watched Psycho even though she likes horror.

So would you like to see a remake in B&W? Trying to outdo the master might be too big of a challenge that not even the best director would take on. Besides, Hitchcock didn't have much choice, but to shoot in B&W because he was financing the film himself and didn't have the money.

That said, if some neo noir director would take the challenge and do a remake, even in color, then I'd like to see Christopher Nolan take a crack at it. He has some experience in film noir as he and his brother did Memento. It was a crazy concept and plot that they made work with an unique storytelling in reverse. I think any remake of Psycho would have to have a different story and ending even if the only thing in common is a psychopathic character or characters. A little joke there.

Nolan and his brother already had one of the best psycho villains of all time as the Joker played by Heath Ledger. It could be a crime story even one of a crime of opportunity. What probably won't work too well is the main protagonist dies in the middle of the movie. The audience would already know about it. Another story line that would not work is having a motel operator as the antagonist. That would give the plot away. One could have the shower scene (not at a motel) as one killing as a homage. However, it would have to be done differently, but still effective. I think the killer using a large knife is okay, too. We just don't know where and when he or she will use it. The protagonist could meet someone, of the opposite sex, and they could be the psycho. It could be that we do not know which one it is from their dialog. Maybe the woman a man meets while trying to escape a big crime of opportunity is suspicious herself. One thing leads to another and she ends up helping the protagonist.

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My daughter who's starting college in the fall thinks B&W movies are old-fashioned so refuses to watch.
Did your daughter like Lady Bird? If so then Frances Ha (written by and starring LB's writer-director, Greta Gerwig) might be a B&W gateway drug. Ditto Nolan's Following if she's the sort of young smart cookie who reveres Nolan.

Bringing Up Baby, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, It's a Wonderful Life, Roman Holiday, Sullivan's Travels, Hard Day's Night also never miss in my experience. Good luck!

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So would you like to see a remake in B&W? Trying to outdo the master might be too big of a challenge that not even the best director would take on. Besides, Hitchcock didn't have much choice, but to shoot in B&W because he was financing the film himself and didn't have the money.

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..and he didn't want to show red blood in color.

You know, Anthony Perkins as the director of Psycho III tried to get Universal to allow him to make that sequel in b/w, but was turned down.

Which triggers a bit of a "parlor game" for me to offer here(to all):

Given that Hollywood pretty much "outlawed" black and white films in 1967, are there movies made after that year which SHOULD have been made in black and white?

I'll offer some "maybes":

The Sting
The Exorcist(but no green pea soup!)
Rocky(it would seem like "Marty" or "Somebody Up There Likes Me")
Network(it would seem like Dr. Strangelove)

Silence of the Lambs
LA Confidential

Well...that's all I got right now.

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It's worthwhile remembering that very fine films continue to be made in B&W (e.g., in the last decade, Frances Ha, White Ribbon, Ida, A Field In England, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Hard to Be a God, Nebraska) as well as some more mediocre efforts (Darling, Eyes of My Mother, The Artist, and so on).

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These references again reflect your astonishing grasp of the breadth and depth of today's "movie world," swanstep but -- I think I only recognize two titles: The Artist(a Best Picture, yes? And a foreign film, non US-studio picture? I've never seen it) and Nebraska(Alexander "Sideways" Payne had some clout).

B/W is rather gone from the mainstream...

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Alfonso Cuaron's latest, Roma, is in B&W. First reviews from Venice suggest it's a knockout, and his best film:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/30/roma-review-alfonso-cuaron

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The Psycho remake was not cast right.


I'm curious as to which roles you don't think were cast right? Heche doesn't trip my trigger like Leigh does (although she's a'right), but I think Vaughn did a smashing job.

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I'm curious as to which roles you don't think were cast right? Heche doesn't trip my trigger like Leigh does (although she's a'right), but I think Vaughn did a smashing job.

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Well, if you think Vaughn did a smashing job...I'm not here to try to disabuse you of your opinion...but I will try to indicate what I think went wrong there, and why.

First of all, this: Hitchcock wasn't always this lucky, but Anthony Perkins was his first choice for Norman Bates, and I've never read of an alternate. He SAW Norman Bates(fat and forty and creepy in the book) AS Anthony Perkins, because he had been intrigued by Perkins' personality since at least "Fear Strikes Out"(1957.) As for Perkins, he took this very risky role because he felt his film career was failing. He was ready to become a stage actor and quit movies. Then Psycho came along, so he said yes.

Well, Anthony Perkins was the first choice for Hitchcock's Norman, but Vince Vaughn was something like Van Sant's 20th choice for Norman. Good Will Hunting stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck turned it down, as did many other young "names" -- Vince Vaughn wasn't really a star yet. He had made his name with "Swingers" and disappeared into Spielberg's Jurassic Park 2. Before VV took the role, Van Sant veteran Joaquin Phoenix(To Die For) said "yes" - -but only if Van Sant could wait until he finished another movie. Van Sant couldn't wait so -- Phoenix was out, VV was in.

So you've got that problem with VV. Chosen not so much because he FIT the role...but because he was willing to TAKE the role. You can sense his unease on screen, I think.

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The funny thing for me is i really liked VV back then -- he was something new: really big and tall("Circus giant tall" he said), very hipster funny, handsome enough(his "Swingers" guy effortlessly gets the chicks) and...when he wanted to be, mean and menacing.

Indeed, for awhile in the late 90's, VV hosted an American Movie Classics movie series called "Tough Guys" -- hosting movies with Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Chuck Norris, etc. Honestly , think about it -- Norman Bates hosting a show called "tough guys"?

VV WAS a tough guy. And I think Hitchcock and Perkins created Norman so as to create a NON tough guy: a shy, thin, spindly, profoundly LIKEABLE young man who poses no threat to either Marion Crane or Arbogast on first meeting.

Let's go to the Arbogast scenes first. In the Hitchcock, Martin Balsam was stocky and tough-looking enough, with Perkins spindly enough, to suggest: in a fight, Arbogast could take Norman. In the Van Sant, Norman is such a big hulking giant that when spindly lil' William H. Macy comes in..the immediate vibe is: "This so-called private eye better watch it -- Norman can squash him like a bug."

Over at the Marion scenes: in the Hitchcock, Perkins' Norman in the parlor eventually reveals a nasty, lightly raging streak when he snaps at Marion about putting Mother some place. He's a bit scary, Hitchcock plays fair. But then he calms down, flashes the smile , becomes "harmless" -- and Marion decides to stay the night. In the Van Sant, when VV starts to rage -- he's a big, overtly dangerous man, the vibe is: "Marion, get the hell out of there!" Plus...IMHO...VV's version of the parlor rage is unfortunately out of his range of emotion. He sells it wrong, like a thug.


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So the main miscasting of VV is size, but I also think his hipster persona was wrong. I like VV as his own unique star, but I feel this is as if Hitchcock were to cast Dean Martin as Norman in 1960(I liked Dino as a star, too.) The butch haircut didn't work for me either -- it further presented VV as a tough guy(on the Psycho "Making of DVD," we see Van Sant supervising VV's haircut and VV playfully says, "C'mon, Gus...let's go all the way...I'll play it bald!")

