Psycho - Bad Liars, Taxidermists & a La Quinta Inn Mudpit

Paul. I'm recently returned from a trip to South Florida. As you're aware, I'm not usually in cars that often, so when i'm down there, I get to see car culture at its finest and not so finest. Florida contains multitud multitudes, as we know. As we all know, picture it on the back across the bumper, so it's not like a small bumper sticker across the bumper in white lettering only gay cops pull me over. Let me repeat that, a black, regular, normal car with only gay cops pull

me over in white so you can really see it. Yeah, what does that mean? I'm literally trying to figure out if I should be offended or not. Yes, I I don't understand the Okay, here's here's where I'm coming from. Yea. Is it a slur? Is it like if you're if you're pulling me over, then you're good, You're good? Or is it a gay man who's like, I'm such a hotty? Yeah that only gay cops told me over. Hey yeah, oh god, that's because it's South Florida. Also, I don't know. If this car were somewhere else,

I think i'd have a better game. I'm prepared to issue a judgment. Okay, I think it's offensive. I was like, are we a slur a celebration coming out? I don't understand what's happening, Sir Macs of someone being like, take a joke, you know, like it feels like that. Yeah, maybe it is a gay cop who's celebrating their whole thing. They're like beautiful, their whole Like, look, I get it. The police are a problem right now. But some of us are cool, man, some of us are gay. Hey, I'm Paul, America,

and this is that aged well yesterday's pop culture. Today we are in the midst of spooky October. We are deep in it now, are we are elbow deep in the in the swamp that is spooky October? Yeah? And I hear howling in the distance exactly and sucking us down. The terrors are coming in at night and they're finding us, Paul, exactly. Night terrors are chasing us down. Hey, we are in the thriller video, is what I'm saying, Erica. Before we get to our spooky movie today,

we do have a five star Apple podcast review. Shall I read it for you? Yes? Please? Okay, So this one is from my so called Social life No notes perfect, very like Irma bomback Energy are amazing, right, yes, yeah, my so called social life rights y'all. This hilarious podcast is my absolute favorite. A coworker recommended it to me years ago and I was immediately hooked. I hope there's no HR investigation into the podcast

you're listening to. You don't listen to this at work, y'all, or make sure your headphones are in do not air drop us to your boss give you a problem. I've cackled out loud to this podcast even just driving alone so much doesn't matter if I'm previously familiar with the movie being covered or not, as the witty retold plots is the perfect way to catch up. Plus, the editing is expertly tight, so I never drift off or get bored. I love everything about it. Keep up the great work. Well,

thank you for the compliment on the editing. I agree. I have to agree with you there because I have nothing to do with the editing, and it is excellent because you have no idea how much dead air we have. You could not tell from listening to this how much dead air Paul cuts out of us, being like, wait, what was her name started with a C. Wait wait, I get it. No, no, don't look it up. I want to get it myself. Okay, tell me the first initial of the last name. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep.

Do you mind if I go pee real quick? Oh? That yeah? The pea breaks. We go along on these episodes, y'all, my so called social life. Thank you so much for that review. Thank truly, thank you for complimenting the editing. I work very hard on it, so I really appreciate that. If you would like at that age, well, tote bag, let us know this is you, and I will be thrilled to send it off for you. Erica, what is the what is the

movie? Today's film is the nineteen sixty horror suspense Psycho. You know what I think of Psycho? Yes, I think that you'd have to be psychoed and not have signed up for our Patreon bam. That's where he works in the Patreon. That's where mister marketing comes in and sells the movie patreon dot com. Slash that age, well, don't be a psycho, don't be a psycho. Don't be a Norman Bates, be a Master Bates. All right. Psycho was requested by d by K and by Josephine and by me.

Let's get ridal Thank you DK and Josephine. Psycho was written by Joseph Stefano. Okay, really short gay sidebar here, love it go. There is a very famous eighties porn star named Joey Stefano. Is it possible they related? Is his nephew because Joey Stefano was Anelius, so it's not his real name. But I read that and I was like just thinking about like that being the author. It was based on Robert Bloch's novel of the same name. It was directed by one mister Alfred Hitchcock Heard of Him. It

stars Anthony Perkins, Janet ly Vera Miles, John Gavin. We're gonna do some talking about John Gavin today and also Martin Balsam. I'd also be very very talented Mark. Martin Balsom' very handsome is he? I want to kick Martin Balsom out of bed. Really, he's got a way about him. You know. I want to grab a cup of Joe with Martin Balsam. That's what I want to do with Martin. I want to I want him

to tell me old Hollywood tales. I'm not saying I would go to a bar and be like that one, but I'm saying if that one was like you, I'd be like, we can have a conversation. Okay. Yeah. Psycho was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actress for Janet Lee. It won none because genre films always get the shaft. Yeah, somehow it was not nominated for Best Score, which is bullshit, bullshit. It may be the best score of the last how long has

it been sixty five years? Yeah, I agree. It was definitely one of the five best scores of the movies in nineteen sixty. I saw this film, Paula like five years ago at the New York Philharmonic. The New York Philharmonic does a whole series every year where they do movies and the actual like the actual Philharmonic actually plays the score out while you're watching the movie.

Yeah, and let me tell you, seeing that like iconic shower scene with like thirty people playing the violin, just like violently playing the violin, it was fucking cool. Those violinists must have been sweatoned by the end of this Yeah, they're working hard in this movie. Also you don't realize until you see it on stage, but like, the entire score is strings. It's it was all violins and cellos. There was no there were no piano, no winds. Clarinet, yeah there was no. Yeah, there were no

there were no brass instruments on that stage. It was all strings. And also, weirdly a tuba I think like a psycho. Raised a lot of concerns for the old production code, including Marion and Sam appearing in bed together as an unmarried couple with Marian in her underwear. Uh, the gender nonconformity. We're gonna get into that. We'll just say that we're gonna hold off from that. And most interesting Erica the act of flushing the toilet, which

had never appeared on film or television. I tried to get a second source on that. I couldn't. That is in I think it's in Wikipedia. But it does kind of feel right because you're right, you never see that. Ever, they hadn't started making films about like disordered eating it, so he didn't have the nineteen eighties spate of films about I think She's throwing up

again. Yeah, that is hilarious. Yeah, that's the first time anyone had like, of course, leave it to Hitchcock to be like how lurid can I guess he was a little bit just of like an iconic class in the way that he was like, there's a rule, I must break it. See if I can get away with that. Psycho inspired three terrible sequels with Anthony Perkins, who does not who deserved a lot better from all of us. He did a shot for shot remake was directed by Gus Van Sant,

which was all so terrible. I saw that in the theater the Anthony Perkins role was. Okay, everyone, I want you to think of who should have played the Anthony Perkins role. You're thinking of like a Jim Parsons kind of person, maybe like a tall, slender, non threatening, easy like light voice, yes, what we would call today in our modern parlance, a soft boy, A soft boy. You want a soft boy. You want a shallow may perhaps, although even him, I think would be

a little too intense, a little too intense. You need someone very non threatening. No, they cast Vince Vaughn, Vince fucking Vaughn, six foot five, Vince Vaughn. I can't picture worst casting, honestly, that is like maybe the worst casting I've ever heard of in my entire life. It is. Okay, I like Gus fan Sam, I'm not coming for him, but like, oh my god, what a bad idea. Yeah. The only person who's on task is on par The detective is played by William

H. Macy in the new version. Okay, not that Martin Balsam isn't fabulous in the role, but William H. Macy is also fabulous, And I'm like, Okay, yeah, that's the only part of this movie I'm enjoying. Everything else is garbage. Even Julianne Moore, She's fine, but like I but Vera Miles is great. Vera Miles is fantastic. You don't need Julianne Moore for that part. Yeah, and I know Viggo Mortenson is hot, but he's not John Gavin. Oh right, I actually forgot who's

Gavin? Okay, Look when people talk about how like unsexy old movies are, they're wrong. They're wrong. The movie stars of the thirties, forties and fifties were the hottest fucking people. John Gavin is now is now the bar for a hunk to clear? Mine will always be Gary Cooper. Sure, Gary Cooper is still like the top, but John Cavin is top five.

