60 Fun Facts About Psycho

Which author wrote the 1959 novel that Psycho was adapted from?

Hitchcock bought the rights for just $9,500 and reportedly had his assistant buy up copies of the book so audiences would not learn the twist.

The character of Norman Bates was loosely inspired by which real Wisconsin murderer?

Both men were solitary killers in rural isolation with domineering dead mothers, and both kept a room in the house as a shrine to her.

How much cash does Marion Crane steal from her employer?

The money ends up sinking into the swamp with her car, and neither Norman nor his mother ever knew it was there.

In which city does the film open?

A helicopter shot descending into the hotel window was planned for the opening but proved too shaky and had to be spliced with studio footage.

The Bates Motel sits a few miles outside which fictional California town?

The A&E series Bates Motel later relocated the family to White Pine Bay, Oregon, and set the story in the present day.

What hobby does Norman describe to Marion over dinner in the motel parlor?

The stuffed birds looming over the parlor are the film's quiet hint that Norman, not his mother, is the one doing the killing.

What is the surname of the private investigator hired to recover the money?

His murder on the staircase required an overhead camera rig on pulleys that took weeks to build and test, all to hide the killer's face.

Where in the Bates house does Lila discover the mummified body of Norman's mother?

The reveal needed a spinning chair, a swinging light bulb and a lens flare to line up perfectly, and Hitchcock demanded retake after retake until they did.

According to the local sheriff, how did Norman's mother die ten years earlier?

The sheriff describes it as a murder-suicide involving her lover, which is why he assumes the woman in the window cannot be her.

Besides saving money, why did Hitchcock choose to shoot the film in black and white?

The monochrome also let the crew use chocolate syrup for blood, since it photographed with a more convincing consistency than stage blood.

Roughly what was the film's production budget?

The whole crew cost about $62,000 because Hitchcock borrowed most of them from his television show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Instead of his usual $250,000 director's fee, what did Hitchcock take for making the film?

The gamble paid off spectacularly: he personally earned more than $15 million from the film.

Who wrote the screenplay?

He had only one film credit before this and was in therapy about his own mother while writing the script; he later wrote the TV prequel Psycho IV.

The look of the Bates house was modeled on a painting by which American artist?

The painting, House by the Railroad, depicts a real Second Empire home in Haverstraw, New York.

Which snacking habit of Norman's was an improvisation by the actor playing him?

The leads were free to improvise as long as it did not require moving the camera.

Who composed the film's score?

The composer refused to cut his fee for the smaller budget, and Hitchcock nearly doubled his salary after hearing what the music did for the shower scene.

The score was written for which kind of ensemble?

The composer saw the single tone colour of an all-string ensemble as the musical equivalent of the black-and-white photography; Hitchcock had actually asked for jazz.

What percentage of the film's effect did Hitchcock later credit to the music?

He originally wanted the shower murder to play with no music at all until the composer insisted he at least listen to the cue.

What was used as blood in the shower scene?

It photographed better in black and white and ran with a more realistic consistency than stage blood.

How was the sound of the knife entering flesh created for the shower scene?

The BBFC still required cuts to the stabbing sounds when the film first reached British cinemas.

The three-minute shower scene took roughly how long to shoot?

It was filmed December 17–23, 1959, after the star had postponed twice, once for a cold and once for her period.

What is the title of the 2017 documentary devoted entirely to the shower scene?

The numbers refer to the sequence's 78 camera setups and 52 cuts, and the film features Guillermo del Toro, Jamie Lee Curtis and Danny Elfman among its talking heads.

Which model has been identified as the star's body double for parts of the shower scene?

The star insisted for decades she did the whole scene herself; two of the wrong answers here were actually the doubles for Norman, since Perkins was away in New York doing a Broadway show.

Where does Hitchcock make his traditional cameo?

The wardrobe mistress said he picked that scene so he could appear alongside his daughter Patricia, who played Marion's office colleague.

In the original trailer, which actress appears in the shower in a blonde wig instead of the star?

The trailer is mostly a jovial studio tour with Hitchcock almost spilling the plot, backed partly by music from his comedy The Trouble with Harry.

What unusual policy did Hitchcock impose on cinemas showing Psycho in 1960?

Theatre owners feared it would kill business, but by the second day they had long queues; Clouzot had tried the same trick in France for Les Diaboliques.

Psycho was the second highest-grossing film of 1960 behind which epic?

It remained the most commercially successful film of Hitchcock's whole career.

Hitchcock later swapped his rights to Psycho and his TV show for 150,000 shares in which company?

The deal made him the company's third-largest shareholder and, in theory, his own boss at Universal.

How many Academy Award nominations did the film receive?

The nods included Best Director and Best Supporting Actress; it won none.

Which award did Janet Leigh win for playing Marion Crane?

She was also Oscar-nominated for the role, and for the rest of her life received disturbing fan letters about Marion, one so grotesque she passed it to the FBI.

What MPAA rating did the film receive when it was reclassified in 1984?

