Never ever lump this into the category of low rent slashers. Just because Bates uses a knife, this isn’t a part of that generic slop.
This is a masterpiece. It is an intense psychological study. It is not some moron in a mask stabbing stupid people.
I agree...it is definitely a masterpiece and one of the greatest movies ever made.
shareI agree that Psycho is a masterpiece -- and one of the greatest movies ever made -- but I "disagree that it is not a slasher." (Double negative.)
Psycho did a lot of historic things but one thing it DID do was to ...invent the slasher.
Consider this:
The ad copy for the movie Hitchcock made AFTER Psycho said:
"Nothing has prepared you for the sheer stabbing shock of The Birds!"
"The Birds could be the most terrifying movie I have ever made -- Alfred J. Hitchcock."
Now, those tag lines could BETTER have been used for Psycho, eh?:
"Nothing has prepared you for the sheer stabbing shock of Psycho!"
"Psycho could be the most terrifying movie I have ever made."
But Hitchcock didn't want to give that away about Psycho --so Psycho had this tagline:
"A new...and completely different...kind of screen excitement!"
Hitchcock and his PR people knew what they were talking about. Psycho WAS a new...and indeed completely different..kind of screen excitement.
Because...it was the first slasher movie. Audiences evidently simply couldn't believe how FAR the two murders went --they might have expected the shower scene to "fade out" after Mother pulled the curtain, and the staircase murder to fade out on the shot of the door opening at the top of the stairs but NO...Hitchcock shocked his audience with graphic and LONG (especially the shower scene) stabbing sequences.
And Arbogast is literally slashed on the face. That slash doesn't look like much now, but THEN, it was as if his entire face was slashed bloody...the element of disfigurement was powerful.
Psycho basically said: "the murders aren't a small part of this thriller, the murders ARE the thriller -- great big bloody murders with screeching music that will make you jump out of your seat and scream."
So I will give Psycho - -and not Halloween of 1978 -- the mantle of "first slasher movie." (By the way, the killer in Halloween also strangles a couple of victims.)
CONT
THAT said, truly Psycho does not end up in the same category as the slashers that Halloween wrought - Friday the 13th and all those "holiday murder movies" like Valentine's Day and Happy Birthday to You, etc. Or Prom Night. Or Terror Train.
In Psycho, Mrs. Bates doesn't lurk about and slash a victim every seven minutes. It takes 47 minutes for the first slashing(the shower) to arrive, and then another 20 for the second(the staircase.)
Indeed, one reason the staircase stabbing drew such screams is it had been such a long, long, LONG wait to see if Mother WOULD kill anybody else. When she barreled out that door at Arbogast, the answer was YES, she's still very dangerous. And this set up nothing but terror and screams when Lila explored the house.
So, masterpiece: yes. Historic film: yes. Invented the slasher movie: yes.
Deserves to be in the same group as the cheapo and poorly written slasher movies of the 70s and 80's: NO.
Janet Leigh's character's murder in the shower was definitely "slasher". There's no other way to describe it.
shareMasterpiece yes, but this movie is responsible for the rise in the popularity of the slasher genre. It was sold as a slasher movie via the promoting of the shower scene and there is no getting away from it.
shareNo one's calling Psycho low rent slop when they call Psycho a slasher. It was a major influence on the genre as it developed in the 70s and 80s, along with Peeping Tom-- though honestly, I don't see Psycho (or PT) as a true slasher.
I always saw slashers are primarily horror movies which turn the murders into spectacle setpieces. Psycho does have intense murder sequences, but they are few compared to 80s slashers. There's really only two-- the shower scene and Arbogast falling down the stairs before getting knifed. So maybe then, it is a slasher... just a very embryonic form of it.
though honestly, I don't see Psycho (or PT) as a true slasher.
I always saw slashers are primarily horror movies which turn the murders into spectacle setpieces.
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Well, for its time, Psycho certainly did that -- albeit with only TWO such set-pieces.
I've read this of the reaction at the time: two was TOO MANY. Audiences were so jolted and sickened by the shower murder, so shaken up and nauseated by the bloody spectacle of Janet Leigh getting snuffed so brutally -- that when it happened AGAIN, to the detective who was supposed to "solve the crime," the horror was just too much. TWO people so bloodily losing their lives was overkill.