And can I tell you how excited I got when I looked him up and found out that not only is he gorgeous, he's his Spanish, he is, he is, his father is from Chile, his mother is I think Mexican. I think so, yeah, I can't remember he became the ambassador to Mexico's that would perhaps, yes, he became. His first language

is Spanish, and I was like, yeah, we got what. Psycho has a ninety six percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a ninety five percent audience score, and is a ninety three percent critical rating on Cherry Picks. I think one hundred, you think I think a hundred. Okay, I understand like an audience score, because no one's gonna love not everyone's everyon's gonna

love everything. Also, there's a lot of like you maybe think it's gonna be scarier than it is, especially if you're watching it now, because it's an old movie. It's not as graphic as what we're used to. It's a little on the slow side at points, like the acting is very presentation. It's in some ways, Yeah, it's funny that you say that because my actual reaction to it was this acting is less presentational than I expected. Yes, but it is also kind of presentation. It's it's like bridging that

time. We should talk about that, because I think Anthony Perkins is like doing something different from everyone else in the movie, which is what makes Norman Bates work so so well. Yeah, but as a critical rating, I honestly I'm like, what is wrong? What what are you dinging this movie

on? Because it's Yeah, I think it's fucking perfect. I wonder, I wonder if there is an aspect and I don't think this is a good critical thing to do, but like, since it was pushing so many boundaries, if it was deemed inappropriate, and that's what some critics got their dander up about something, I don't know. I mean, it is a ninety six, so it's obviously most people, most critics will agree this is a fucking great movie. But I genuinely like, I'm going through it in my

head and I'm like, I don't see what your problem is. It's tight, it's it's it's extremely suspensful. It's not super long, it's like an hour and forty minutes, and it's a fast hour and forty minutes. Yeah, Like, even though I said just before, like it is, there are moments that it kind of takes its time. But yeah, yeah, I don't like. What's your fucking problem? For percent of critics seven percent of Lady Critics, Paul, when did you first see Psycho? Well,

hold on to your butts everyone. I saw this for the first time yesterday. Shocking, shocking, this. I wasn't scared of this one, truly. I basically knew everything that happened. There's a part in the middle where I was like, I actually don't know what happens to get us to the end, and like that it got more suspenseful. But like, the whole

Marion Crane arc is basically so famous. If you've ever watched an Oscar ceremony, you've you've seen at least a clip of the famous shower scene, right, Like, one of one of the most iconic images in all of cinema. I would say, top five, top five easy. Yeah. Yeah, so like Scarlett O'Hara on the fucking mountain, like looking over plant I'll never be hungry again, right, and Indiana Jones running away from the boulder. Yes, the shower scene, eat, eat, and then that last

moment in The Godfather when they closed the door on Diane Keaton. Yeah, I feel like that's five. So I watched it yesterday. I really liked it. Hot Take. It's a really good movie. It's great. Right, I'm so glad you like it. Yeah, and I was. I was actually genuinely excited to watch it because I knew it wasn't going to scare me. I knew all the twists, so I really enjoyed watching it.

And I the score is I mean, from the first second you press play on of all apps, Peacock, this film was currently showing on Peacock, and it's just like like right away, and I'm like, oh my god, Like it's in like you're on the ride right away and the ride doesn't stop, you know how They're like in Sex and the City. New York City is the fifth girl. I swear to God in this movie, the score is the fifth character. It's a sixth character. It should have been

listed as a character. Yeah. How about you, Erica, When did you first see Psycho? I have a long journey with this one. So when I was a kid, we went to Universal Studios in Florida, in Orlando, and they had a psycho Like it's not a ride, it's like an attraction where they show you like a clip of the movie. They show

you a little documentary about the making of the movie. Then they break down the shower scene and how it was filmed, and then you watch like a video about it, and then they take you into a room that's like a recreation of the set of the shower scene, okay, and then they show you the actors, like I think they get someone from the audience to come in and be janetly so you're like, ah, you know. And so

I saw it that way when I was young. I don't remember how old, maybe twelve, And it takes all the teeth out of it when you see it way, so it's not scary anymore. You're just sort of seeing how a film is made. And then I probably saw the movie itself for the first time when I was in like junior high. I'd say like fourteen fifteen, I don't remember. But this one is an interesting one because I've seen it in the theater like three times, okay, because they keep re

releasing it. It's like like the anniversary or blah blah blah, or the time with the Philharmonic. So I've actually I saw this once with like a drag queen talking over it and make in fun of it, like that's how many times I've seen this movie. So I've probably seen it in the movie theater at least three times. Okay, I adore this movie. It's so good. It might be one of the first horror movies I ever saw. And that kind of got me in the yeah, which is why I like

you and you like the water. Yeah. Yeah, And so definitely the first Hitchcock I ever saw. And then after that I was like, well, I'm gonna watch literally everything this person's ever done, and he does not disappoint fair I've mentioned this before. I think with Hitchcock, he is deeply problematic as a human being, but he is also dead, so I don't care, Like that is my rubric. If that bothers you and you don't want to watch his films because he was a deeply problematic human being, I

totally understand. But when someone dies, I'm good. I'm like, I can watch their articles. I believe you said. Once God cancels someone who am I? Who am I to completely God has already started, right what's god like? Yeah, all right, Erica. The tagline for Psycho was it doesn't have a tagline because it's from nineteen sixty. They didn't do that back then. They didn't do that. They didn't need to. It's mostly it's like from Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Suspense, you must see Psycho.

So do you want to read the iTunes synopsis? Sure thing. Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of the macabre stars Anthony Perkins as the troubled Norman Bates, whose old dark house and adjoining motel are not the place to spend a quiet evening. I feel like I should be Vincent Price reading this. Oh yeah, yeah, reading your best Grinch voice. You know, the narrator from The Grinch. Okay, here we go. No one knows that better than Marion Crane.

I don't know why what that accident is. No one knows that better than Marion Crane. Janet Lee, the ill fated traveler who's he ends in the notorious quote unquote shower scene, titilating as first a private detective, then Mary and sister Vera Miles searches for her. The horror and the suspense mount to a terrifying climax where the mysterious killer is finally revealed. I mean that's pretty good. It gives away a little bit too much if I mean,

I don't know that anyone's going into Psycho Cold. I would have killed to have gone into Psycho Cold. Yeah, Like, I don't know that anyone after like opening weekend of nineteen sixty, yeah, went into Psycho Cold. I feel like, even like the minute it came out, everyone was like, did you see that fucking movie? Like the lady dies like halfway through and then you're like, what the fuck am I watching? Uh huh. Yeah, it did strike me as how much Brian de Palma stole for Dress

to Kill. Oh absolutely, Like with the even with like the long silent stretches of just watching just having the camera Unjanetly, because the camera loves fucking Janetly. There's a shocking take like yeah, it isn't interesting too when you see Gantly from the right angle and you're like, oh, there's Jamie Lee Curtis one hundred percent. Yeah, they have the same mouth and the same nose. Yes, Janetly is so pretty that she actually transcends that hideous haircut.

