Word: psychos
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Story lines have become so formulaic that studios are recycling old stories at a record rate. Sometimes they try to trick us by changing the title (The Prince of Egypt), and other times they unabashedly flaunt their lack of originality (Godzilla, Psycho...
Remember the big masturbation scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho? The shot of a George Jones-Tammy Wynette record? The visions of a naked woman and a sheep during one of the murders? The spider crawling out of Mother Bates' mummified mouth? All these are in Gus Van Sant's new version of the 1960 horror classic--which suggests he hasn't been quite so slavish as expected...
...this is a nearly shot-by-shot recapitulation of the film and an almost verbatim rereading of Joseph Stefano's terrific screenplay. Why do it? One reason: it's never been done. Another: Psycho, which spawned a festering genre of slasher films, has been ripped off a zillion times--surely it can be remade just this once. And finally: let's set a test for today's actors, encrusted with decades of Method mannerisms. Can they assimilate the smooth delivery of the 1960 cast...
...When Psycho first appeared, it was a shock. At first the picture seemed like a familiar Hitchcock melodrama of guilty escape: a woman, on the run with stolen money, stops for the night in a tatty motel, chats with the eccentric owner, takes a shower. And then, 44 minutes in, the movie goes a little mad. Exit leading lady, in a whirlpool of blood. New characters appear, are slaughtered or imperiled. What the hell is going on here? Audiences knew (it was one of Hitchcock's most profitable films), but the critics were annoyed, dismissive. It took a while...
...call contempo-retro. It is beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle, who turns the puky green of motel lighting into a circle of Hell, and it features a busy sound track of rattlesnakes and buzzing flies--moral decay in the desert. Everything else is defiantly same-old. This Psycho is radical because it has not only the dialogue but also the tempo of a film almost 40 years...