Analyze This

The common wisdom concerning the penultimate scene of Psycho (1960) has always been that the speech delivered by actor Simon Oakland - in which his psychiatrist character explains in exacting detail why Norman Bates has been committing murder while dressed as his dead mother - is a tedious attempt at summation as Oakland is given the thankless task of walking us through Norman's twisted mind, dryly explaining the craziness we've just witnessed. But while this scene is usually singled out as a misstep, a speech that could've used some judicious editing and still conveyed the necessary info, I feel like there was an underlying method to Hitchcock's madness.

Every time I've watched Psycho, I've always felt that Hitchcock wanted this scene with the psychiatrist to work on two levels. One, I think he felt that a large part of the audience would really need an explanation and that he was obliged to include this scene for the sake of clarity. Even though what we see transpire in the fruit cellar is enough to roughly put it all together, a more deliberate connecting of the dots had to be there. But I also feel that while Hitchcock knew he had to include that scene, he purposely portrayed the psychiatrist as a windbag - knowing that he would let the air out of everything that was said with the coda that followed with Norman alone in his cell. Oakland plays the psychiatrist as a self-satisfied blowhard who likes the sound of his own voice. He's smug, he's comfortable playing to an audience. After talking to Norman - or specifically, to Mother - he's got the whole story. His explanation is all about demystifying what we've just seen. He takes all the mystery out of it.

But then Hitchcock pulls the rug from under that speech by bringing us back to Norman and letting us hear his thoughts as Mother. While everything that the psychiatrist says about Norman - about his crimes, about his split personality - may be true, the last scene with Norman shows just how empty those words are. Hitchcock could've let the audience off the hook with Oakland's explanation and left the film at that. That would've been the conventional choice. Vera Miles and John Gavin could've walked out of the police station with matching sad faces as soon as Oakland finished talking with a big 'The End' title imposed over them - Janet Leigh may be gone but hey, at least normality is restored. But for Hitchcock to go back to Norman instead and let Mother's thoughts be the film's final words (courtesy of actress Virgina Gregg) is a brilliant undercutting of Oakland's speech. By doing this, Hitchcock is able to have his cake and eat it too. Yes, he gives the audience the explanation but then he shows how bullshit it is to believe we can understand a person as disturbed as Norman.

What's always made my skin crawl the most about Psycho was imagining what Norman's victims saw in the last moments of their lives. To know that these people suffered a death that was inexplicable to them - to see who was attacking them, to be able to recognize Norman (even though in the shower scene we only see Mother in silhouette, I always felt that Marion could see Norman's face just as well as Arbogast clearly does) but to have no way of comprehending why Norman was dressed the way he was or why he was out to slaughter them - was an idea that burrowed into my brain. And when Hitchcock returns to Norman after the psychiatrist has had his say, he is putting a fine point on the idea we are eternally vulnerable to the madness of others. This is what Hitchcock wants to leave us with, not Oakland's hollow explanation. The psychiatrist can dissemble Norman's mental state with practiced professional acumen now that Norman is in custody but the truth is, if this psychiatrist had gone to the Bates Motel a day earlier, he would've stood face to face with Norman and not perceived his insanity.

By knee-capping the psychiatrist's speech, Hitchcock obliterates any comfort those words might've offered, allowing Psycho to endure as the ultimate public service announcement for watching your ass at all times.

Blood Work

I don't begrudge anyone who's a fan of that Twilight stuff but it sure isn't for me and even though the HBO show True Blood has gotten some acclaim, I just can't shake my disdain towards love stories about vampires. Ever since I was a kid and I saw Frank Langella's face on the poster for the 1979 Dracula remake and wondered how in the world a guy who looked that lame was supposed to be scary, I've known that sexy, seductive vampires are generally not my thing. Even the best Dracula's, like Lee, Lugosi and Jourdan, were just pretty boys to me. Barlow from Salem's Lot - now that was a vampire.

So imagine how my face lit up with boyish excitement at the promising trailer for Daybreakers - a film that looks to be the vampire apocalypse movie that Blade III (2005) should've been (about damn time!). I couldn't make it all the way through the Spierig Brother's first film, Undead (2003), but Daybreakers looks like a Variety Pack of awesome. Sam Neill looks rocking as a vampire as does William Defoe as a Whistler-esque vampire hunter. Even if this turns out to be total trash, it'll be my kind of trash. If they can make so much trash for other people, they better keep making it for me, too.