This film is that the nineteen fifties were just the worst era for women in haircuts. I lament that that was like the high point of Elizabeth Taylor's career. Yeah, because the face is perfect, but for a long time she was saddled with just the worst haircut. Yeah, we actually talked about that haircut and Will and Grace when you said that's what they were going for with Karen and the pilot this hair Yeah, and it doesn't work. It does not work on anyone. If Janet Lee can't carry it off, none

of us can. Let us admit defeat. Do you have an actual synopsis for Psycho? Mothers am I right? Moms, come on, geez jeez, what a nag. That should have been the tagline, mothers am I right? All right, stick around, we're gonna come right back, and we're gonna take you through Psycho and we're back. We open with a credit sequence set to Bernard Herman's famously taught score. That is a tot score. Tot is the perfect word it is. Yeah, it's a tot score.

We zoos the high tight ass of a score. It's a perfect bubble button. It's a bubble button. Bubble. But if that score were a fruit, it would be a ripe juicy apple beach. We zoom into the window of a semi sleazy hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, and we see Marion Crane played by the Great Janetly in bed with her gorgeous lover, Sam Lumi. Sam loomis played by John Gavin. Where have you been? Where? If you've been my whole life? John Gavin, Paul is expanding himself, Paul

is sweat, He's not in the vapors. I didn't need a fainting couch, and frankly about fifteen minutes of privacy. Okay. Look. One of the many problematic things about Alfred Hitchcock famously is that he was like he made his actors do things that they sometimes felt uncomfortable with, including John Gavin when he got to set and Alfred Hitchcock was like, we're gonna need you to lose that shirt and John Gavin is like, but why, and He's like

because, and I like, look, obviously that's wrong. Yeah, but but she's cake that we get in this film so hot. He like Hitchcock gave us what we were asking for. This was a time too where like he was allowed to have chest hair and he actually has lower back hair too, and for some reason even that was hot. Yes, so yeah, he has a tail. It is equal opportunity cheesecake because also Janet Lee is

topless. It's funny though, too, because like women's underwear back then was so much that like, even though she's in her underwear, she's wearing a full pencil skirt because that's what a slip was back like to her ankles, and like a bra that like I've seen hauls her tops with less fall, yeah than this bra that she's in at the beginning of the movie. So, like, I guess in nineteen sixty that would have been terribly shocking. But to us, it's like, yeah, she's wearing more clothes than I

think I'm wearing right now. Yeah, Like I didn't even it did even occurred. I mean it curred. She looked good, but I was like, oh, she's fully dressed. Yeah. John Gaviny, Yeah, that's what are Both of our eyes went straight too. We're like, well, hello sailor. Yeah. So the two of them are enjoying some afternoon delight. During her lunch break from work, Sam tries to get Mary in to ditch work for the rest of the day and stay with him in bed,

but she demures. I don't know how, but she demures, since he's actually in town for just for business and is about to go to the airport, She's like, what's the point You're gonna leave for the airport in an hour? Anyway? I'm like, you can get a lot done in an hour. I mean, Marian, seems like it seems like you're not really appreciating what's on display for you, frankly, taking taking things for granted. Yeah, I guess maybe when you look like genetly you're like, I'll get

another Does this happen in Phoenix a lot? Yeah, this particular figure. I was shocked when I saw Phoenix. I don't know why. I was like, Phoenix, it's not a place most movies are Yeah about exactly. Yeah, I kind of agree. Sam offers to fly back next week to see her, and Marian gets out of bed and just starts getting dressed, and she tells him, look, she's tired of sneaking around. Sam, you gotta shit ter get off the loot. Yeah. God, I wish she had said that. That's not what she said. Oh, Sam,

please do shit to get off the pot. She's like, look, I want to get married. I'm tired of sneaking around. He tells her he can't marry her until he's out from all the debts he's under. He has got his dead father's debts that he's still paying off. He's got apparently enormous alimony payments to some bitch ex wife somewhere. He's just praying she gets married again. Yeah, and he's ashamed of the fact that he's poor and he

owns a hardware story. He lives in the back room of it. I have you have tools like that at your finger to I'll sleep on a cot again. Agreed? Agreed? How romantic? Oh, a cot in, a hardware sword, a shitty town in California, and a Greek god living with me? Like, I would love to know the backstory of what business trip was this guy on in Phoenix? Also, how poor are you if you're flying to Phoenix every everywhere? Like were flights free back then? Where

they were like were flights of nickel? How like? Like that's a lot of money. They just loaded you into a barrel and fired you off. It was the Acme Airlines run by the road runner Marian says she doesn't care that he's broke. She loves him, and Sam knows her too well. He knows she'll get tired of being dirt poor. Oh these star crossed lovers. So Marion heads back to her job in a realty office and she manages to sneak in before her boss comes back for lunch and the secretary played by

Pat Hitchcock. I love Hitchcock, okay, so much. This is Alfred Hitchcock's daughter. Uh huh. She is so fucking funny in every he puts her in a few things. It is not her only movie of his that she's in. She's excellent. And this is nepotism at its finest. I didn't know it was his daughter, And when I watched her, I was like, she's funny, she's kind of popping. Who is that? Yeah, I had like this, and I didn't look her up because I was

busy watching Psycho. But yeah, she only has one scene in this movie, but man, does she fucking sell it. Yeah, totally. So the secretary tells Mary and that her sister called to say she was going to be out of town that weekend, and just then their boss comes in with a rich client who just bought a forty thousand dollars home as a wedding present to his eighteen year old daughter, Erica. Did you do the math? I did. Yeah. All you have to type into Google is forty thousand

dollars in and it will go nineteen sixty. It's like, are you watching Psycho? You're watching Psycho because that is four hundred thousand dollars today. Yeah, four hundred thousand dollars in cash. The rich client sits on Marion's desk and he tells her he loves buying happiness for the young ladies in his life. He looks like Jr. From Dallas. Basically, if you've seen It's

a Wonderful Life, it's the man who plays Sam Waynwright. Okayh He then suggestively tells her I could buy you some happiness, and Marian politely but resolutely declines his offer. Look, I'm not gonna worry about spoilers. Everyone knows Psycho. They do a good job of making you want Marian to steal that fucking money. Agreed, that's it. They do a great because this guy is such a letch. He's so creepy. Yep. And the funny thing

is after he leaves Pat Hitchhik's character because he was flirting with you. He must have seen my wedding ring and I'm my girl girl. Have you seen Marion? The rich client keeps peacocking, and he pulls the full forty thousand dollars cash payment out of his jacket pocket and hands it to Marion. That

is a fucking move. Yep. As soon as the client is out of earshot, Marion's boss quietly tells her to put the forty k in the company's safety deposit box at bank because the client's like, just leave it here, who cares. I'm my dick is so big, I have eighteen million dollars Like yeah, blah blah blah. Marian puts the money in her purse. She tells her co workers that she's not feeling well and she's going to go straight home after she goes to the bank. Yep. It's like a Friday

afternoon. Yep. We cut them to Marian at home. She's obviously just had a shower or something. She's changing her clothes. She looks down at her bed and the envelope with the money is lying tantalizingly open on her bedspread. The camera pans across the room and we see that Marian is packing a suitcase, and now we realize, Ah, she's gonna run off with that money. Run Marian, run, no, Marian go. As Marian drives across town, she imagines the conversation she's gonna have with Sam when she tells

him what she's done for him. She's like, in her mind, he's like, Marian, what are you doing here? And she's like, Sam, I have something to tell you. And she's so distracted by this thing that she's concocting in her head that she almost misses the fact that her boss

is walking right in front of her car at an innersect. Unfortunately, he does not miss seeing her, and he like looks right at the car and he looks a little bit confused as to why his quote unquote sick employee is in her car instead of at home where she said she was going to be. Yeah, and it doesn't help matters that no one in this movie knows how to be chilled. Yeah, Marian basically looks like she just her pans this. This will be funny the entire movie. Anytime anyone is caught in

even the tiniest lide. They're like, what me, How could you think that of me? It's like a fucking Italian pantomime of guilt. And so she's like she sees her boss and she's like ah, and the boss looks back at her, and then she finally like collects herself and smiles and waves at him and then keeps driving off. I'm like, cool, cool, cool. I'm sure he didn't notice anything weird about that exchange. Yep.