And recall this: Hitchcock was asked by an interviewer if the shot of Perkins swinging his hips when he climbed the stairs was a "clue that he's Mother." Hitchcock said, "well, I think the clue is the feminine nature of the character in general." VV was NOT feminine.

Let's move on. Anne Heche, like VV, wasn't much of a star when she made Psycho. She'd just landed a role with Harrison Ford in a romantic comedy and immediately announced she was gay and "with" Ellen. She came into Psycho with a bit of controversy and not much of a star reputation. And then she elected to cut her hair really short so that Marion became rather "boyish." If there is one thing that Janet Leigh projected circa 1960 it was SEX. In that bra and slip -- three times. (Let's be direct: she had big breasts, "the best in Hollywood" said Robert Wagner at the time.) Heavy necking with Sam. And Leigh had a great movie star's VOICE: reedy, tremulous, but strong.

Anne Heche struck out against Leigh in all of the above categories. Voice and body,especially. And she mugged too much -- some of the problem in Psycho isn't just "miscasting," its sub-par performances. Watch Heche's reaction after the oil millionaire walks away from her: mugging. Watch Heche's face contort into fear when Norman says "a boy's best friend is his mother." Mugging.

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Intriguingly, Julianne Moore(a bigger star at the time than Heche) interviewed to play EITHER Marion or Lila -- and Van Sant gave her the wrong role. For Moore HAD established herself as a "sex star" just the year before in "Boogie Nights." In a better world, Moore would have been Marion and Heche would have been Lila.

Since Sam and Lila are pretty meager roles, Viggo Mortensen and Julianne Moore aren't really miscast. But each of them seems to miscalculate against the original. John Gavin gets dissed in Psycho, but he was in the Cary Grant tradition of Hitchocck leading man. Viggo plays Sam as a bit of a hick type -- and actually comes on a little to Lila in the story, in a bad bit of improve.

As for Julianne Moore -- Van Sant and Heche said that this Lila is a lesbian(the keys she wears around her belt are the key) and Moore elects to play the part at a far tougher level than Vera Miles did; I was scared for MRS. BATES when Moore's Lila entered the house. She's like Clint Eastwood in this (she doesn't cry at the hardware store, either; there is no line "sorry about the tears.")

Viggo and Moore weren't miscast, but their performances aren't as good as the originators(said Moore of the role of Lila,"I have no role to play here" -- and her contempt shows.)

Miscast were: VV, Anne Heche and...William H. Macy, a milquetoast detective(with a good, strong voice) who is undercut further by being forced to wear a really dumb oversized hat and a suit that looks a size too big. Nobody would hire THIS detective. Both when questioning Norman and when climbing the fatal stairs, Macy's Arbogast seems overmatched, a clear victim. Balsam's Arbogast seemed too tough to die.

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Lower level miscasting:

Rita Wilson(Mrs. Tom Hanks) as Caroline the secretary. When mousy Pat Hitchcock in the original says to Marion "He was flirting with you. He must have noticed my wedding ring" -- its a joke on the character. When Rita Wilson -- arguably more pretty and sexy than Anne Heche -- says the line, its just plain mean...and the truth.

James LeGros as California Charlie. John Anderson had been an older man, stern, Lincolnesque...and clearly a "punishing father figure" who intimidates Marion. He's SCARY. He feeds paranoia. The much younger LeGros(a crony of Van Sant) is just...a young guy.

Lance Howard(Psycho producer Ron Howard's dad) as Lowery, the realtor. He's OK, but colorless. Vaughn Taylor had CHARACTER -- that rat-like face, that moustache.

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A couple of the castings were "right on": aged Chad Everett making Cassidy as much of a sleaze as Frank Albertson did, and James Remar as almost a total match for the highway cop.

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And other castings were just "different": Philip Baker Hall as a more erudite Sheriff Chambers; Robert Forster(coming his wonderfully warm, Oscar-nommed perf in Jackie Brown) as a more low-key psychiatrist(Simon Oakland seems energized to the max by this case; Forster seems a little bored.)

The cast of Van Sant's Psycho isn't miscast "across the board," but I think the three key roles are: Norman, Marion, Arbogast -- all wrong. And Caroline and California Charlie down the list.

Just my opinion....

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I agree with your assessments, but I seem to recall that for the leads, it was more a matter of who they could GET, rather than who they WANTED. I could be wrong.

One thing, I'd never even heard of Vince Vaughn before, didn't even know what he looked like, but I thought that since nobody could do what Perkins did, he did OK.

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The fact that Hitchcock and Bloch saw Norman in two very different ways shows that there can be different interpretations of the same basic character. You point out that Perkins’ effeminate vibe walking up the stairs as Norman is a clue to the truth about the character, but Bloch’s original version lacked this. Besides, in real life are only foppish men transvestites?

You argue that Vaughn was like Van Sant’s 20th choice (which is a serious exaggeration) but (1.) it’s irrelevant who COULD have had the part when viewing the piece and (2.) Vaughn was still one of the contenders and wouldn’t have been on Van Sant’s list if he was unworthy of the role (in the director’s estimation).

Yes, Vaughn is towering but (1.) he lacked the musculature of, say, Schwarzenegger or Ferrigno and could scarcely be described as “hulking”; and (2.) his amiable and slightly awkward disposition as Norman was hardly that of a tough guy and therefore not menacing. At the same time, his imposing physicality suggested that you wouldn’t want to tangle with him. So when he flashes a hint of indignation in the parlor you think, “Whoa, Marion, don’t piss this guy off.” She has the same thought so immediately calms him down and prudently makes a courteous exit to her room (she had already decided to stay the night because she purchased the room earlier and Norman didn’t do anything so radical to make her fear for her life; she just wrote him off as an eccentric Mama’s boy).

The fact that Heche isn’t hot like Leigh and Vaughn is a tall, handsome Norman makes Marion’s decision to join the peculiar dude for a sandwich date more believable, especially since she’s portrayed as rather man-hungry. It’s less believable in the original for hottie Marion to willingly waste time with a creepy slightly effeminate guy. That said, Perkins was handsome in his own right in 1959 and was hardly short at 6’1”. In the two sequels he lost his looks, of course, simple due to the aging process.

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When Arbogast (Mace) meets Norman (Vaughn) he smells something fishy, but perceives his mild, nervous disposition and so presses him for info while wisely maintaining caution due to his daunting stature. The very fact that Norman could wipe the floor with Arbogast if it came down to it creates palpable tension in the verbal confrontation. In the original’s confrontation, by contrast, you don’t really have any worries for Arbogast.

I strongly disagree about Macy as Arbogast. Outside of Batman, detectives rely on their wit and social acuity to be effective at their craft, not physical brawn. For instance, Arbogast swiftly and easily obtains the info he requires from Norman. He was palpably shrewd and simply being 5’8” and smirking doesn’t automatically make a man a “victim.” Balsam was even shorter, btw. In any case, with Vaughn as Norman there’s more of a sense of threat for Arbogast when he enters the house to snoop around.

