Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting [N.F. - Folklore] by Poole W. Scott

Author:Poole, W. Scott [Poole, W. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Culture, Folklore, History, Horror, Literature, USA, Monsters, Fantasy
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Five

DEVIANT BODIES

I finally convinced myself that it was good to do it, necessary to do it, and that the public wanted me to do it. The latter part I believe until this day. I believe that many were rooting for me.

—David Berkowitz, “Son of Sam” killer

Welcome to prime time, bitch!

—Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

The story of Marion Crane, a beautiful young woman having an illicit affair, seemed to follow the general outline of Hitchcockian narratives. Crane steals money from her boss in hopes of attaining the postwar American dream of domestic bliss and conspicuous consumption. Then she goes on the lam.

Audiences came to see Psycho expecting a suspenseful thriller along the lines of North By Northwest or simply a big-screen version of the offbeat espionage and crime tales on Hitchcock’s popular television series. Packing in to theaters all over the country to see Psycho, the forty-seventh film by the “Master of suspense,” moviegoers received a shocking, blood-drenched welcome to the 1960s.

Psycho’s opening scene titillated viewers with Crane (played by Janet Leigh) in white negligee, talking to her lover in a hotel room about their need for money. Audiences, though they would have likely disapproved of her when she steals from her boss, likely identified with her as she sets out for a new life. Viewers experienced a growing unease as Crane gets lost on a dark and stormy night and stops at a hotel with a frightening, California gothic house leering over it. The young proprietor Norman Bates, though strange, comes across at first as shy and even charming. Moreover, Tony Perkins played the role of the odd young man, and his previous film work had been in light comedy and romance, suggesting that he might become Crane’s ally and maybe even a new romantic interest.

Suddenly, like thrill-seekers on a roller coaster that had slowly bumped its way to the top of the track, audiences felt their stomachs heave as the film took a precipitous and terrifying plunge. As Leigh, alone in her room, begins to take a shower, the curtain suddenly rips open and a shadowy figure with a butcher knife begins plunging the weapon repeatedly into Leigh’s naked flesh. Thirty-four segments, edited together at furious speed into a sequence lasting less than a minute, increased the feeling of the attack’s suddenness and brutality. Leigh’s body crumpled over the edge of the tub with blood swirling down the drain while audiences went from shocked screams to stunned silence.1

Esquire called Psycho “a reflection of the most unpleasant mind, a mean, sly sadistic little mind.” Numerous reviewers exuded distaste and not a little anger at the director himself. The New York Times called the film “a blot on an honorable career.” One reviewer, after calling it “the most vile and disgusting film ever made,” added that he found it especially disheartening that a director of Hitchcock’s prominence had been responsible for it.2

Early critical rejection did not prevent Psycho from changing American movies forever. A box-office smash,

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