She continues driving. She gets out of town. She keeps driving well into the night, and she eventually pulls over to the side of the road to sleep. She's eventually startled awake the next morning by a police officer. She sits up, also exactly how I look after sleeping in the front seat of my car for the night. Also, her back isn't hurting at all I slept. She sleeps like perpendicular, like like legs on the ground, back

on the seat if I have slept that way. Wheelchair yeah, minimum wheelchair body full body cast the cat the copy knocking on the window like sit up, be like I can't. I'm sorry, officer, my hips are now fused in this position. Yeah, can I can you toe me to a hospital. Please, can you please please take the forty thousand dollars that I stole. I don't care. I mean so much pain. Please get me to a doctor and then throw me directly in jail, But get me to

a doctor first. I am in a prison of my own making here. I'm gonna need help me. I'm gonna need at least four o'clown apin and probably for you to hit me in the back of the head with something very heavy so I can go unconscious. I can't move. I'm gonna need acupuncturist and a shaman right away. Thank you, thank you, please, and thank you. So Marian tries to frankly use her white privilege. She tries to be a pretty lady and helps stop Karen's it. I've noticed that too,

She said, I'm sorry, sir, what do you want? Yes, what's the problem? Did did you something wrong? The cop leans into her window, asks her why she didn't stop at the hotel. She was tired, and she acts again, super nervous, no chill at all. I do appreciate the fact that she's not good at this. To our eye, it's like overacting, and it is you're right. It's very funny because it's like, why this cop is gonna think you're on like drugs? What was the drug in the night? And if it was only her, it

was, but it's everyone in the movie. Yeah, it's like a world where no one has ever learned how to lie, and it's excellent every fucking time. But like her being not good at this and obviously flying by the seat of her pants and she didn't know this forty thousand dollars is going to fall into a lap until it did and she just went. She clearly didn't think it through the movie, I think is smart about the way they make her not good at this. She doesn't have a plan, she doesn't know

what she's gonna do. She's just reacting basically, and she feels bad. Yeah, she is not a sociopath. She understands what she's done has consequences. Yeah, the cop eventually lets her go. She starts driving down the road and he keeps following her, and then eventually he takes an exit off the highway and Marian breathes a sigh of relief. We're spending just so much time on Janet's beautiful face. Yeah, so far in this movie. Literally

she has been in every shot, I think. And by the way, like we're kind of breezing through the movie, but I think we're already like twenty five minutes in. There's so much silence, yes, but it's not wasted time like all that. Like this, this extended sequence with the cop following her is so tense and I didn't write it down. I'm not sure who plays that cop, but the casting could not be better. Yep.

Is this big, imposing guy with almost like a nondescript face, like I can't I couldn't describe him to you if I tried, but there's something terrifying about him. Yeah, he looks like a failed politician's face, one hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Later that day, she drives into a used car lot. She's now in California, and she tries to trade her car in for a new one with California plates to try to throw off the scent of any law enforcement or that's eventually gonna come after her, right yep.

So she also like grabs a newspaper and she checks to see if her crime has been reported, and it hasn't. She tries to move swiftly through the transaction with the car salesman, who's this very folksy like, yep, well, first customer of the day is always trouble, So tell me what kind of trouble you're gonna be, young lady. And he's like, well, women do like to choose their cars, don't they like Like he's just like, she's like, just that one, I'll take that one. And he's

like, don't you want to try it out? I know, I know my wife likes to chest things out before she's like, just give me the fucking car. No chill, no chill. I thought for a second when she pulled up, because I was like, oh, is she going to try to switch the license I thought I realized it was a used car lot. I thought it was repair shop, and I was like, is she gonna like steal the license plate? You kind of need a plan for that, yeah, Like you know, I have these tits. I'm going to

distract that guy. You switch these. Also, it's broad daylight. The whole thing is broad daylight. Right. She tries to move quickly through this. The salesman keeps asking her a bunch of questions she doesn't want to answer. He's like, where are you from? What you doing in town. Blah blah blah. She's like, just tell me the puppy car. And then, to make matters worse, the cop that stopped her in the highway back back like a little while back, spots her trying to buy a used

car and he pulls over across the street and starts watching her. Yeah, okay, Like, I know you don't care for Wes Anderson movies, so you may not recognize, but like, I see so much of a hitchcock in Wes Anderson movies because the shot of the cop is perfectly like symmetrical. It looks like a threatening version of a Wes Anderson movie, Like that could be Bill Murray leaning against the car. Yeah, she sees the cop watching her and she starts to panic. So she agrees literally the first price the

guy offers her. He's like, well, how about a if you trade your old car and I'll give you this one for seven hundred And she's like sold and the guy and that really takes the salesman aback. He's like whoa, Okay, that's weird. She can't get off of the lot fast enough. The police officer is like obviously onto her, and to make matters worse he pulls into the lot. She sees him pull into the lot after she leaves, so she knows now that those two are gonna talk. Yeah,

and that officer is gonna have her new license plate number. Yeah, because that used car salesman. I was waiting for this to matter. No. I think that's kind of what makes the movie genius. It's what there's a lot of, like red herrings, Yeah, but also like like she is almost caught. Like you can see the like, for lack of a better term, than the noose tightening around her a little bit. And then she

just manages the land in a situation that's so much worse. Yeah. She continues to drive and in a close up on Janet Lee's face, she's imagining conversations, right, So she imagines the police officer and the salesman talking about her as nightfall. She imagines how the scenario will play on a Monday morning when everyone realizes she's stolen the money. You know what, Her boss will defend her and the secretary will defend her, but the letch will be like,

no, she has my money. I have to get her, right, And then she breaks into a smirk thinking about how mad that rich Letch will be and it's been swindled, which was it was interesting when it started.

I actually interpreted it as these scenes are actually happening, and we're not cutting away, we're staying with Marion and that because ultimately, because again I know, I do know where this is going, Marian is what matters that all of this is going to literally become essentially irrelevant in about twenty minutes. Yeah, and all of this set up, all this track they lay down

is just to make you think that we're following Mariyan the whole time. And then when she smirked, I was like, Oh, no, she's just imagining what's going on. She's catastrophizing or whatever the word would be, like her reality that she has created. Yeah, to her choices, choices, choices. I do love that moment when she smirks, because it's like like she's a little excited to pull a fast one on that asshole. Yeah, she sam was there for some RoadHead. Yeah, she feels bad about what

she's done. Her boss, like, we didn't really talk about it. He seems like a lovely person, very nice man, a very nice man. She's screwed over, a very nice man. And like that the business that she worked for for ten years. And she feels terrible. But then when she thinks about like this asshole thing, like that bitch stole my money, She's like, aha, fuck you, fuck that guy forever. Yeah, it starts ter rain, Erica writes, it starts to rain. It

it goes into a downpour. Yeah, so Torrential, those famous California downpource. And I believe the filming in black and white is also helping us, and just like the how they filmed back then. But she cannot see where she's going on the road. It is. It is frightening to watch this woman, who I know is not going to get into a car accident, drive on this road this kind of it's kind of downpour. She sees a

sign for the Baits Motel and she decides to stop for the night. Yep, no, marian no, no, run bitch, run the motel. Let me set the scene in case you've never seen the film. It's a block of rooms they call them cabins, and there is an office attached to this block of rooms that are like parallel to each other. It's just one level and that's on the bottom of a hill and then at the top of the hill is a giant, terrifying Victorian house. Uh huh, overlooking the

motel. So it's still poor torrential downpour. Marian pulls up. She runs out of her car and into the office. No one is there. She looks up at the house and she sees the shadow of a very tall woman walking across one of the bedroom windows. Yeah, she honks her car horn, and a moment later, Norman Bates played by the unimpeachably wonderful Anthony Perkins, so handsome in a different way from John Gavin, so boyishly handsome. It's it's I don't know if I've ever seen a better marriage of actor and

role. This is the perfect person, the only person who could make this role this good. They're using all of his energy and what he looks like and what you know, the public thought of him to suck people into this. Yes, and like it's fantastic. Also, we talked a little bit

about this and Bubble without a Cause. We're at this inflection point right where it's like the old old presentational acting style versus this like new method acting style, this like hyper realistic, but like it's funny because to us it doesn't look that realistic anymore, but like he's doing that the latter and I think it makes him so natural. Yeah, it adds a level to the film. It adds a grittiness to this character that I think works so well.