While it’s always possible (and inconsequential), I don’t buy that Moore’s Lila was a lesbian, keys or no keys, but simply a tenacious attractive redhead in her late 30s. If she was a known lesbian why would Sam flirt with her? And, if she were a secret lesbian, Sam would’ve picked up on it and refrained (he might’ve been a hick, but he wasn’t a dimwit). In “Psycho II” Vera Miles appears as Lila Loomis, which shows that she and Sam got married after Marion's death. Of course, “Psycho” ’98 exists in a separate universe to the original trilogy (or tetralogy).

As for Miles vs. Moore as Lila, they EACH had temerity and – while they’re both relatively short – Miles is actually a half inch taller. Although Moore’s Lila was formidable and might handle herself with lanky Perkins Norman, she was no match for the imposing Vaughn Norman; hence, there’s more of a sense of danger.

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Yes, Rita Wilson is way sexier than Heche. I took her line as an innocently vain joke, but it might have been catty. We don’t know enough about her to draw a conclusion.

Perhaps Forster’s psychiatrist seemed a little bored because by ’98 the weirdos had come out of the societal woodwork en masse after the Donahue show (etc.) and he had seen it all, unlike the more innocent era of 1959 where Norman’s condition would’ve been shocking and more fascinating (for a psychiatrist, at least). In any case, Van Sant made the right decision to abridge the doctor’s analysis.

The other characters you cite are too immaterial to make any difference.

Van Sant’s version was not supposed to be an exact duplicate of Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” but rather a 90’s updating with key nuances, not to mention IN COLOR. Vaughn was not meant to impersonate Perkins. If Van Sant wanted that he would’ve cast a Perkins-type. It’s the same thing with the Marion, Arbogast, Sam and Lila characters.

The iconic 1960 version had an incredible impact when it was released and reigns supreme whereas the '98 rendition failed at the box office (and yet still made over $37 million, which ain't nothing to sneeze at), but that doesn't make it bad. It's just different... and IN COLOR. It's entirely possible to appreciate both versions for varying reasons.

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wuchak, your arrival here portends some serious exception taking to established thought processes on the one hand - but(as always I hope on these boards) always a sense of personal opinion and different views of the world.

If Vaughn, Heche, and Macy seem to me to be "miscast" it is likely because movie remakes do NOT track with play revivals because they are so much a piece of their time, place, reasons, etc. I suppose if Vaughn, Heche, and Macy had played these characters first, perhaps Perkins, Leigh, and Balsam would feel like the usurpers.

But history didn't work out that way. And Hitchcock's Psycho is very much built around Tony Perkins AS Tony Perkins.

When Hitchcock persuaded Perkins to play Bates, he said, "Tony, you ARE this picture." Its as if everything -- the twist ending, audience sympathy with Norman despite the horrors happening all around him, and a mix of empathy and terror at the end of the film, were precisely built on who Anthony Perkins was in 1960.

As for Leigh vs Heche (and Anne Heche said,on the DVD commentary track of Psycho, that these role comparisons shouldn't be a "wrestling match of opponents, but a comparision of different interpretations), I would point to the side-by-side promotional photos of Leigh taking her shower before death arrived and Heche in the same position. One is a photo of eroticism; the other a photo of a woman taking a shower.

In 1998 , William H. Macy was about the hottest character actor around. He'd done Fargo; Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman hadn't fully landed yet -- and I think Van Sant went for the best name available. So Macy was gonna get cast "irregardless" as Arbogast. I think he is fine in the delivery of his lines and the seriousness with which he played the role but -- the wimp factor is there, and if you've seen "the Balsam version," its just DIFFERENT. The dynamic is different; Balsam's cool factor is different, the line readings are different.

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Now, a little something enters in with the Balsam vs Macy casting which, I think, reflects an element of Hitchcock's "cinematic artistry" and doesn't have much to do with casting: their faces and heads.

There is a famous "freeze frame" from Psycho(not a promotional still, from the movie itself) of Balsam's face and head as Arbogast first reacting in shock and horror to his being slashed down the face at the top of the stairs: his round, bald head holds the center of the close up. His eyes are bugged out, open wide. His mouth is open wide in shock. Even his NOSTRILS seem to be open in a certain way, and the visual effect is: a series of concentric circles -- a "painting on film" of horror expressed not in how many times a knife stabs, but a man's face in shock and terror. Balsam's baldness was key to this effect, as was his round head.

When Macy got the part, that close-up was lost. Macy got to play HIS version of Arbogast's initial shock and...the actor's art, not the director's was on display. No concentric circles.

I would add that as a matter of simple filming -- Van Sant "blew" the attack on Arbogast . The position of Macy's head doesn't match -- in the shot where he almost reaches the stairs -- the position of his head(now looking in the other direction) when Mother runs out at him in the Van Sant. Nor is Mother's "run" believable -- I think Van Sant had her run past Macy and cuts before the two really meet. In the original, you can see Mother reach Arbogast as his head rears back, her free hand grips his free wrist, and the knife comes down on his face-- clearly.

And while I'm on the subject, the overhead close-up of the door opening and light spilling on the floor in the Hitchcock is PERFECT -- the cut comes right when the maximum amount of light hits the floor. Van Sant cuts too soon.



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And while I'm on THAT subject -- precision -- in the Hitchcock, when Arbogast comes out of the office and makes his turn to see the house(for his final walk), Herrmann's "three notes of madness" sound just as Arbogast reaches the edge of the porch and the house is in the POV shot. The house and the three notes of madness hit at exactly the same time. In the Van Sant, Van Sant cuts a shot of Arbogast walking back across the office to the porch and so -- Herrmann's three notes of madness are "thrown away" on the shot of Arbogast emerging on the porch. The POV shot of the house doesn't get the important music as in the Hitchcock/Herrmann.

In fact, perhaps I'll leave the issue of "miscasting" to cast other stones at the Van Sant's Psycho which is the simple fact that the poor guy , most of the time, simply couldn't get the shots or precision moments that a master like Hitchcock(with his seasoned team) got the first time around. The shots in the Van Sant are often mismatched; the timing is wrong; the LENSES are wrong(so that while you could see "all of Mother" attacking Arbogast on the floor in the original, she's more of a dress blocking the shot in the remake.)

Etc.

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None of this is to say that I'm a "hater" of Van Sant's Psycho. In some ways, I had been waiting for it for years, indeed wondering what Psycho would look like "if done today" (I recall a re-staging of the Arbogast murder in the TV version of Salem's Lot and thinking "yeah, that's what this would look like today.")

Nor am I a hater of remakes. Sequels...a lot more. Recall that screenwriter William Goldman(who I often quote because he's one of the few film people to write books about the business) flatly calls sequels "whore movies." His contention is that a great story is meant to have a beginning and an end and to arbitrarily re-start the tale is only done for the money.

