Word: psycho
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...PSYCHO...
Until that point, veterans of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) may entertain some hope for Norman, a wan faith in the restorative powers of a 22-year course of state-sponsored psychotherapy from which he has just graduated. Thereafter one knows it is only a matter of time before he reverts to the sharp practices of his youth...
...entirely per suasive. To accommodate them, and set up its own Mama's boy twist ending, the movie of ten slows to a crawl as it tries to explain it self. On the other hand, that ending is genuinely surprising and, like much of the rest of Psycho II, it has a certain sly wit about it. Indeed, there is a rather good-na tured air about this not overly scary pic ture, which pays homage to Hitchcock's most famous (but not best) work without trying either to rip it off or knock...
...brilliance. He grew up with the film industry, and at his best gave movies a dazzling visual impudence: the single flash of color in the black-and-white Spellbound, as the pistol of the suicidal villain flares red; the wicked eroticism of Janet Leigh's shower scene in Psycho, a film that, as Spoto points out, takes pains to make the viewer queasily aware of being a voyeur. Hitchcock's final obsession was secretiveness, but he has been well served by a knowledgeable and revealing biography...
...frumpy Talbot's dresses for the more matronly characters, while externally updating the actors, do not make them any more believable down deep. The use of popular music at climactic scenes is likewise questionable: in the final scene, when vengeance is pounding recklessly towards fulfillment, the Talking Heads' "Psycho-Killer" erupts out of nowhere as servants sprinkle the grappling bodies with red glitter. The ploy only adds a dash of Saturday Night Fever to an already macabre event. And the updating is not uniform throughout. Sudden bursts of gunshots in the final scenes startle an audience grown used...