Yeah, and also like a boyish charm to the character. Yeah. So Norman comes bounding down the stairs. Norman is probably twenty two, I would say very five at the most. Yeah, very young. And he has a feminine energy to him. I may be reading too much into it because I know about Anthony Perkins. Yeah, famous homosexual Anthony Perkins. He does, right, Am I crazy? He has like a slightly feminine energy too, Yeah, or I would just say like like non threatening, like completely

non threatening. I think that's why he casts John Gavin and Martin Balsom and the other men that he's cast in the film as like a It's like, who are hyper masculine to try to like offset Norman. So he's very earnest as well, and she immediately feels comfortable with him, because who wouldn't. He tells me that she can have any cabin that she wants because the entire motel is empty. He's like, you want a room? You can have

twelve. Yeah. Marion signs into the motel under a fake name, Marie Samuels, and she says she's from La Norman very purposefully gives her room number one and tells her it's the closest to the office in case she needs anything. Oh god, up until this point, if you still don't know what's going to happen, you're like, oh, that's nice. He seems really sweet. He's nice. Immediately take I prefer twelve. I want to be as far away from this office as I would like to be in a place

where there are no peoples. Marian asks if there's a restaurant nearby and finds out that she's only fifteen miles away from Sam's hometown. I did. This is a point I didn't know, And when he said that, I was like, oh my god, she's so close. Just get back in the car and drive there. Stop raining, Marian, keep going. The movie is so smart what it does there, because it stops raining five minutes after she gets there, and if she just got back in the car and left,

she'd still be alive. So Norman very helpfully checks her into her room, and he says, you're not going to go back out because it is still raining at this point. You need to go back out in this Why don't you come to the house have a sandwich, like I'll feed you. Like obviously, this is not what you were planning on doing tonight, And Marian agrees she is not threatened by Norman in the slightest. She's exactly what

we said. She thinks he's a very soft, sweet boy. As soon as Norman leaves, Marian wraps the stolen money in a newspaper and places the newspaper in plain sight on her nightstand, which is actually At first, I was like, is that the best thing to do? And I was like, actually, yes, No one is going to look at that newspaper and think there's valuables in there. So if someone should break into her room for whatever reason, they would not even look twice at the newspaper. So Marian

is like doing that in her room. The window is open because they're letting fresh air into the room, and she hears an older woman's voice yelling from the house on the hill. I don't want some strange girl in my house having dinner with my son by candlelight in the cheap erotic fashion cheap eerotic fashion was like my nickname and co cheap eerotic fashion is my entire sense of style. Yeah, cheaperotic fashion is what I aim for now Aha. Cheap eerotic

fashion is what I smell like. It's hard erotic fashion, but it's done in the Norma Bates' voice, cheap erotic fashion. By the we hear Norman calmly try to plagate her. But mother, she's tired and cold and she has nowhere else to go, and it's just a sandwich, and she's like, keep that whore out of my house. So finally he's like, fine, mother, and you see him grab a tray of food and like leave the house and go back to the hotel with a tray of food for Marian.

Yeah, Marian immediately apologizes for causing so much trouble. Norman apologizes on behalf of his mother. He says, she's not herself today, He implies, like she's infirm, she's not herself. She's just a cunt. You're hot on that word in this bud. That is entirely possible. That's two Sea words for October Amber and missus Bates. You didn't think I could work it into Casper last week, we worked a lot of terms into Casper.

I don't think anyone was respecting last week. Marian invites him into her room so they can eat the sandwiches, but he isn't comfortable being alone in the room with her. He says, why don't we go back the parlor in my office and we can eat there. So they go back. Marion smiles, how sweet Norman is. So she walks back them to the office. And she walks into the parlor and there are taxidermied birds everywhere. Has there ever been like just even a baseline normal taxidermist in a movie, Like,

we need to write a movie about a taxidermist who's a real mess. She's a genius taxidermist, but she's personal life is a disaster, and she winds up meeting like a really sweet angelic I don't know mor worker, and they find love and they like, they like doing everything, but they're just happened to be a taxidermist and a mog worker. She's played by Kate Hudson. Uh huh. He's played by James Marsden. James Marsden. It's called Love and Death, yeah or something like that. Yeah, Stuffed full of love

love and flight. Oh that's good. So anyway, Marian looks at all these taxidermy birds and thinks, yeah, sure, still this seems cool. Yeah, I feel perfectly safe in this room, no problem. I love everyone's reaction in the movie to seeing the birds and everyone goes ah, yeah, but then they just keep going in the room. Anyway, So she eats the food that Norman's brought her a while chit chatting with him about his

unusual hobby of taxidermy. Norman starts off nervously. He stutters a bit as he opens up to Marian about his life, and eventually he warms up to her and speaks candidly about running the motel and taking care of his mentally ill mother. And Marian becomes interested in Norman and asks do you have any friends, and he replies, well, a boy's best friend is his mother. So Marian feels, like we said, super comfortable with Norman, and she

opens up a tiny bit to him without giving away what she's done. And so the conversation turns to like prisons of your old making, how your life can be a prison of your own making, right, and she admits that she feels trapped herself and is looking for an escape, and so they're confiding in each other, and he feels like he's made a friend, a connection, and he leans closer to her and admits that he was born trapped into

the situation with his abusive mother that he can't get out of. Then he kind of smiles affably and says, but you know what, I don't so much mind my prison anymore, and she says, but you should mind it, like I feel really bad about the way she just treated you, and I overheard, and then he cuts her off and says, well, my

mother has a very tragic backstory. First, my father died, and then she was with a man for years who took advantage of her and they built this motel together as part of his scheme, and then it didn't work, and then he died horribly. And Marian's like, oh, I'm so sorry, and he's like, yeah, So she's had a lot of problems in her life, which is why I feel like I can't leave her. I have to be there for her. And he goes and he starts to describe

his mother's situation. He says, if I left her, she'd be alone all up there in that room. The fire would go out, it'd be cold like a grave. Again, when you know what's happening beforeshadowing, it's so good five shadowing, the five shotow ten shadowing that's happening in this movie. Marian gently suggests that you can put your mother someplace, and Norman does it like that. He leans forward. The entire manner switches Yep, he

leans towards her. His eyes are suddenly wide and says, people always call a mad house someplace, don't they. And he starts to speak as though he's an entirely different person. HM. And he very intensely says that those places are hell on earth, and Maren suddenly very uncomfortable. It's like, whoa, Okay, I've stepped on a land mine here and I was there. She apologizes, I didn't mean to offend you. I'm sorry. Norman snaps back. He's sweet, boyishly handsome again. He leans back, and

he says, it's not like his mother's a raving maniac. She just goes a little mad. Sometimes we all go a little mad. Sometimes. This movie is so good. Norman smiles to break the tension. Marian relaxes a bit too, and also she has a realization from this conversation that she does

not want to live her whole life the way Norman is living his. She does not want to always feel trapped, always looking over her shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and assuming nothing more terrible happens to Marian tonight, her whole life trajectory is about to change. Norman Bates is the best thing that's ever happened to Marian Crane. She stands up and she tells

him she has to go to bed. She's changed her plans and now she's going to drive all the way back to Phoenix in the morning to get herself out of the bad situation that she has put herself into. She actually thanks him, and he says, well, then, all right, good night, miss, and then instead of giving her assumed name, she says Crane. So now he knows she's going back to Phoenix, that she's from Phoenix, and her name is miss Crane, not what she signed in with.

