# Psycho (1998)

### reviewed by
Phineas Narco

Review of Psycho (remade 1998 version) by Phineas Narco

    ======

I wonder if Hitchcock has enough room in his coffin, he must be building up some pretty good RPM's right about now.

Well, It's probably an impossible task to review the new Psycho remake, directed by Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy), without comparing it to the original classic so I won't even try.

The original masterpiece, directed of course by Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, was the tale of a boy and his mother. The 'boy' of course, being Norman Bates, curator of the Bates motel, an out of the way little establishment that hardly no one visits anymore.

One night, he's visited by Marion Crane (here played by Anne Heche reprising the Janet Leigh role) who is on the run from the law. One shower later and... well the rest is history, isn't it? Cinematic history. Why mess with it?

But then, Psycho has been sequelized, cable-TV prequelized, made into a short-lived TV series, and now it's been remade. Someone in Hollywood keeps trying to franchize this movie with some pretty bad results. What's next, are we going to have a video game and Taco Bell designer glasses?

Frankly I had my doubts when I heard they were remaking Psycho. It was like someone remaking the Wizard of Oz or Citizen Kane. How can you improve on perfection? Indeed for the most part Van Sant seems not so much to reinterpret the original vision but simply copy it over shot per shot and line for line. There are some original touches, but they are hardly worth the price of admission. In fact most of them are downright awful.

Keep in mind that in 1960 no one had seen anything quite like Psycho. It left audiences breathless. Movie-goers were not allowed into the theater after it started. There were stories of people fainting and having heart attacks.

But what kind of impact is the story of a psychotic little mama's boy like Norman Bates going to have on the desensitized audiences of 1998 when we've seen Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer and countless other serial-killers-of-the-week not to mention hundreds of slasher movies?

To devotees of the original film, Psycho (the new movie) proceeds like a recurring dream. But this time around it's as if you had too much pizza to eat the night before.

For one thing the pacing is all wrong. Hitchcock had this way of allowing these exquisitely-timed pregnant silences between the lines that were even more important than the lines themselves. He let you *savor* the anxiety. That is called... 'suspense'.

Here, everything is rushed and clipped, as if everyone's had one too many latte's at Starbucks before going on the set and can hardly wait to hurry onto the next scene. Perhaps the makers of the film thought that today's modern audiences cornfed on too much MTV wouldn't have the attention span to sit through a dramatic pause or two.

Even the new Norman seems 'on something'. Perhaps those candies he munches on obsessively are actually No-Doz tablets. Compared to Anthony Perkins' studied portrayal of a pent-up, nervously withdrawn and stammering recluse, the 'new' Norman seems positively manic.

Flashing wicked smiles and winks as he flirts and mugs, and throwing off glib one-liners like "You have a wonderful quality about you that puts guys at ease", he's so cocksure and bristling with energy, you wonder what he's doing wasting his life in the middle of nowhere. He should be in Hollywood somewhere pitching horrible movies like this one.

Another major problem with this story is that it doesn't belong in 1998. I thought 'well maybe they're remaking it because they want to modernize the tale' after all the ad copy says 'A modern vision of the original classic'. But since 95% of the script is taken verbatim from the original script the 'modern vision' seems to consist of afterthought touches like Lila Crane saying "Wait, let me grab my walkman" before her and Sam go to see the sheriff. What?? What does her walkman have to do with anything??

The dialogue is fraught with embarassing anachronisms. One example is the used car saleman saying to Marion, "You have a right to do anything you have a mind to, being a woman, you will". That sort of line in 1960 might have been flattering, today it sounds like chauvanistic condescension. The sweating actor who delivers it actually looks embarassed at the lines coming out of his mouth.

I should have asked for my money back at the theater, because I paid to see a horror movie and I got a comedy. I lost track of how many times the audience laughed, tittered, giggled and openly jeered at scenes that should have been steeped in suspense and horror. Van Sant tries to make it shocking enough for today's sensibilities, but the results are unintentionally humorous. The only time the movie works is as camp, and sometimes I truly wondered if it was intended that way.

For example, when Norman pulls back the picture to gaze at Marion undressing through his peephole, Van Sant actually inserts the whap-whap-whap sound of him masturbating. The audience howled like it was a scene out of Porky's. I almost walked out at that point, but I wanted to see what he did with the shower scene. (Answer: it raises an eyebrow but is hardly worth waiting for).

I kept waiting for Van Sant to GO somewhere with the material. What he was going to do with the story? It would have been interesting to see the makers of this film truly rework it from the ground up instead of just adding a few modern technical touches.

For instance, instead of Sam living on a cot in the back of a hardware store, what if he was sleeping on his buddy's couch and working at a temp job at Manpower? Doesn't that seem to make more sense in today's world?

Or why not have Arbogast (the private detective played by William Macy) be a woman? It would have been interesting to see Kathy Bates put Norman Bates on the spot, but I guess that would have required too many rewrites.

The plot is also seeded with logic problems when told in a modern setting:

For example, why would Sam and Marion have a tryst in a hotel at the beginning of the movie? In 1960 it would be because they wouldn't want to start a scandal. Today they would just have sex at her house. The neighbors wouldn't even notice. Why rent a room?

Why is Arbogast wearing such a ridiculous hat? So he can look more like a private detective? Who wears hats anymore?

Why in the world would a millionaire throw around $400,000 in cash in today's world of ATM check cards and internet banking? To avoid paying taxes, he declares for all the world to hear and casually hands it to the secretary. What?? Would this EVER happen? The IRS would be on him like flies on Mrs. Bates' corpse and no reputable bank would do business that way. Doesn't this little plot point need SOME kind of rewrite to make it believable nowadays?

On the bright side however, there is one nice thing that came out of the movie and that is Danny Elfman's adapted soundtrack of Bernard Herrman's score. It sounds wonderful. I was just sorry I had to be watching this movie while listening to it. Indeed the score has been imitated so much since the 1960's it seems campy in the context of a modern movie..

I see the original Hitchcock classic as sort of like Hamlet. This movie is like a bad junior high school production of it. It's problem when retold in the modern age is that, like Hamlet, it's wrought with many since-told 'cliches'.

Let's face it, when it comes to movies about psychotic murderers, today's audiences have seen it all. (How many times have we seen the shower scene ripped off?). The irony is, those who have never seen the original Psycho probably don't know that the slasher movie moves they've seen so many times can be traced back to just the film they're watching a bastardized version of. The tragedy is, after seeing this one first, they've rather spoiled their enjoyment of seeing the original.

Please, please, please, if you have not seen the original Psycho do NOT, I repeat DO NOT watch this one. Save your seven and a half bucks and go rent the original for a dollar at Blockbuster's.

I had hopes for this movie and still think it might have been at least an interesting remake if completely reworked and reinterpreted under the hand of a more disturbed director like John McNaughton or David Lynch.

But as it is, I can't help thinking that it would be better to just let the story be as it is, preserved in time, as a classic, like one of Norman's stuffed birds.

         Mama mia.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews