This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the release of Hitchcock's classic film Psycho. Like any film directed by Hitchcock, the promo he produced to trail Psycho is full of in-jokes and recurring themes and devices. In the promo Hitchcock takes us on a tongue-in-cheek guided tour of the Bates Motel accompanied by his trademark jaunty music. This clip shows the mother's bedroom which is, as Hitchcock remarks, "still beautifully preserved".
He then takes us to the top of the staircase where the private detective played by Martin Balsam is murdered. Staircases recur in many of Hitchcock's films. In Vertigo, for example, the stairs up the church bell tower are an important feature in the film while Suspicion includes a scene where Cary Grant slowly, menacingly ascends a staircase. Birds, another of Hitchock's favourite devices, feature in the Psycho promo in the form of taxidermy with which the Anthony Perkins character surrounds himself.
In the bright light of the fateful motel bathroom, Hitchcock teasingly creates a shadow of himself - another of his famous and playful trademarks.Finally, Hitchcock shows opens the lid of the toilet where "an important clue was found". The censors wanted to cut the scene in the film in which Janet Leigh flushes the loo finding it shocking, and impish Hitchcock couldn't resist drawing attention to it in the promo.
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