As soon as she leaves, Norman checks to register and confirms, okay, so she's she's something something, Something's up with this lady. So when when Marian leaves, if I'm not mistaken, it is the first time that we stay with a character, not Marian, like like for this long two hand or scene between the two of them. There's obviously close ups of Norman that

she's not in, but she is in the scene mm hmm. And watching it, she like left the room and the camera stayed with Norman, and I, as a viewer, even knowing what was gonna happen, I was like, Oh, Marian has exited. This is not her story anymore. Yeah. Yeah, And it was just a very effective directing. You're so comfortable with her at that point she leaves on and I had a little bit, oh wow, we're with this creeper now, because we're also so invested

in like her story. This her story is interesting. She's not just a girl in a road in a car, blah blah blah. She's like she's a thief. She's a lover. Ye, she's like a wanton lady, like passionate. She's passionate. She's made a mistake, but she's gonna fix it. Like they're so we're so invested in this story at this point, and now it's going away. Yeah. So Norman hears Mary and rummaging around her room, which remembers just on the other side of this wall. He

gave her the room that's closest to the to the office. He pulls it, painting off the parlor wall, exposing a people. Oh no, may day, may day, nothing good ever starts with the people. I don't know if you remember this, Like ten years ago, there was a famous story that happened in the news because some motel I don't remember where, like in the middle of the United States. This married couple owned a motel for

generations. Every single room had peep holes in them, and these two people were like watching everyone that was ever in their motel and like filming them and taking pictures of them. Yeah, it's It was one of the fucking creepiest things I've ever heard. Was there any I don't know if I wanted the answer to this question. Was there any purpose to the recording or like they weren't like selling him or anything. No, No, it was just for

their like personal enjoyment, I believe, so I have. The story is a decade old, so I don't quite remember, and I don't even remember exactly how they were caught, Like if there was if something happened at the hotel, the police had to come investigate and they were like, what are all these cameras? But yeah, I mean when I remember hearing that story and being like, oh my god, I will never check into a motel

ever in my entire ever again. If psycho in do it for me, this story did ha ha uh. So Norman watches Marian, she takes off her clothes, she puts on her bathrobe. He stops himself from peeping and with a great deal of intention, walks back to the house and is about to go upstairs to his mother's room. Then he stops himself at the bottom of the stairs and with a slow, slouchy walk, he goes into the

kitchen and sits at the table by himself. So something happens here. Norman has a moment where he's like, I gotta do something, and he goes into the house, almost goes up the stairs, and like we see him physically stop himself and change his mind and go sit in the kitchen instead. This is just ten shadowing. We just want to mention that because ten this is ten shadowing. There's a moment here that like, look, I am a child, I will admit. But when Norman looks at the people into

her room, it's like a straight shot into her bathroom. And it would have been so funny if Marianne had been like, good night, Norman and then run into her room and like run over into the toilet and be like oh like just lifted up her skirt and be like, oh god, so much coffee got roadside Tagos. I think Norman is just watching in horror, and she's just like, ah, ST's do a safety flush. It's really smelling. Okay, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. Wait no,

oh Jesus, that went on for so long. You're gonna have to edit some of that ass. So that's gonna have to go. Oh my god, just just a attack, just that bathroom, and he just starts screaming in horror. You can't look away. She's just like, ah, why can't I stop shitting? We should actually produce a shot for shot remake of this, But that is the end. It's forty it's a forty five

minute shot for shot remake of Psycho. And he's like, you know what I am no longer you're sexually attacked to you, So I guess nothing happens for the rest of the movie. She just checks out. I don't even look at her. Yeah, and then I burn this motel for something unholy. Here, if you had a poop attack in those undergarments, you were in trouble. Seriously, she's got a fucking garter on. Like, I don't know. I think you just have to leave the garments in the bathroom.

I think it's done. We've all been in the situation where it's a slide home, you know, like yeah, where you're like, okay, seconds away, my body is you know your body does when once you mentally know you're close, it starts to release, It starts, it begins the process. Do you know. I've had moments in my life where I've had to pee and I get off the subway and I am fine, I know I have to go to the bathroom, but it's not it's not an emergency.

And then I round the corner and I just see my building. Yeah, and my body's like time and I'm like no, I am outside, I am on the sidewalk, and then it's like it's a very difficult walk up the stairs, like you have to go fast, but you can't go too face yeah, no, And I'm basically stopping halfway up the stairs. And like, okay, no, no, no, no, no ebb ebb ebb, low tide, low tide, low tide. Gotta make it just inside the apartment. I kiss on the floor. It's fine, it's

on my own floor, but I can't miss in the hallway. So anyway, marying Crane could have been saved by diarrhea only if only. I mean, she ate something. I don't know what was on those sandwiches, just dairy bread with butter and cheese is what she was like nibbling on. And I was like, I don't know how many of those Chanely had to eat, but that had to be awful, and she was eating them. I mean maybe there was a spit bucket on set, but like she was actually

biting and chewing. Yeah, anyway, that doesn't happen. Marying Crane does not nearly ship herself. While the gods about roadside tacos, well, Norman bas is like, well, I'll never be sexually attracted again. The murder spree has ended. It's over. It's over. We cut back to Marion. She's doing the math on how much she's used from the forty K, which isn't It's like seven hundred dollars or the car and that's it, and gets like two dollars for food. Yeah, like whatever the hotel costs.

The motel costs. Yeah. She tears up the sheet of paper and she flushes the paper down the toilet, which is the scandalous toilet shot that we get in the film. Exactly nearly a scandalous of the toilet shot could have been. We now know Hitchcock was a pussy. If he had the balls, he had any artistic integrity, he would have she would have seen brown. She would have sprayed that bathroom, the Jackson Pollock, the entire wall. There was a murder in the bathroom that night, and it was of

the plumbing. She closes the bathroom door. She gets into the shower, and at first she just seems happy, relaxed to wash this terrible day away, like they've talked about, like this is Marian has made the right choice. Now she's going back, she's gonna try to she's gonna make a man, she's gonna return all of the money. This is her baptismal moment. Right, She's washed clean of her sins. She looks so happy to be in the shower, right, that's like I've never looked that happy to be

in the shower. I have on days ninety eight degrees and humid. I get into the shower and it does actually feel like Jesus himself is chucking it into the chin. That's actually true now that as I said it out loud, it was like, you know, when it's wonderful, as when you've been at the beach all day. Oh and that that first like when it rises all the sand gree Yeah. Yeah, So now you know what, Marian, I get it. I feel you. I feel you, girl. Okay, are you ready, Paul, I'm ready. We're getting into

it. This is the most famous scene maybe of the nineteen sixties, maybe of cinema, maybe of cinema, like pretty close to of cinema. Marian in the shower, enjoy herself washing the day away. We see a tall figure with a woman's hairstyle, but like an old, tiny lady's hairstyle, like a like a a messy, low iron gray bun one hund a schoolmarm if you will. This tall woman is approaching from the other side of the

shower curtain. Then the music picks up and the mysterious woman pulls back the curtain, and that's when we hear that first re re as the woman stabs Marion to death, several stabs. The scene takes a minute or two. It's it's it's longer than I expect it. It's I think, something famously like eighty shots. Yeah, for like thirteen seconds of film. But he had to film it because I've seen that Universal Studios thing. I know a lot about the way this scene was filmed. He had to film it over

and over again, different angles. That's famously chocolate syrup instead of red dye for the blood that's going down the drain. He had to be extremely careful not to include nipples by accident, because we're not allowed to have nudity in the sixties, nor pubic hair. So like you'll see shots of her torso and her upper chest, but she's managing to like cover her breasts with her arm. So it's artfully, tastefully done, but it had it must have

taken days. A few things about the scene. Famously, janetly never took a shower again after this. Oh really only baths, according to her. Also, funnily enough, Anthony Perkins is not the person in this scene opposite but really he was doing a play in New York at the time, and this is the last thing they did for the film. So he was doing a play in New York. They couldn't get him back, so it's actually

a body double. The whole movie is shot in black and white. R like for her for Janet Lee to because you read a lot about like actors talking about how like if they get along with their co stars. I don't know that these two got along or not. I think they did. I never heard anything otherwise. I'm sure she would have felt safer if she was doing this with an Athony Perkins and not I'm sure some very lovely body double who like she doesn't know, yeah, she's naked in front of and like