You can start with Psycho II on that account. Psycho ends as perfectly as a movie can end -- with Norman now mother "probably for all time" and facing eternity in that great shot in the cell at the end.

Naw. 23 years later, we were told, he was let out (even after committing such brutal murders), given a job at a diner(with KNIVES), allowed to live alone and run the motel again. Whore movie.

That said, certain sequels are fine, are great. Godfather II usually gets the vote --it won Best Picture, and it is clearly more of an art film(on the one hand) and a historical epic(the De Niro scenes) than the first one. But it is also two other things: (1) The original novel still being told (the De Niro scenes are in Puzo's book and didn't make it into the first movie and (2) some rather gratuitous new stuff written by Coppola to "extend" Michael's story and tell the tale without a lot of the great characters from the first one. The proof was in the public pudding: it made less than half of the first one.

"Aliens" is as great a sequel as we have gotten because (unlike Psycho II), it had A-list blockbuster production and took the story in a new direction (war movie.) But the rest of the sequels offered diminishing returns.

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I guess I disagree with William Goldman. Sometimes a sequel can be a classic movie, a great movie. But the batting average is a lot less good than with remakes.

Of course, we have another phenomenon now: movie SERIES. Perhaps Andy Hardy started it, and Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan. But modernly, James Bond got the ball rolling and now Star Wars, MCU and DCU are deep into it. The problem here as I see it is : these now are particularly gripping stories anymore. They never end. They go on and on and on. James Bond is a TV series writ large -- he never finds one woman and settles down, never completes his tasks...

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But back to remakes.

Remakes can and should be more acceptable because "the same great story is being re-staged." The Psycho sequels don't much feel like Hitchcock's masterpiece. The Van Sant surely does...because it IS. (Or as Joseph Stefano said, "I wish Van Sant had directed that movie, but Hitchcock did.")

Indeed, I'll go back to some knowledge about how Hitchcock "envisioned" his version of Psycho:

There were NINE different iterations of "how Arbogast gets killed" before Hitchcock put his version on screen. Start with the Bloch novel: Mother kills Arbogast as he enters the foyer, and slashes his throat with a straight razor. The first draft of screenwriter James Cavenaugh restaged that scene from the book. But Cavenaugh was fired(for other reasons), the straight razor was switched to a knife and...well, Hitchcock had a lot of script and filming changes (he famously re-shot Arbogast's climb up the stairs after his crew "blew it" while he was at home sick), and...we got what we got.

All Van Sant had to do was to re-stage what Hitchcock had toiled through many drafts and re-shoots to get. HITCHCOCK directed Van Sant's Psycho. (Except, in this scene, for two more slashes to Arbogast's face and the inexplicable shots of babe and calf.)

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The "crime" of Van Sant's Psycho -- the element to be considered -- is that up to that time(and, I think since) no one had dared remake such an accepted classic of such high ranking.

Its one thing to remake The Longest Yard or The Italian Job or Get Carter or Willard or Walking Tall -- all have been done, no harm no foul.

But Psycho is up there in the Top Twenty of Great Films -- sometimes the Top Ten - and those were supposed to be inviolate shrines to "movies done just right."

Along with their players.

Bogart in Casablanca. Brando as Don Vito. Gable as Rhett Butler. So far, nobody's tried to take those on.

But Perkins as Norman? Well, evidently all the time now, and I still think he was the best because he fit Hitchcock's vision of how an audience could be convinced to SIDE with a killer, well against their better judgment.

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I write it up at the True Grit pages, but there's an original and a remake I dearly love. About half of the Coen's True Grit is "shot for shot, line for line" with Henry Hathaway's original, most famously Rooster facing down four outlaws and jousting with them(Though Wayne's "Which will it be?" becomes Bridges "Which will you have?").

The other half of the Coen's True Grit is new material not in the novel(the guy who wears a bear head for a hat; the hanging man on the tall tree.)

And both films work.

Now, the Coen version is more "polished and professional." And a real actor(Matt Damon) replaces a bad actor(Glen Campbell.)

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But I still much prefer the final half hour of the Hathaway True Grit, which has two great back-to-back scenes(Rooster talks to lawyer J. Noble Daggett; Noble with Mattie at her gravesite-to-be) that end the original True Grit in deep emotion. The Coen's inexplicably threw the climax to the interminable long ride to safety on a winded horse; and then used the very anti-climactic ending of the novel to end the movie on a low note(with none of the stars of the film even in the scene.)

I'm also partial to the standard Western emotionalism of Elmer Bernstein's score in True Grit(especially during the jousting scene and at the end) against the "polished" traditional hymns and Carter Burwell score in the Coens.

Still, the Coens' True Grit is my favorite movie of 2010. The 1969 original has to line up behind The Wild Bunch and a few others.

But the original True Grit has never been considered at the level of achievement or historical impact of Psycho. THAT's what Van Sant messed with.

In fact, that's often my parlor game question about Van Sant's Psycho:

Has any OTHER classic and historic film at the level of Psycho been remade?

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Vaughn was not meant to impersonate Perkins. If Van Sant wanted that he would’ve cast a Perkins-type. It’s the same thing with the Marion, Arbogast, Sam and Lila characters.

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Though I think he TRIED to get more of a Perkins type, I also think he just sort of didn't care once casting was underway. He offered Marion first to Nicole Kidman(his star of To Die For.) He eventually landed Joaquin Phoenix for Norman(also his star of To Die For), but had to drop him. I figure he went after Macy because he was "hot at the time." I don't know about the others, except Moore did say she would play either Marion or Lila.

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The iconic 1960 version had an incredible impact when it was released and reigns supreme whereas the '98 rendition failed at the box office (and yet still made over $37 million, which ain't nothing to sneeze at),

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Hmmm...Hollywood gross numbers always shift and change. I'd read $20 million gross for the Van Sant, but...those bean counters can drag it out. I think Hitchcock's original at the time would have been a $200 million grosser in 1998 dollars but "apples and oranges" enter in. Psycho made its money when the US population was a lot smaller; it would have been a $400 million grosser if everything was evened out for population, I suppose(More people alive to buy tickets, proportionally). And do it by today's "international figures" and I suppose Hitchcock's Psycho would hit $700 million(and Van Sant -- maybe $100 million.).

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Irony: but that doesn't make it bad. It's just different... and IN COLOR. It's entirely possible to appreciate both versions for varying reasons.

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That's how I feel about True Grit, and The Magnificent Seven, recently. Actually, its how I feel about the two Get Carters(the gritty brutal 1971 British film is a favorite; the 2000 Sly Stallone piece is sanitized but has a great style all its own.)

I think with Psycho, Van Sant did several things wrong. He picked too classic a classic (I mean, is everybody hoping for a remake of The Godfather?), and he tried to emulate too masterly a director(at that director's peak, not when he was older and making Topaz.)

Honestly, I could take you shot by shot and line by line through Van Sant's Psycho and demonstrate where he simply kept screwing up what Hitchcock did technically. Van Sant himself said that he was astonished -- with a DVD of Hitchcock's original on the set at all times -- he could NOT match the shots. He didn't know how Hitchcock got them -- it was a mystery.

