There we have it folks. Another year passed and another Halloween marathon completed, though perhaps not the only thing I'll be doing for the holiday. Even though I started working on this list in the middle of summer, I still ended up getting down to the wire, which is why some of these entries might seem a bit haphazard (some movies lend themselves better to writing than others though). I don't know if that means I need to make stricter deadlines for myself or just shorter ones, but at least I didn't waste half the month before posting them, right? I think I ended up with a pretty good selection of films too, maybe a bit more outside the horror genre than last year, but I'm an eclectic man with eclectic tastes, and it's just something we all have to deal with. I hope all of you reading out there found something new to try out this Halloween, and it ends up being something you enjoy. Not love, necessarily, we all different tastes after all, but just something that you can enjoy. If these little scribblings can help you discover a movie that you'll really enjoy, something that makes you laugh or cry or think even inspires your own art, then that's more than enough for me. It might be a tall order, but I can hope.
Happy Halloween!
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Since I rarely get comments on the articles I write, I’m going to assume I being silently judged for the film i’m highlighting this time around. Judgement for waiting till now to watch Psycho, judgement for placing it at the number one position (even though the placement doesn’t really mean anything) when Vertigo placed lower on last year’s list, despite being considered one of the greatest films of all time. Continuous, constant judgement. However, if there was one director who really earned the right to be at the top of any movie Marathon, much less mine, it’s Alfred Hitchcock. Without his influence, without seminal works like North by Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope (a personal favorite), The Birds, etc. filmmaking as we know it would not be what it is today, and that goes double for the horror/thriller genres. When people talk about auteurs, those directors of supreme creative talent and vision, they’re talking about guys like Hitchcock. I’ve discussed him several times in my reviews of Rope and Vertigo, you can go there to see even more opinions.
While Psycho is certainly deserving of its spot in film history, being a prototype of the ‘slasher’ movie years before that subgenre really growing steam, I think the more worthy legacy of Psycho is solidifying the idea of humanity being its own monster. Prior to Psycho, a lot of your horror antagonists were fantastical beings, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Thing from Beyond Space, and so on. After Psycho, the movies were darker and more ‘real’, and yet the antagonists were still fantastical. Jason Voorhees is an undead killing machine, Freddy Krueger is a dream demon, Leatherface is some sort of hyper exaggerated Ed Gein, we’re still dealing with monsters. Still in the realm of fiction. Norman Bates though? Norman Bates could be the guy behind you in line at Taco Bell, or the guy pumping your gas. Throughout your day-to-day life you could interact with dozens, maybe hundreds of people, and any one of those seemingly normal people could be a murderer or a psychopath, and go through your entire life not knowing it. In real life there’s no identifying features like aversion to garlic or silver to determine who wants to make your skin into an ipad cover, and so you watch horror movies to work out that instinctual paranoia in a safe environment. Then Psycho comes in and reminds you of that fear, and suddenly you’re out of that comfort zone that vampires and mummies had built up for you. Suddenly you can’t help but realize that you can’t really know other people the way you know yourself, and that you can never be sure what they’re thinking, or if they mean what they say. That’s why we have wars and racism and all that other horrible stuff, and that’s why Psycho is such an effective horror film. Because anybody could be a Norman Bates, and Norman Bates could be anybody.
I’m not going to give too much away again, because I’m not really in the mood for recapping the story, but I will say that it’s not really the kind of movie you’d expect. Psycho is mainly known in pop culture for the infamous shower murder, which I think gives it the impression of being a slasher like Friday the 13th or Halloween. In fact, that scene is more like build up to the rest of the film, which is about investigating that murder and catching Bates. It’s sort of like the plot to an Columbo story, where we know who the murderer is and how they murdered the victim, and we’re just watching the character’s journey up until the point where they put it together and it all comes together. Since I’m a huge fan of Columbo, as should we all, maybe that explains some things.
Watch Psycho, I guess is the suggestion here. There’s really not any deep philosophical arguments to be had like with Rope or Vertigo, it’s just thrills, chills and attractive women that Hitchcock probably verbally abused during filming. All in all a horror classic, prime Halloween material whether one is alone or with friends, even decades after its release. True art never really fades, even if the people in the pictures do.
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