I doubt they had closed sets back then. I don't know if all those protections were in play. They actually did, they had a closed set. There was like a rumor that they put cold water on her to get her to react and that janetly herself is dispelled and be like, no, the water was warm. They were very nice to me. They did everything they could to make me comfortable on set that day. Like, but it takes a long time. It's a thousand shots so she is naked all day in

front of a group of men. Yeah, and I think Hitchcock's wife was on set too, Yeah, like be like, hey, I'm here girl, and then a lady over here, just you know, just in case you need me, I'll be right over here. Yeah, you're right. I didn't think about that. That must be really weird because you're like, I know Anthony. I can just look at Anthony and we're friends, and I know Anthony's not looking at my tits, so you know, yeah, that had to have been weird. Yeah. The only other thing I'll mention

is the movie famously was shot in black and white nineteen sixty. They had color movie by for like twenty years by then, so black and white was a weird throwback. He's filmed it in black and white because he knew he was never going to get away with all the blood in this scene, like they would just be like, Nope, we're never going to show this to

this film will never see the light of day. So he did it in black and white so that there was no red blood in the movie and then he could get away with It's a pretty graphic, violent scene for forty nineteen sixty yeah, yeah, it's it's not too even to my eye. But and again it we're all so jaded to this specific scene that it's it's not ineffective, it's just not it's so misterily horrifying in the way that it probably was in nineteen sixty and like when it first came out. So we never

see the killer's face. The camera is stayed on Marian. The focus is on her struggle to overcome her attacker. The scene ends with a close up of Marian's eye. It is a very long close up and she does twitch. Yeah, the actress, it's impossible to stay completely still for it's like twenty seconds the camera pan. She also grabs the shower curtain and pulls the shower curtain off. Yes, as she falls, Yes, that's a very She reaches out almost towards the audience to be like help me, help me,

and then alas, yeah, we can't help her. Another thing that Brian de Palma stole for the vastly inferior dressed to kill and way more offensive. Yeah, dress to kill, way more offensive. We're going to get into that later. So the camera pans out from Marion to the newspaper on the nightstands like almost as if to say, well, this part of the story is now over right, And then out the window towards the house where we hear Norman scream mother, oh God, mother, blood, blood,

we see Norman run out of the house. He runs into Marion's room, and he's shocked by the horror show that he finds in the bathroom. Right, but he rallies quickly. He doesn't doesn't run to the tea, to the phone to call the polace, like my mother murdered someone. Yes, this seems like not his first rodeo. Yeah, yeah, he switches. He's not as nervous as a virgin at her first rodeo, as blanched every would say. He switches into cleanup mode. This, by the way,

this is like a ten minute sequence of the movie with no dialogue. As Norman cleans up the scene. I wonder if because the scene in nineteen sixty was so horrifying, they needed a long time to let the audience like simmer maybe, yeah, like pull back, like they can't go past this too quickly, you know. He cleans the bathroom. He cleans there's like blood on the side of the tub, and he cleans it. With a mop, and I'm like, girl, get a rag, like what are you

doing? Get a paper towel and some sprayk clans and also what was like crime scene investigation back then? He didn't really need to worry about that, monch ha ha. He wraps Marian's body in the shower curtain. It puts her in all her luggage, including the forty K which he does not know is in the paper in the trunk of her car. Okay, first of all, Norman redress her. You know your way around bra Okay, Redresser. Drive to a local cliff, put her into the driver's seat, and

just send the car over the cliff. Yeah, that's the move. Well, wait, but how about how do you explain the stab wounds if if the car doesn't explode and she just kind of lands, how do you explain the stab of the move? Dout the car in gasoline, the forty five stab wounds in this body. Douse the car and gasolin. Maybe, like you know what you do. You find a sleeping bear and you put it. You put a butcher's knife next to the bear. You frame the bear

for the murder. Yes, that's how you do it. That's how you do it. Yeah, we saw that. Okay, So he instead drives the car to the lake. It is. It is a I wrote this wrong. I wrote nearby lake. Here it is a pond on the property. It is and bipond. What we really mean is five square foot puddle. It's maybe an Olympic size swimming pool, not even not even close to an Olympic It is half at most of an Olympic sized. Yeah, it is the pool of a lakina in Yeah, exah, it is a lakina

in mud pit. He drives this car out. He pushes the car into the mud, and he watches the car slowly slurps and slorps back down into the mud. It stops briefly, and Norman gets really nervous, and then it continues to sink and he smiles with the relief and as Erica writes, here something akin to pride, right, like his manner changes. Yeah, we cut to Sam's hardware store. Oh, thank god Sam's back. I

was so excited. I was like, we may never see like he's now vestigial to the plot really, and I knew her sister was showing up, but I was like, we may never see Sam Lumis again. Oh no, we'll see Sam again. Well, we won't see is a shirtless Sam, which I'm a little I'm like she. Veer Miles should have walked in there and been like, are you Sam Loomis? Take your shirt off? I need to verify. There's only one way for me to know this. I need to see on nipples. Saha. Do you have a small tuft

of hair on your lower back that's somehow hot back hair? Yes? Done? Hello Sam, Hello, I'm Sam, I'm Lailah. We've met, but my sisters told me everything about I enjoy your little tufted tail back There. A few days after the murder, he's in the back room. He is writing a letter to Marian, asking her to come and live with him, to be like, I was wrong. I don't care if we're poor, we'll be happy if we're together. It's a very if you pause and

read the letter, it's very cute and very sweet. Mary and sister Lilah played by the great Vera Miles, enters. She's carrying a suitcase. She's concerned. Yeah. She comes in. She's like, are you Sam? She asked the boy running the register, like the fifteen year old boy doesn't have a hypen her sister's sexual appetite, and the boy's like, no, that's Sam. And then this Greek god comes out from the back and she's like got it, yep, okay, dionis makes more sense, understood,

understood, Now what's happening here? And she's like are you Sam? And he's like, yes, who are you? I'm Mary? And sister tell me where she is and he's like I don't know. And Sam's like, what is going on? Why are you here? Why are you so frantic? A moment later, a private detective enters. His name is Milton Arbagast. What a name for a fairly small role. I thought I'd be annoyed

writing the word Arbogast over and over again. I was not. You know, it's funny every time Barbagast sounds like the name of one of the cats and cats. Ahaa, I'm all be cast the dumpster cast. Yes exactly, I'm arbagas the curious cat. I'm allb cast the cat. You see. It's Cemeteries for some reason. So he is played by Martin Balsam, wonderful actor. Lyla's like who are you He's like, I'm a private detective, and she's like, how did you find us? He's like, I