And some of it is just sloppy. I'll clarify one I said earlier.

In the original, at the phone booth, Arbogast says to Lila:

"OK. I'll be back in an hour...or less."

Van Sant cut that line. But he did NOT cut Lila's later line, "Sam, he said an hour...or LESS." The 1998 "new" audience would not understand what Lila was saying.

Van Sant's Psycho is rife with mistakes like that. And personally, I always wonder why. I think he was overmatched. (When he filmed Lila saying that line later,I'm guessing he FORGOT he cut Arbogast's line earlier.)

And this: to get the "perfect" run of Mother at Arbogast at the top of the stairs, Hitchcock had doubles rehearse that run every evening when the day's shooting was done. Many evenings. So that when it was time to shoot, Balsam and "Mother" were positioned JUST RIGHT(not just for the run, but for how Mother grabbed Arbo's wrist, how he dropped his hat, how the knife comes down, how his head rears back). I'll bet Van Sant and Macy and "Mother" barely rehearsed three or four times, if that. (Macy was not happy to be in that movie, he said of Hitchcock, "I'm not a fan. I think most of his stuff is lame".)

I like to say that Van Sant's Psycho was made by a man who saw Psycho about 3 times...and shown to a world filled with people who saw Psycho 103 times. He was overmatched by US, too.

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I mostly value Van Sant's Psycho because he DID keep most of the Hitchcock. If Van Sant's Psycho is a good movie, it is because it was really directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by Joseph Stefano(who was alive and paid much more to touch up his original than he was paid to write the original -- YAY), and scored by Bernard Herrmann. Its a pretty good Xerox copy.

But...when the movie world contains two versions of the same movie, there is always a conflict, a battle.

And in Psycho's case, the battle is over, and the dominant movie has won.

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The iconic 1960 version had an incredible impact when it was released and reigns supreme whereas the '98 rendition failed at the box office (and yet still made over $37 million, which ain't nothing to sneeze at),

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I speak to the grosses in another post, but I just remembered:

Whereas Hitchcock's Psycho started its US run in June of 1960 and finished in October of 1960(pretty much the whole summer, with a "late" release on the West Coast in August)...Van Sant's Psycho barely stayed in theaters for three WEEKS in December 1998. I actually saw it twice...full house opening night...almost nobody in the theater three weeks later. And then it was gone. It wasn't playing in January.

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I value your work here, Ecarle, even if I don't always agree with every jot & tittle of your opinions. Thanks for sharing.

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I actually thought the shower scene was much more brutal in the original. It was more realistic. In the remake, it was more calculated. Just didn't seem as genuine. Seemed much more staged.

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I thought the scene where Lila discovers the corpse of Mrs. Bates was superior in the original as well.

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I thought the scene where Lila discovers the corpse of Mrs. Bates was superior in the original as well.

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Though I offer kudos to the spider that crawls out of Mrs. Bates mouth and onto her face(creepy) so much of that scene plays so wrong compared to the original.

Hitchcock timed to the millisecond Norman's rush into the cellar and "pose with the knife"(he likes to do that when he thinks he has a female victim in view; he did it in the shower -- but not coming at Arbogast.) And he also time to the millisecond Sam's sudden entry behind him.

But the classic element was the look on Anthony Perkins face -- the mad, sadistic and blood-thirsty SMILE that told us: this killer ENJOYS killing. In the murder scenes, we never saw Mother's face, but we never saw Norman's face either. Now, we do. It made people scream, how happy he looked to be killing someone.

Then the very tall and strong Gavin overpowers Perkins. It is believable that Gavin could do this, but also believable that it would be hard.

Cut to: The Van Sant. VV enters rather slowly, creeping along with an "unfocussed facial" expression. No split second timing here, he's just walking along. And then Viggo rushes in and we get the spectacle of a very small and wiry man having to bring down a very big one. Viggo's up to the task, but the fight and struggle(a wrestling hold that can't hold forever) lacks the brief intensity of the Gavin/Perkins fight.

And Moore's Lila, being a tough and modern woman , adds a few kicks to Norman's head. The fear factor is rather gone. She's like Lady Kung Fu or something.

All of that and the weirdness that the fruit cellar in Van Sant's Psycho seems to have cost Norman $500,000 to build -- all blue lights and birdcages. It lanks the "dark, dank" wood and concrete realism of Hitchcock's original. You could BELIEVE that was somebody's grotty old fruit cellar...and no place to stash a lady.

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we get the spectacle of a very small and wiry man having to bring down a very big one.


At 5' 11", Viggo ain't exactly "very small" as Sam Loomis; plus his overall physicality and vibe is formidable, not wussy-fied, which is why Viggo's often picked for stalwart, heroic roles.

Plus, Norman is mentally ill and Sam isn't, not to mention Norman was in total mother mode at that particular moment, which would presumably lesson his masculine prowess.

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At 5' 11", Viggo ain't exactly "very small" as Sam Loomis; plus his overall physicality and vibe is formidable, not wussy-fied, which is why Viggo's often picked for stalwart, heroic roles.

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Well, even moreso AFTER Psycho -- LOTR for God's sake, I get that. And he had great fight scenes in two David Cronenberg films -- A History of Violence and Eastern Promises(the latter has its own "shower scene" -- Viggo fights two clothed killers in a steam bath. They have knives. He's nude. The potential for bladed mayhem is sickening -- and so is how he kills his attackers.

That said, Viggo was a wiry 5' 11'' to VV's "circus giant" 6'5" -- Viggo looked overmatched in size, to me.

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Plus, Norman is mentally ill and Sam isn't, not to mention Norman was in total mother mode at that particular moment, which would presumably lesson his masculine prowess.

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Liking the original fruit cellar scene better, one thing I like about it is how Perkins' Norman fights Gavin as best he can -- but never gets out of the other man's grip at all, and indeed finally collapses.

Which brings me to an issue I've raised about Psycho before(either version):

What did Sam and Lila DO with Norman in the minutes necessary for her to find a phone, call the cops and the cops to drive out. We never get that scene.

I figure that Norman simply collapsed not only into being Mother -- but being "weak Mother."

For a few writers on Psycho have noted that psychopaths reportedly have "the superstrength of the superinsane" and that, for instance is why Norman could rout Arbogast so easily and keep puncturing Marion for minutes on end.

Anyway....

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Our little debate on the two fruit cellar scenes, wuchack, strikes me as reaching a point where we have to "agree to disagree." Its not even an argument. We just see the scene differently.

My rule is: "If only two people are having an argument and can't reach agreement, only a judge can decide."

We don't have one of those around here.

I like Van Sant's Psycho fine for one big reason: all the real work was done, decades ago, by Hitchocck and Joe Stefano and Bernard Herrmann. Its really their movie.

Joe Stefano -- alive and on set to see Van Sant direct Psycho -- said he said to Van Sant: "This is great, but I wish I could see Gus Van Sant direct this. Its really being directed by Alfred Hitchcock."

From the grave....

