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 Psycho IMDb Genre/keyword: Horror / Thriller / Romance / mother-son / multiple-personality / rain / detective / murder / toilet / police / transvestitism / thief / swamp / birds / stolen-money / cult-favorites / psychological / controversial / knife / famous-score / shower / old-dark-house / insanity / based-on-novel / money I really don't think I need to go into detail about how good this film is. If you haven't seen it, I urge you to go out and rent or buy 'Psycho' tomorrow. The significance this film holds for films of all genres, most of all horror, is so great that I would consider it mandatory viewing for any film buff. After seeing this film, you can watch a movie like 'Pulp Fiction' and point out exactly where Tarantino took directly from 'Psycho'. It's insane. So yeah, the acting is incredible, the script is phenomenal, the music everyone knows regardless of whether they've seen the film or not (a good thing), and the direction if pretty much perfect. Being a modest Hitchcock fan myself, I'd have to rate this film fairly high up on the overall scale of how good movies can get. Sure there have been some better ones, but they fall few and far between. So why then does Universal do a special edition? Probably for the same reason they did a special edition of 'Vertigo': Hitchcock is the man! In my opinion, any and every decent director out there today takes something from Hitchcock. Hopefully they know it and acknowledge it, but I think many times it's just subconscious to them. A technique has been done so many times that a filmmaker will just use it, not realizing that it came from 'Rear Window' or something like that. At the bottom of it, this is a great film directed by a legendary director so it deserves a special edition by all means. Universal, as usual with their special editions, didn't disappoint with this title. The disc is jam packed with extras, ranging from a whole mess of photo stills to more trailers that you can shake a stick at. The video and sound quality is very decent, proving that an old film can still look good. The sound is in DD 2 channel mono (which, for the original soundtrack, is as good as it gets), and the video is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen format. Aside from one or two imperfections in the title sequence, film quality is PRISTINE. For 1960 black and white, I'm amazed the film can still look this good. Obviously, the high end extra here is the 90-minute documentary, simply exemplifying what a good documentary should be. Interviews with most of the principal cast and crew (Janet Leigh and Patricia Hitchcock to name a few), behind the scene photos, and the occasional censored scene all find their way in here as each section of the film is taken and dissected. In many ways this documentary acts as a commentary as well, since the movie is discussed chronologically scene by scene. It was edited together very nicely and makes for a captivating documentary that's almost as long as the film itself! The other extras pale in comparison to the documentary, but are still very nice to see on the disc. The original and re-release trailers are nice to have, as old Alfred is so damn cool. This theatrical trailer is probably one of the better trailers I have ever seen for a film. I have no idea why directors don't take this approach more nowadays... In any case, the trailers are in moderately good condition, considering their age. The Shower scene (which is discussed heavily in the documentary as well) does a great job showing just how influential and effective the musical score is. Bernard Herrmann is quite simply the man when it comes to music. The shrieking crescendos of strings tearing into your ears are so fitting to the film that one ALWAYS associates that music with 'Psycho', even if they've never seen the film. The same can be said for Norman Bates, which again shows just how influential this film was to our culture. EVERYONE knows who Norman Bates is, and that Anthony Perkins played him to perfection. One of the more interesting features of this film's release is that they required all tickets to be sold before the starting time and only before the starting time. No one was admitted to a show in progress which, at that time, had never been done before. The original press kit newsreel is included in this disc, explaining the whole procedure. Basically, Hitch didn't want anyone to come in after Janet Leigh's death and spend an hour wondering what the hell is going on. This is a perfectly acceptable task to ask of an audience and I'm very glad that perhaps the only director of the time with the clout to actually enforce such a ludicrous law actually did it. Nowadays, it's standard for the audience to arrive before the movie starts, but in 1960, people would walk in off the street, catch the ending, wait for it to start again and catch the beginning until they get to the part they've seen. As one can imagine, this is simply not possible to do with 'Psycho'. Another thing Hitchcock tried to do was persuade the audience not to give away the ending, since it was so shocking and terrifying. This trend continues on today ('The Crying Game' for instance). Also included in the disc are a lot of stills. Production photos, behind-the-scenes photos, lobby cards, posters and 'Psycho' adds, and the storyboards for the Shower scene. This is cool because it really breaks the scene down. A lot of people don't realize how hard a scene like that is to film, since it's done so beautifully on screen. In reality, they spent a full week just shooting that 30 seconds of film, and pulled it off masterfully in my opinion. Unfortunately, after blazing through the movie and all the extras, I was left with a longing for one or two features more. I REALLY could have done with an isolated music track. Herrmann's score is so wonderful and brilliant that I felt this movie screams for an alternate audio track but doesn't get one. Sure the menus have a few snippets but it's just not the same. Also, a commentary would be nice. I realize the documentary covered a lot of ground, probably mentioning everything that would get mentioned in an audio track, but for sheer entertainment time I would have liked another feature in there. Of course, this may just be me wanting more information on one of my favorite movies, but I genuinely think it would have been interesting (get the producer and assistant director in there and fire it up!). A note on the menus, which apparently befuddle a few people: In my opinion Universal is holding up to their standard classy structure. Well-done still images in the background and clear, intuitive options are easy to navigate and clearly get the job done. My one qualm is that the chapter list doesn't contain a master list of chapters so you have to scroll through all seven screens to select the end credits (not a big deal, considering it tells you your status (1 of 7, 4 of 7, etc.)). However, to get to the next screen, you simply move the cursor over the arrow and it goes automatically. No more confusing than say 'LA Confidential's menus, which are in my opinion too confused and busy. The extras menu is the same format with the same red arrow on the bottom of the screen. Anyone that would miss that probably wouldn't be interested in the other extras (three screens worth) on the disc. It is extremely easy to see and about as far from hidden as one can imagine. I had no problems whatsoever in getting around the menus and in fact, I consider them to be done rather well. So, in the end, this is a classic film that's come to life on DVD and ensured it's existence for ages to come. The documentary is top notch, like all Universal documentaries that I've seen. Actually, now that I think about it, this is so true. I've seen four now and each one has just been amazing. I'm deeply impressed with the quality that Universal brings to the table and just wish that they throw EVERYTHING in there once in a while (although this is yet to happen because it would be the perfect DVD and we all know that wont be out on shelves anytime soon). For the relatively high list price that Universal asks for, they usually get the job done. In this case, I'm a happy camper. The lack of music track and commentary don't bug me a huge amount, although they would be nice to have. As it is though, this is a solid title definitely worth owning.  FINAL GRADE: A |
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