Maybe Showers Remind Me Of Psycho Too Much

Among Michael Jackson's long list of professional accomplishments, it's understandable that his gig singing background vocals on Rockwell's 1984 hit "Somebody's Watching Me" may be all but totally forgotten (it's no "We Are The World," after all). However, while this wasn't a Jackson song (long before 1984, it would've been impossible for Jackson to sing a song that describes himself as "an average man with an average life" - although as the son of Motown CEO Berry Gordy Jr., Rockwell was stretching it himself) its lines about paranoia and invasion of privacy seem prescient towards Jackson's increasingly fame-addled life.

What's more, the creepy video that accompanied "Somebody's Watching Me" remains a horror highlight of early MTV. Despite being made with a clearly low budget (it utilizes cardboard gravestones that Ed Wood would've admired), and despite its tongue-in-cheek chills (beware the mailman!), it's also sprinkled with some inventively eerie imagery (I love the dancing figure in a black hat and shroud that spins and twirls outside Rockwell's shower curtain), and surreal surprises that wouldn't be out of place in a David Lynch film (what's the dilly yo with the armadillo?) that suggest an affinity for the horror genre on the part of the director. While "Somebody's Watching Me" was only a footnote in Jackson's career, it's easy to imagine that he often had to ask himself "why do I always feel like I'm in The Twilight Zone?"

The Funk of 40,000 Years

It's been awhile since a celebrity death has left me feeling shell-shocked but the sudden passing of Michael Jackson at age 50 has certainly done it. While almost every article commemorating his death will be obliged to mention how his bizarre personal behavior had nearly eclipsed his talent, it's only because its true. Besides being a blazing, one-of-a-kind talent, he was also a blazing, one-of-a-kind oddity. Before sexual accusations permanently tainted his image, Jackson was just a wealthy flake ("Wacko-Jacko") with a passion for chimpanzees, plastic surgery and, allegedly, the Elephant Man's bones (strictly a tabloid rumor). But what horror fans will remember Jackson for, aside from penning the title ballad for the killer rat classic Ben (1972), is the John Landis-directed music video Thriller.

For many fans born in the early '80s, Thriller was their introduction to horror. And what was cool about Thriller was that it was something even a confirmed horror junkie could enjoy. After all, there was a Forry Ackerman cameo, Vincent Price's rap and closing cackle, and FX God Rick Baker delivered feature film-caliber goods with some of his most memorable creations. The were-cat that Michael turns into is simply awesome (I love it when he knocks a tree over with a swipe of his hand!) and while everyone remembers the dancing zombies, what I loved as a kid was the brief moment where Michael and Ola Ray are surrounded by the undead and Landis pans over to a zombie oozing blood out of its mouth. That, to me, made Thriller a real horror movie - that, and the title card that stated that Thriller didn't endorse Michael's belief in the occult. When you have to put something like that in front of a movie, well, it makes it seem like it's The Exorcist or something.

Call it a long form music video, call it a mini-film, Thriller deserves to be remembered as one of the most influential horror movies of the '80s. And best of all, it's one that will likely be immune to a remake.

Inspecting The Box

Having picked up writer/director Richard Kelly's The Box and shaken it, via the new trailer online now, I'm anxious to rip it open. I haven't read the 1970 Richard Matheson short story "Button, Button" that this is based on or seen the previous adaptation (directed by The Changeling's Peter Medak), which aired as an episode of the '80s Twilight Zone revival, but I like what I see here. Although it's set in the '70s, it doesn't look like Kelly is exploiting the decade for its kitschy, camp aspects. I'm not sure why Kelly determined that The Box ought to be a period piece but given the elements of paranoia and conspiracy seen here, maybe he believed this story naturally fit in the decade that put paranoia on the map with films like Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, and All the President's Men. Whatever the case, it looks like The Box stands a good chance of being an ideal match with Kelly's idiosyncratic style and a mainstream thriller.