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I don't "hate" Van Sant's Psycho, but I do think it was good only as an "experiment," not as an "organic film."

As much as I can support the idea that movie remakes are just like stage revivals of Shakespeare(or Neil Simon), we enter another realm with a remake of Psycho.

Let's say there have been 100,000 movies made since their beginning. The ones that are really well made are a smaller number of that. The ones that made some sort of history are a smaller number of that. They are rare. They are -- dare I say it -- works of art.

Some critic who didn't like Van Sant's Psycho didn't like the idea of it. Psycho, he said, was like the Mona Lisa, a once-in-century work of art that exists as its perfected self. And you don't "remake the Mona Lisa." All you can do is trace it, maybe.

I personally believe that the failure of the Psycho remake(and it did fail, three weeks in release) was a cautionary tale to filmmakers not to try to take on the Mona Lisas in film history. There will be no remake of Citizen Kane. Or of Casablanca. Or of The Godfather. Van Sant's Psycho has seen to it.

Back to the "lasting power" of Hitchcock's Psycho. The Van Sant lasted three weeks. It got DVD release, but I sure don't see it on cable as much as Hitchcock's.

Anyway, the original Psycho not only ran from June to October of 1960, it came back on re-release in 1965 and made more on that run than many NEW releases. It became a cause celebre when CBS paid $800,000 to show it(in 1966) and then DIDN'T show it. It was a local ratings winner in LA and NYC in 1967. And then -- AFTER having been broadcast in some markets on TV, it was re-released BACK to theaters("See the version of Psycho that TV did not dare show") in 1969.

So Psycho had impact from a release in 1960 to a release in 1969 -- with all those stops in between(including several stints as an" amazing second feature" with movies like Mirage.)

The Van Sant never had that impact.

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Please allow me to reiterate: Van Sant’s version was never supposed to be an exact duplicate of Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” but rather a 90’s updating with key nuances, not to mention IN COLOR. Vaughn was not meant to impersonate Perkins. If Van Sant wanted that he would’ve cast a Perkins-type. It’s the same thing with the Marion, Arbogast, Sam and Lila characters.

The iconic 1960 version had an incredible impact when it was released and re-released, as you note, and reigns supreme whereas the '98 rendition failed at the box office (and yet, as pointed out, still made over $37 million, which ain't nothing to sneeze at), but that doesn't make it bad. It's just different and in color.

As detailed earlier on this thread, some parts of the '98 version are actually superior to Hitchcock's version, like the Parlor sequence and Arbogast's confrontation with Norman. Not to mention, Vaughn as Norman creates a greater sense of menace. Blasphemy? Not at all. It's entirely possible to appreciate both versions for varying reasons, which I do.

Some people can't do this, understandably, because they view Hitchcock's version as an untouchable, almost sacred work. But one could argue the same thing of the original "King Kong" and "Ben-Hur," which have both been remade twice. There's room for remakes or reproductions, which introduce new generations to the same basic stories and opens the door for them to appreciate the former productions, which they might not otherwise do.

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Some people can't do this, understandably, because they view Hitchcock's version as an untouchable, almost sacred work. But one could argue the same thing of the original "King Kong" and "Ben-Hur," which have both been remade twice. There's room for remakes or reproductions, which introduce new generations to the same basic stories and opens the door for them to appreciate the former productions, which they might not otherwise do.

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I continue to accept this theory, certainly. I think the first King Kong is the work of art, and likely the second Ben-Hur. (The "middle" 1976 King Kong is awful; the 2005 one great in the final hour, but simply too long at three.)

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As for black and white originals suffering versus color remakes:

i tell ya...the dialogue is cornier but I prefer the 1966 color and Cinemascope version of Stagecoach better than the 1939 original.

Why? Because its in color and Cinemascope for one thing. And because the second one has one of those rich, robust Jerry Goldsmith scores.

And what was a one-shot quick fix on John Wayne firing his rifle at unseen opponents in the first one is an extended action shootout in a saloon(with chandeliers falling and fires a blazin') in the remake.

Even the famous Indian(er, Native American) attack on the stagecoach is a bigger, more colorful(literally) and action--packed extravagana in the remake. There's even a matte painting cliffhanger on a stormy night on a mountain pass for the stagecoach that feels very NXNW/Vertigo Hitchcock in its look and feel.



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The remake has more of an all-star cast on the stagecoach; Van Heflin as the sheriff; Robert Cummings as the crooked banker; Keenan Wynn as the outlaw leader waiting at the end of the line. Bing Crosby is perhaps Thomas Mitchell's casting match as the drunken doctor, but Crosby gets better lines and his sonorous voice sells them. (I think he was a bigger star than Mitchell, too. Same goes for Oscar winner Red Buttons in the Donal Meek role.) Andy Devine in the old and Slim Pickens in the new at a match.

The one casting mismatch in the '66 Stagecoach is a game and handsome Alex Cord in for Young John Wayne. It was almost as daring as Vince Vaughn taking on Anthony Perkins' iconic role. Meanwhile, Ann-Margret makes for a sexier hooker than Claire Trevor(and in 1966, can pretty much be played AS a hooker.)

The '66 Stagecoach strikes me as a perfect example of how one basic story done in cheap black and white could be done bigger and more starry in the 60's than in the 30s. With Psycho, I'm still not so sure. The original looked ahead of its time in 1960 and looks fine today. Its ageless, really. And unlike Stagecoach, it really didn't need to be "bigger" to work better.

BTW, they remade Stagecoach again in the 80s with a great gimmick cast: Johnny Cash as the Sheriff; Willie Nelson as the drunken doctor(now Doc Holiday); Waylon Jennings as the gambler(John Carradine in the first; Mike Connors in the second) and a too-old Kris Kristofferson as Wayne's "good outlaw." Yes...the Highwaymen...as they were called at the time...were great casting. As was suave Tony Franciosa as the crooked banker and Anthony Newly in the Buttons/Meek part.

Problem was, the 1980's Stagecoach was a regular TV movie, and hence couldn't match the 1966 version for opulence and big action, and couldn't compete with the classic status of the smallish original.


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I'll add that the 1966 Stagecoach was done by a journeyman director named Gordon Douglas, who made a LOT of movies that I like - Them, Rio Conchos, and Sinatra's amiable private eye flick , Tony Rome(Sinatra liked Douglas' no-frills style and used him as a director a lot.)

Gordon Douglas was no John Ford...but he edged into Don Siegel territory....

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"Stagecoach" ranks with my favorite Westerns. I've seen the '66 rendition and I appreciate seeing the same basic story in color, but it's longer and doesn't have the same pizazz.

It might be blasphemy, but I would love to see a colorized version of the original "Psycho," as long as it was done properly.

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In the light of these remarks I rewatched S39 then tracked down S66 in blu-ray quality on a Russian youtube-like site here: https://tinyurl.com/y73ckts8 (make sure your anti-viral software, general computer prophylaxis is up-to-date if you follow me on this!).

