Today in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was released, ushering in the age of ultra-violence in American cinema and to some extent the independent movie (Paramount were aghast at Psycho‘s script, so Hitchcock financed the film via his own Shamley Productions for $806,947.55)

Based on the novel of the same name by famed author Robert Bloch, Psycho was inspired by real-life murderer Ed Gein. It was filmed in black and white, not just to save money, but because Hitchcock knew that the shower scene would have just been too much in color. Principle filming took place on the set of Revue Studios, the same location where Hitchcock shot his television show. The Bates Motel set is still standing at the Universal Lot (see above).

Janet Leigh was apparently so upset after she saw the infamous shower scene (which had over 50 edits and used chocolate sauce for as the blood stand-in) that she tried to avoid them for the rest of her life. Leigh told documentary producers in 1997 that she would only shower if everything in the house was locked down first and she felt safe. She also always left the bathroom door open.

As, well, psychotic as Psycho is, it would take another twelve years before Hitchcock would film his sickest film of all, Frenzy. You wanna talk about a sick film? Frenzy makes Psycho seem tame by comparison. Today’s “torture porn” ain’t got nuthin’ on Hitch, baby!
 

 

 
It’s not enough that British early-twenty-something film nut Charlie Lyne’s Ultra Culture is one of the best cinema blogs around.

Oh no. He’s also gotta do stuff like Death / Hitchcock, a wonderful tribute to a legend, and one of the most anxiety-inducing and ultimately satisfying short simultaneous montages you may ever see.

Dare you to watch it just once.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
24 Second Psycho
Psycho at 50: Zizek’s Three Floors of the Mind
Happy Birthday, Hitchcock: The Dali Dream of Spellbound

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
24 Second ‘Psycho’
Psycho at 50: Zizek’s Three Floors Of The Mind

(via the always delightful If we don’t, remember me.)

 
In 1993, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon exhibited his 24 Hour Psycho, a slowed-down screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film that lasted twenty-four hours. The project contained “many of the important themes in Gordon’s work: recognition and repetition, time and memory, complicity and duplicity, authorship and authenticity, darkness and light.”

In 2005, talented artist Chris Bors created his own version of the film and art work, but this time as 24 Second Psycho.

24 Second Psycho appropriates the entire Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho and condenses it into twenty-four seconds. Tweaking the concept of artist Douglas Gordons 24 Hour Psycho, where Hitchcocks masterpiece was slowed-down to a crawl, here the process is reversed to accommodate society’s increasingly short attention span. Seeing Hitchcocks most lasting contribution to cinema flash before your eyes in a matter of seconds represents our new information age where culture is packaged for easy consumption at a breakneck pace.

Bors work has been exhibited at PS1 MoMA, White Columns, Sixtyseven and Ten in One Gallery in New York, Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, and the Videoex Festival in Zurich, Switzerland.

Update:

Also over on You Tube, Joe Frese has created a variety of mini masterpieces, including his own Sixty Second Psycho.
 

 
Bonus clip Joe Frese’s ‘Sixty Second Psycho’, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Henri Podin
 

 
Today marks the half-century anniversary of the premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which—along with Fellini’s La Dolce Vita opening earlier the same year—used the artform of cinema to hold up the cracked mirror of compulsive desire to Western civilization.

Movies, of course, would never be the same. Who better to drive the point home than our friendly neighborhood Lacanian critical theorist from Slovenia, Slavoj Žižek, from his excellent 2006 documentary, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema?

 
Get: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema Pt. 1-3 [DVD]