In 1960.
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Psycho does have intense murder sequences, but they are few compared to 80s slashers. There's really only two-- the shower scene and Arbogast falling down the stairs before getting knifed. So maybe then, it is a slasher... just a very embryonic form of it.
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Well, "embryonic form of it" also means(and I very much respect your opinion: It IS the first slasher movie.
I would say that it is a very wonderful version of the template, so many things DON'T happen in it that were clichés of later movies: murders every seven minutes. Teenage victims. Victims who could not ACT. (Leigh and Balsam were Oscar-caliber.) Doorknobs turning slowly. Killers who die and jump back up. Scenes of Mrs. Bates endlessly chasing potential victims all over the place for minutes on end (when she strikes, its FAST, deadly and over.) Victims hiding in a corner while the killer walks by them. "Halloween-cam" POV shots from the killer's viewpoint(imagine walking into the bathroom WITH Mrs. Bates.) "The final girl." (Lila comes close, but not close enough.) NONE of this stuff is in Psycho. It works very differently from the usual slasher.
But it IS a slasher. Arbogast in particular gets slashed. Everybody gets STABBED. Multiple times.
CONT
(This is beginning to remind me of the old commercial about CERTS :
Certs is a candy mint!
No, certs is a breath mint!
No, candy mint!
No, breath mint!
Ha. Psycho is a breath mint! No, its a candy mint!
--
CONT
There is this. One thing that made the audience scream loud when I saw Psycho with a great crowd was -- the appearance of the KNIFE. It was so big, and it became so clear that it WAS going to be plunged into the victims(the knife FLASHES LIGHT when Mother comes out of the room and raises it at Arbogast.)
This bladed implement of savage bloody death kept getting "one upped" as the sixties went on:
Homicidal: a thin, stiletto like KNIFE with a blade sharp enough to stab one victim in the belly and cut off another one's head.
Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte: The killer uses a MEAT CLEAVER to cut off first Bruce Dern's hand(he raises the stump in horror) and then his head. (Both head and hand make appearances later in the movie.)
Strait Jacket: An AXE. Indeed, the ads cut to the chase "Warning! Strait Jacket vividly depicts axe murders!"(You see, Psycho started this -- the "bloody murders" were the POINT of the movie. Could you take it? Would you keep your eyes open? Would you scream?)
Repulsion: A STRAIGHT RAZOR. The weapon Hitchcock refused to film being used on Arbogast's throat. The weapon later bloodily wielded by the killer in Dressed to Kill.
CONT
Shock Treatment: BIG GARDENING SHEARS. You know, the ones you have to hold in two hands and wield like giant scissors. Roddy McDowall, in a role turned down by Tony Perkins, was shown in the trailer for this film lowering the shears on either side of an old woman's neck and slicing her head off(off screen.) I SAW this trailer at a drive-in as a kid and it marked me for life.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A CHAINSAW. (The outer limits?) As the ad copy said "Who Will Survive? And what will be left of them?)
Body Double: Brian DePalma again. A POWER DRILL, wielded by the killer from between his legs like a penis at his female victim on the floor below him. (I believe a lesser movie called "Driller Killer" used the same motif.)
These weapons were apart and aside from the knife work of most slashers. But my point is that Psycho started it all. The BIG KNIFE of that movie set the pace for a whole pack of movies about bladed instruments treating human bodies like cattle on the hoof.
And thus the slasher movie WAS born.
An interesting thought though: there may not have been slasher movies before Psycho, but there were certainly thrillers, and horror movies(Dracula and Frankenstein leading the way) and fifties big bug stuff. But Psycho got there FIRST with gory bladed murders and terrifyingly savage killers.
Which reminds me:
What was the first Western? The Great Train Robbery, maybe?
What was the first musical? The Jazz Singer, maybe?
What was the first Science Fiction movie? Trip to the Moon maybe?
What was the first slasher movie?
I totally agree with you. To lump it into the slasher category ignores the inventive way the murders were handled. This movie had class and depended on suspense, not on blood and gore.
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