I have the most recent Criterion edition of S39, and there's no getting around that the film's still in pretty bad shape. While many films from the '30s, including Hitchcock's, look *amazing* these days - Stagecoach's negative was lost/destroyed long ago and all restoration has had to begin from various second generation sources. The basic image quality of S39 isn't good. The upshot is that S66 isn't just wide-screen and color it's also clear and detailed in ways that make S39's blur feel headache-inducing if you flip between them.

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What else is there to say about S39? For me, it's literally over-rated. It regularly gets put on top 10 US Westerns lists when honestly more beloved things like Rio Bravo, Once Upon A Time In the West, Liberty Valance, Bad Day at Black Rock, Little Big man, My Darling Clementine, Ox Bow Incident, Man From Laramie, True Grit (Both of 'em), Mag 7 (1960) miss out.

S39 tends to be over-valued on official lists I think principally because (a) it's the film that made Wayne a huge star, (b) the Injun attack was a landmark stunt and action sequence for the time, and (c) the archetypal qualities of the tale impress some people - Ford would do this sort of thing better from here on but S39 is one of the *first* times that 'the wagon-train is America after the civil war'-type quasi-allegorical ideas (as well as quasi-philosophical reflections about 'the blessings of civilization') were front and center.

In sum, S39 was a breakthrough film for Wayne, for action cinema, and for the 'serious' or adult western generally. But I'd still rate at least ten films from 1939 higher than it: Rules of The Game, Gone With The Wind, Dark Victory, Wizard of Oz, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Of Mice and Men, The Roaring Twenties, Le Jour se lève, Ninotchka, maybe even Ford's own Young Mr Lincoln and Goodbye Mr Chips and Gunga Din.

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Other Problems with S39:
1. It was made quickly and it shows: prominent Monument Valley landscape shots from the beginning of the journey are repeated just before the Injun attack (so you half-suspect nowadays that this might be a Westworld-like *twist* - that as the wagon gets close to the edge of the park it gets looped back to the beginning!). How Ford thought he could get away with this... just 'the kids will never notice'? S66 relocates the action to wyoming and colorado losing all the great Horizon-lines that you get with shooting places like Monument Valley.
2. There's a *lot* of stereotype-character schtick starting with the censorious townswomen. S66 loses *some* of this (endless drunkie schtick survives) but also loses a lot of the allegorical/mythic power
3. Plot points such as the late reveal of a pregnancy and the insta-sobering power of coffee are almost literally jokes. Other plot points emerge quickly in ways that are easy to miss or misinterpret: Hatfield the gambler's background, his decision to kill Mrs Mallory to save her from the Injuns (Hatfield doesn't care if Dallas gets raped etc. is the subtext!), Marshall Buck's decision to let Ringo and Dallas go, Ringo taking a while to figure out that Dallas was a prostitute. S66 omits some of these plot points altogether and enlarges on others it keeps. Probably the right move. But the Ringo-Dallas relationship never interests us in S66 the way it does in S39 in part as a result of all S66's enforced clarity.
4. The 4-3 asp. ratio is a disaster for all the inside-the-wagon shots - Ford can't get three people across let alone get the whole wagon interior in shot so those sequences are frequently *unintelligible*. This is the biggest problem that S66 avoids.

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5. As ecarle observes, S39 is quite light on action for the most part and arguably muffs its big shootout in the street finale. S66 addresses this problem by adding lots of action sequences (including a gory Injun win over the cavalry at the beginning and a super-implausible, night-time, stormy mountain pass crossing) and staging a genuinely bloody and sadistic and fiery shootout climax.
6. S39 has an oppressively loud but undistinguished score hurriedly patched together by 5 or 6 different composers/arrangers. S66 improves upon this with, in my view, an OK but most importantly just more unified and better mixed so it's not blaring and oppressive score from Jerry Goldsmith.

In sum, S39 was worth remaking. S39 was far from perfect in the first place and has been handed down to us in a pretty terrible state. A lot is lost in S66 - especially Wayne and Trevor, and the sometimes squirm-inducing schematicness/allegorical-ness, and the horizon-line majesty of Ford's chosen landscapes - but a lot is gained too.

1966 was full of breakthrough films from Blow-Up and Persona to Seconds, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Virginia Woolf, and Alfie. S66 can't compete at that level. Is it an entertainment comparable to say Fantastic Voyage or Gambit or Arabesque? I suppose so although I think I'd take any of those over it too.

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5. As ecarle observes, S39 is quite light on action for the most part and arguably muffs its big shootout in the street finale. S66 addresses this problem by adding lots of action sequences (including a gory Injun win over the cavalry at the beginning

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I lost a post on this earlier: the opening shot of the film has a cavalry cook getting a tomahawk right in the face with red blood pouring everywhere.

And I was allowed to see Stagecoach -- at the theater -- in 1966 around the same time my "Psycho" curfew was underway.

My poor parents. All they knew to do was to ban Psycho from my life, but other (later) movies of the 60s were already pouring on the gore, and I was getting to see them. One might say that the remake of John Ford's Stagecoach is INFORMED by Psycho. There are other violent scenes in S66.

None of that gore in Stagecoach 66 bothered me. Rather, what I recall was watching it on the ABC Sunday Night Movie a few years later...with all the gore removed. Scenes of this nature were always "weird" on network. That cook who gets the tomahawk in the face just sort "disappears" in a flurry of "violence-removing edits." No blood. One got used to watching violent movies of the 60s and 70s cut this way on network. (And then came...HBO. Uncut movies.)

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and a super-implausible, night-time, stormy mountain pass crossing)

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Well, in 1966 I really loved that. It was a warm-up, I think for my love of North by Northwest(which began when I saw it on CBS in 1967 the next year.) What I liked: the night sky backddrop and matte painting "fantasy" of the cliffhangers (here, the stagecoach -- in NXNW, not only the Mount Rushmore climax, but the early cliff drive matte work for Roger's drunk drive -- Glen Cove suddenly has big cliffs and slamming waves matted in from Big Sur, California.

And rather like North by Northwest, what I liked about Stagecoach 66 is that it had quite a few big action sequences -- I used to get a certain exhilaration from movies that "punctuated the story with big action." Back then, three such scenes were enough; modernly they are overkilled.


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and staging a genuinely bloody and sadistic and fiery shootout climax.

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Here is where Stagecoach 66 lifts up, up and away from 39...though 39 had that great single shot of Wayne diving to the ground and firing, and the now-usual bit of the bad guy walking into the saloon as if the victor, and falling dead.

But Stagecoach 66 wheeled out the blood buckets, killed off the crooked banker(he is merely arrested in the original), cripples the good sheriff with kneecap shots("He'll be walking on sticks")...and opens the door to an action shoot 'em up finale that reminds us how action needed to become both bigger and more violent to best what was on Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

It excited me then. I see the contrivances and plot holes in it now(REALLY? The banker trusts psycho outlaw Keenan Wynn to be his partner?). But..eh, great action.

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S66 improves upon this with, in my view, an OK but most importantly just more unified and better mixed so it's not blaring and oppressive score from Jerry Goldsmith.