For sixteen years it had carried an M rating, roughly equivalent to today's PG, until the VCR-era debate about violence in PG films.

CBS paid $450,000 for the TV rights but pulled its planned 1966 broadcast because of what?

Valerie Percy was stabbed to death three days before the airdate; a second attempt was postponed by the Apollo 1 fire, and CBS never showed it.

What is the first name of Norman's mother?

In the A&E prequel series she is played by Vera Farmiga, who won a Saturn Award for the role.

How much was Janet Leigh paid for the film, about a quarter of her usual fee?

She agreed after only reading the novel and never asked about the salary; her co-star Perkins got $40,000.

Nearly the whole film was shot with lenses of what focal length, chosen to mimic human vision?

The idea was that a field of view close to the human eye would draw the audience further into the story.

What was Marion Crane's first name in the original novel?

It was changed for the film because a real woman with that name lived in Phoenix.

How does Marion die in the novel, in a more violent scene than the film's?

The book is also nastier about Norman himself: middle-aged, overweight, alcoholic and interested in the occult and pornography, all of which the film dropped.

Why does the opening scene carry an on-screen caption reading "Friday, December the Eleventh"?

Rather than reshoot the downtown street scene, Hitchcock simply added the date and let the tinsel stay.

Who directed Psycho III (1986)?

The star returned as Norman for all three sequels and stepped behind the camera for the third; the voice of Mother in the sequels was radio actress Virginia Gregg.

Who directed the 1998 nearly shot-for-shot colour remake?

Vince Vaughn played Norman opposite Anne Heche and Julianne Moore; the director called it "a huge kind of experimental project".

On which network did the prequel series Bates Motel air from 2013 to 2017?

The channel skipped a pilot and ordered ten episodes straight to series; it became the longest-running scripted drama in its history.

Who played the young Norman in the Bates Motel TV series?

The show was a "contemporary prequel", moving the family to a modern-day Oregon coastal town while the final season loosely adapted the original novel.

Psycho II (1983) picks up how many years after the events of the first film?

Norman is released from the institution over Lila's objections; the film has nothing to do with Robert Bloch's own 1982 sequel novel of the same name.

The Bates Motel and house exteriors were built on the same Universal stage as which 1925 silent classic?

The sets are still standing and remain a regular stop on the Universal Studios Hollywood tour.

Which 1978 horror film starred Janet Leigh's daughter and named a character Sam Loomis in tribute?

Jamie Lee Curtis later spoofed the shower scene herself on Scream Queens.

Which 1998 Busta Rhymes single samples the film's opening theme?

One composer has argued the score's repetitive "nihilistic fragments" anticipated the way hip-hop producers build beats.

Which 1960 British film is sometimes cited instead of Psycho as the first slasher?

Michael Powell's film shares Psycho's themes of voyeurism and sexualised violence but effectively ended his directing career.

When the BBFC finally passed the uncut version in 1986, what certificate did it receive?

The original 1960 release had been trimmed of stabbing sounds and nude shots; Ireland's censor banned it outright at first.

Which relative of Hitchcock's appears as Marion's office colleague?

The wardrobe mistress said the director chose his cameo spot outside the office specifically so he could share a scene with her.

What did censors object to seeing in Marion's motel bathroom, a first for mainstream American film?

The scrap of note paper that fails to flush replaced the tell-tale earring that gives the game away in the novel.

The film was selected for the National Film Registry in which year?

The registry's first class was 1989; Psycho joined three years later as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Psycho was seen as a sharp departure from which big-budget Hitchcock film released the year before?

Where the 1959 thriller was lavish and in colour, Psycho was shot cheaply in black and white by Hitchcock's television crew.

Who plays Sam Loomis, Marion's lover?

Vera Miles, John Gavin and Martin Balsam rounded out the cast below the two leads.

Which actor plays the private investigator who follows Marion's trail to the Bates Motel?

His character's walk up the Bates house staircase was partly shot from Saul Bass storyboards while Hitchcock had a cold, then scrapped and reshot.

Through which company of his own did Hitchcock make Psycho after Paramount refused?

He shot at Universal under the Revue Studios unit, and four years later sold his stock in the company to MCA.

How much did Hitchcock pay for the film rights to Robert Bloch's novel?

He reportedly also had his assistant buy up copies of the book to keep its surprises from leaking.

Which radio actress voiced Norman's mother in the original film and the first two sequels?

She was replaced only in Psycho IV: The Beginning, the 1990 television movie.

Which Romeo and Juliet star played Mrs. Bates in Psycho IV: The Beginning?

The 1990 part-prequel was a television movie, and the only sequel in which Mother was not merely a voice.

Which long-time assistant of Hitchcock's brought Bloch's novel to his attention?

She had read Anthony Boucher's positive review in The New York Times after Paramount's readers had already rejected the book.

Who designed the film's titles and storyboarded the shower scene?

Hitchcock's whole crew, drawn mostly from his TV series, cost just $62,000.