summertime movie
besy time to watch it
sharePsycho on original release was a summertime smash-hit. It didn't have the same-day, wide-release that Jaws used to finally cement the summer big box-office model, but it was definitely pointing in that direction.
sharePsycho on original release was a summertime smash-hit. It didn't have the same-day, wide-release that Jaws used to finally cement the summer big box-office model, but it was definitely pointing in that direction.
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Yes, that's very true. I recall the Los Angeles Times running an entertainment section piece in the 90's that was titled something like "Psycho: the first summer blockbuster."
The summertime release of Psycho was weird indeed. It opened in June (June 16) in NYC(the all-important opening city in those days) and on the Eastern seaboard(Boston, Philadelphia, DC) and in Chicago (which was the most "westernmost of Eastern cities -- the Second City."
Psycho spent June and July in those engagements and then...all the way on August 10, it opened on the West Coast in Los Angeles, and in San Francisco, in Oregon and Washingon State and Nevada(Vegas.)
Psycho opened in June alongside The Apartment, and in August on the same day as Sinatra's Ocean's Eleven. Psycho thus had "two lower opening weekends combined into one big one, two months apart!"
To me what is amazing is that, in the days decades before the internet and with a more subdued entertainment press, evidently the twist ending secret of Psycho HELD for almost two months. Los Angeles first timers in August didn't know the secret that had been revealed in New York in June!
Psycho and its shower scene were the talk of the summer regionally , it seemed. The NYC Times critic Bosley Crowther said that only the two Presidential conventions(which were more important back then) tied with Psycho as the events of the summer. The Democratic convention was held in Los Angeles, near Hollywood and all sorts of stars showed up -- including Janet Leigh(with then-husband Tony Curtis), basking in her Psycho fame.
The summertime release made for miles-long lines of cars to get into drive-ins to see Psycho. (Imagine the screams all drifting out of the open windows cars across the night sky), with photos taken of such autobmobile lines in New Jersey(the "across the river" getaway of New Yorkers and home of the Sopranos).
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There was this. We are told that until the time of Jaws, summertime was a "dumping ground" for non-prestige movies -- beach party movies and horror movies and Elvis movies and low budget comedies. Christmas-time was for big budget blockbusters and for Oscar-bait. And the rest of the year was for "just movies."
I've never really agreed with that analysis (the paucity of film studies, eh.) The Apartment came out in summer. Rosemary's Baby came in summer, as well as The Odd Couple(a one-two punch from Paramount in 1968.) The Wild Bunch came out in summer. Chinatown came out in summer.
And North by Northwest came out in summer. (Flagship showings at Radio City Music Hall in NYC and the Egyptian on Hollywood Boulevard in LA; then all over.)
That said, Jaws -- definitely a movie ABOUT summer -- made big bucks in the summer of 1975 and Star Wars made them two summers later and Animal House the summer after that and Alien the summer after that and -- the die was cast.
We can say this: Hitchcock, with Psycho, had the "summer blockbuster" ready to go about 15 years before Hollywood caught on to it as a "genre."
And this:
Though Psycho famously begins on "Friday December 11th" and ends(less the final swamp shot) on Sunday December 20...Joseph Stefano's script specifies Psycho as TAKING PLACE in .....late summer.
That's why its "hot as fresh milk" in Phoenix, but the rest of the story doesn't much demand a season(rain falls anytime.)