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I've sort of memorized many Goldsmith scores, and some were better than the one he did for Stagecoach: Lonely are the Brave, Rio Conchos, and Bandolero for three. Still, his music made the 60's and 70's; it took John Williams to overtake him and his peer Elmer Bernstein.

That said, I think as MOVIES, Rio Conchos and Stagecoach are much better than Bandolero(which uneasily starred James Stewart and Dino as brothers). Better paced, better action. The difference? Director Gordon Douglas, I'm guessing.

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In sum, S39 was worth remaking. S39 was far from perfect in the first place and has been handed down to us in a pretty terrible state. A lot is lost in S66 - especially Wayne and Trevor, and the sometimes squirm-inducing schematicness/allegorical-ness, and the horizon-line majesty of Ford's chosen landscapes - but a lot is gained too.

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Well, its just that after wracking my mind a bit, I came up with Stagecoach 66 as an example of what our friend who doesn't like b/w movies is talking about: a movie that became MORE in the remaking: bigger, color, Cinescope, more action, arguably bigger stars.

I saw Stagecoach 66 years before I saw the original, and when I caught up with the original, things like the banker just getting arrested and the paltry shootout at the end had me thinking: the new one is so much better.

But with time and hindsight, the original is obviously more a "classic of its time," which -- like, say The 39 Steps -- probably played a lot more vibrant and exciting to the original 30's audiences than it does today.

Stagecoach 39 vs Stagecoach 66 is probably a classic conundrum: the earlier film is the "classic" and from a serious filmmaker; the later film is a "pulp entertainment" from a journeyman(but not a hack; Douglas made too many entertaining movies.) Which, honestly do we like better when all is said and done?


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Meanwhile, just as Stagecoach 66 feels more "modern" than Stagecoach 39 we have..True Grit 2010 looking more "modern" than True Grit 1969(which looked rather Henry Hathaway hackneyed even in '69 as opposed to the cinematography of Butch Cassidy, and The Wild Bunch.)

But there, things work out a bit in favor of the '69 IMHO. The '69 has John Wayne; Elmer Bernstein's score(never better than when Wayne cocks his rifle to start the joust sequence); and two great emotional scenes at the end that were not in the novel and are not in the 2010 True Grit.

But the 2010 True Grit sure LOOKS better...

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And there is this...whereas Stagecoach 66 goes out of its way to make for more big action sequences(though the big chase is about a tie)...Van Sant's Psycho never really gets to do the same thing with Hitchcock's original. Hitchocck's two murder scenes are so well put together, so original, that Van Sant could do nothing to better them(and with the Arbogast one, I think he rather screwed it up.)

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1966 was full of breakthrough films from Blow-Up and Persona to Seconds, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Virginia Woolf, and Alfie. S66 can't compete at that level.

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Absolutely can't. Its an entertainment, "a classy programmer with a pedigree." I mean, I've watched it recently and the early scene where two men fight to the death over Ann-Margret just plays WRONG. A bit fake in all respects, cheap in the dialogue, gory in the outcome -- with drunken doctor Bing Crosby spouting overarticluate one liners("This establishment shall soon be in need of my services").

Is it an entertainment comparable to say Fantastic Voyage or Gambit or Arabesque? I suppose so although I think I'd take any of those over it to.

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Eh, the Western action sets it apart, I suppose. Recall that my favorite movie of '66 is also a Western -- The Professionals -- but it is very well-written and "serious" even as an adventure. Stagecoach is at once more "pop" than The Professionals and, oddly, more gory.

1966 gets no respect. 1967 always gets the glory -- Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate first, but then The Dirty Dozen and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night(and my faves, Wait Until Dark and Hotel.)

But there was some cool stuff in 1966. Gambit had a tremendous trickery to it -- and I was touched by the growing love affair between Cool Caine and Kooky Shirley, as she saved the day and won his respect. In 1966 yet. (I was a bit advanced for my age in liking romantic movies.)

Arabesque was from Stanley Donen, the maker of Charade. It didn't have Grant and Hepburn being witty -- but it had Peck and Loren being fine physical specimens, both strapping. (Another 1966 memory: Greg Peck hiding, clothed, in Loren's shower -- while she TAKES ONE, naked! Thanks, mom and dad, for that ticket.)
GREAT Henry Mancini overture -- Herrmann replaced by lush, muscular jazz with a Middle Eastern flavor.

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All that fine modern thriller-making and Hitchcock gave us..Torn Curtain? Well, he had the biggest stars of the day(Newman and Andrews) which kept it watchable. And a not bad thriller overture(John Addison, after Herrman's firing.) And it was at once more auteur-artful and serious than the Bond inspired mod thrillers.

Too bad nobody cared about that in 1966!

Which reminds me: Dino's Playboy photographer-spy Matt Helm, with his automatic bed dumping him into a shallow pool with a woman waiting in it for him, nude.(Not shown.) 1966.

Thanks, mom and dad, for the ticket!

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the opening shot of the film has a cavalry cook getting a tomahawk right in the face with red blood pouring everywhere.

And I was allowed to see Stagecoach -- at the theater -- in 1966 around the same time my "Psycho" curfew was underway.

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I would like to elaborate on this. Yes, I was seeing gory scenes like the one in Stagecoach long before I saw Psycho, and I can't say that either of the murder scenes actually scared me when I finally saw them on TV.

But they sure did scare me as "frozen frames" in the pages of Hitchcock/Truffaut...with the images held as long as you wanted to look(not flashing by as in the movie) and the darkening and slight blurriness of the frames making the attacks look WORSE on the page than on the screen.

A combination of the Hitchcock/Truffaut Psycho frames and neighborhood talk made sure that Psycho scared me long before I actually saw it.

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I appreciate the comment, wuchak. I'm an acquired taste, and my usual feeling is nobody has to read my stuff, but its here if you'd like to. And I will engage on Psycho and Hitchcock. And -- OT -- anything else.

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Uh oh, my replies aren't landing after the posts they are replying to. I thought they would. Sorry.

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❤️️
"Thanks, Margo; I can't believe the hate this film gets."

And that is why I call it my guilty pleasure. I'm made to feel as though I shouldn't be watching "that trash".

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I love them both.

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Thanks, I grow weary of this "It's a remake -- hate it, hate it, HATE IT" crap. It's possible to -- maybe -- like both films.

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Right on!
I wrote a post on the page for the Van Sant version stating why I like both films, if you want to check that out.

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I like both but you can never beat this film as its a classic original.

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Speaking of remakes, Jack Nicholson has withdrawn from the titular role in the Kristin Wiig-starring (as the daughter) remake of Marin Ade's near-classic German comedy Toni Erdmann (2016). On the one hand there aren't many roles big enough to tempt Jack to come out of effective retirement so this may mean that Nicholson is in fact done. :( On the other hand, there aren't too many guys who could possibly pull off the old-bear-Toni-Erdmann-father-to-Wiig part and Jack's uniquely starry and box office in that group. One wonders now whether this remake will ever be made.

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I prefer the original.

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