On a separate note, I find it funny that the distinctive Saw music appears in this trailer given that The Box is due in theaters the week after the latest Saw installment (VI for those who've lost count). I've heard the Saw music used in other trailers (like Valkyrie) but in this case, with The Box infringing on Saw's turf ("If it's Halloween, it must be Saw!"), it seems like a deliberate thrown down on the part of the marketing people. If that's so, I'm all for it. Anything that takes the Halloween season back from the Saw films is good with me - if there were a button to push to make that happen, consider it pushed.

Mother Mania

Even though Father's Day has just passed us by, it's Charles Kaufman's Mother's Day (1980) that's jumped into my thoughts lately. My pal Matt at Paracinema recently posted a write-up on the satirical slasher and a remake is currently in the works (natch!), courtesy of Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III, and IV). But while I'm no fan of Kaufman's film - it's shoddy, mean-spirited, and only sporadically funny - what I have absolutely loved about Mother's Day from the start is its incredible poster. As a kid, when I first saw this poster reproduced in a newspaper advertisement (which in smudgy black and white newsprint only made it look cooler), at the height of the slasher fad, I was in thrall with its ghastliness. Even with as many outstanding posters as the early '80s boasted (hello, Happy Birthday to Me!), Mother's Day knocked everything else on its ass.

I mean, the poster for Maniac (1980), with a psycho brandishing a knife in one hand and a bloody scalp in the other, is pretty astonishing in its nastiness but for me, that's all that poster is - just bluntly unpleasant. Mother's Day, though, is different. There's a EC Comics-style jolliness to it (beginning with its nod to Whistler's Mother), coupled with a hardcore slasher attitude. Every element of this poster is macabre - the decapitated head in the gift box, the grinning Mother with her half-skull face - but what makes this poster a win is the two cretins lurking in the background (known as Ike and Addley in the movie), with their knife, bloody axe, and creepy apparel.

Up front the image of the mother displaying her 'gift' sells Mother's Day with a ghoulish wink, a sight that wouldn't have been out of place on a poster for an Amicus anthology. But behind that, Ike and Addley are all business - pimping the more sordid, threatening horror of the '80s. Ike and Addley are the kind of authentically skeevy-looking degenerates that haven't been seen in horror movies since about 1983 or so. Sure, you'll see some impressively deformed inbred hillbillies now and then (as in 2003's Wrong Turn) but those are clearly the fantastical creation of make-up maestros whereas Ike and Addley were in the tradition of Ed Neal's Hitchhiker in Texas Chainsaw Massacre - characters portrayed by actors who were able to inhabit their parts with such uncomfortable reality (sans make-up, it seemed) that it looked like they had been cast in mid-crime, rather than from an audition - and the artist's rendering of Ike and Addley on the poster for Mother's Day does these despicable boys full justice. In a world of PG-13 remakes, and a world in which even horror movie posters are about showing off its most photogenic cast members rather than showing anyone who might make your skin crawl, you'll never see a pair of psychos like Ike and Addley again. Hell, even Robert Silverman's sweaty, suspicious school gardener from the original Prom Night wouldn't make it into a movie - even unattractive red herrings are forbidden.

I don't spend much time lamenting how the genre has changed and pining away for the way things used to be because honestly, there's still a lot out there that I like. But whenever I look at that Mother's Day poster, I have to admit that something's been lost along the way. Even today's most balls-out films aren't sold with true exploitation posters anymore. The horror genre has shed the tawdriness that it used to own so proudly, and that's a mother-lovin' shame.

"Hot Creepers!"

I was just watching Psycho again today for the first time in many years and while most of it was as familiar to me as the back of my hand, one bit jumped out as though I was hearing it for the first time. When Marion Crane is driving to her new life and is imagining the various reactions that her theft of $40,000 dollars belonging to raffish oil man Tom Cassidy will cause, the phrase that she imagines Cassidy blurting out is "Hot Creepers!" How I ever forgot this, I have no idea because 'Hot Creepers' is perhaps the funniest shit ever. This very blogspot would probably be named 'Hot Creepers', in fact, had I properly earmarked those words. Although I've never heard it spoken elsewhere, I find it funny that in my many viewings of Psycho over the years that this is the first time that it struck me as being a nutty expression. While she was on her way to finding out what crazy was all about, it's clear that Marion was already a little bent herself.