followed you yea, and she's like, you followed me. I didn't know you were following me. He's like, I wouldn't be much of a detective if you did. I'm a private detective. Everything about this scene I love it is so snappy. Meanwhile, these two are arguing why is there a private detective? What are you doing? And then Sam's like, who the fuck are you people? What is happening? Mariyan's been missing at this point for a week. Sam squears he has no idea where Marion is. Lila

starts to get really worried. Barbagast is less believing of Sam. He's like, look, I know what's happening here. That Tots he stole the money she's paying off your debts. I'm gonna search this town high and low until i find her. So he starts combing the town for Marion. Arbagast's search eventually leads him to the Bates Motel. Norman is completely at easy At first, he offers the detective a room. He's chatting casually with him, very

similar to the first meeting with Marion. As soon as Arbagast pulls out a picture of Marion starts to inquire about the missing woman he's looking for. Norman gets nervous. Now Norman has less of an excuse for not being good at this. That's how you know Sam's telling the truth that other scene, because he doesn't. He's not acting crazy. But the minute anyone starts to li in this movie, they're like, who, I don't know, what's a

person? I've never seen one. Arbagast catches the inconsistencies in Norman's story. It's kind of studying him curiously, and he asks to see the motel registry and instead of saying there is it one, or it ran away, or we keep our register on the local cow we brand names there like I, Norman shows our bigas to registrate and the detective immediately finds Marie Samuel's in Marion's handwriting, which she has a sample of. At this point, Norman's like,

oh, oh, that woman, that woman. Did you know that picture you showed me is in a very good picture. It's like the clearest full frontal face picture, like she had wet hair that night, and uhh, yeah, it's not a very good picture. Is and Barb Gas is like, I guess it feels like this is your fault. So Norman incredibly suspiciously starts to stutter and sweat, and he's piecing bits of the real story together with lies, like, yes, she came in the middle of the

night, but she left the next morning really quickly. She said she had to go back to Phoenix. Yeah, and that was all I know about her. Arbigas is like, did she go straight to bed? Did she make any phone calls? And Norman's like, nope, didn't make any phone calls and she definitely went straight to bed. And Arbagas is like, did you spend the night with her? Yeah? Like jokingly, but then Norman's react action. He literally looks like he's been hit with a stun gun.

He's like what And arba Gast's like, well, that's a weird reaction. I'm joking. I'm just saying, hey, how do you know she went straight to bed? And Norman's like, she told me she was going to stop asking me questions one people. I mean, damn. So our Bagat now is like, Okay, here's what's happening. He thinks Norman is hiding a marian that they are in on this together, and he comes right out and asks, hey, did that girl jar your honorable intentions? Are you

trying to save her? Ye? Norman laughs a genuine laugh because he's like, she is definitely not at the motel. Ye, no way, her body nobody I mean is at the motel. He's like, look, if you want, you can even inspect all the rooms. They have twelve empty cabins here. Our baguest is like, okay, thank you, No, I don't need to inspect the rooms. And then he looks up at the

house and he sees a woman's shadow in the bedroom window. First, this is important that we see a woman's shadow and Norman, yeah, not at the same place at the same time, and he sees a woman's shadow in the bedroom window, and he asks Norman again, are you hiding Marian. Norman more forcefully says no. Arbigas warns Norman that if he is hiding Marian, she's just making a fool out of you. Yeah, like she's using you. You are not gonna let yourself be used by some TUTSI are you?

Are you, sir? Pop some girl, some some thief, some lady thief. Norman starts to get really angry, and he does that thing again where he kind of switches personalities. Huh. And he says, no woman can fool me. And even if Marian did fool me with her feminine wiles, she didn't fool my mother. Whoops. Our big Gass thinks that Marian must have spoken to Norman's mother, the woman he sees in the window, and he insists, I need to speak to missus Bates. Oh,

oh, your mother knows something about Marian. Maybe she told her something woman to woman. I need to talk to her right away. And Norman's like, absolutely not. Get the hell off my property. Yep. Arbagast calls Lilah. He tells her that he he believes that Sam is telling the truth about now hiding Marion. He's gonna go back to the Baits house and interrogate missus Bates. I'll be back in fair Vail in about an hour. So this, remember I said earlier, there's a part that is genuinely suspenseful for

me because I didn't know what was going to happen. I was like, I don't know what's gonna happen to Arbagast. My money is on he ain't making it, huh, because he's poking around and he doesn't really know where he's poking around in. I would say the next five minutes are the actual scariest part of the movie. Yeah, only because we all know the shower scene. Yeah, people don't know this scene, and this scene is truly scary. Yeah. We see Norman enter one of the motel rooms to change

the linen just as Arbagast comes back. He arrives again. Arbagast enters Norman's office, he checks Norman safe, it's empty. He goes up to the house. He just lets himself into that big Victorian manse on the hill. He starts to climb the stairs and we see a bedroom door at the top of the landing creak open and light comes out of the crack. The camera cuts back to Arbagast. He's like just getting to the top of the stairs and the music he lets us know that something terrible is about to happen.

So this is an interesting shot. It's almost shot from above. It is shot, yeah, not almost. It is shot from above, and we see a woman in a long, old fashioned dress with the school marm Haricott run out of the room and stab Arbagas in the chest. He falls down the stairs. The woman runs down and continues to stab him until he's dead. We never see her face exit. Arbagas. Yes, and now the worry of what's going to happen to Sam starts. Ah, they can't kill

Sam. Can we get a wellness check on Sam? Can I just need to know how Sam and his tufted tail is. Take your shirt off, Sam, I need to check for stab wounds. Are you bleeding? We cut back to Sam's hardware store. It has now been three hours since Ourbigas called and said he'd be back in an hour. Lila is really concerned. She wants to go to the Baits motel and investigate, but Sam decides that one of them should wait in case Arbigas comes back, so he drives out

to find Arbigas at the motel. Concern for Sam rising right. We cut back to the motel. We see Norman doing his whole bullshit at the pond. How deep is it? Just? Is it just an incredibly deep pond. It's like a chimney, just a sinkhole. It's akhole. The property is on an actual sinkhole. There is like fifty cars down there from the people this family has murdered. The pond. It is the size of a car. The car barely fits in it. And now we got two.

We've got at least two cars. These are nineteen sixty cars. These are not tiny little like practically a land boat fishing cars like a Chevrolet station wage from the eighties. Ah, So we have Norman looking at the pond as another car goes into it, and he hears Sam's voice at the other side of the property echoing out our Bagas name. He's like Barby gass Haarbagas and that's it. That's all we see here. Sam comes back to the hardware

store. He says there was no sign of Barbagas or Norman at the motel, and he saw the shadow of an old lady in one of the house's windows, and he knocked and knocked and knocked, but no one answered the door. So Sam thinks the lady was too old and sick to come to the door. He and Lilah decide to go to the local sheriff because now like their fucking detective is missing too, what happened? So they go and they wake up the sheriff in the middle of the night and his wife up,

I didn't write down the actors' names. But these two actors are so funny and so good. They small town yeah no account sheriff and his like sweet dotty wife, yeah no. Notes. They also, like they had said earlier, they were trying to avoid going to the police because they were hoping that Mary would just return the money, and the guy had agreed to like not press charge, like they yeah, to be like all kind of

swept under the ruck, right right, that's right. They can't. They didn't want to go to the police because Marian has also committed a crime at this point. So after they tell the sheriff everything they know up to this point, he posits that Arbigass got a hot lead on Marian and took off without telling them. Lila is not so sure. She's like, look, that guy felt sorry for me. He wouldn't not call me if he knew something about my sister, Like yeah, So she says, something is wrong

at that motel. We have to investigate. The sheriff calls Norman. Norman lies and tells them Arbigast was here, but he left hours ago. I have no idea what's happening. There is a moment in this scene where they go but you know, we need to talk to missus Bates and the sheriff's wife goes, oh, Norman took a wife. Yeah, and they're like, no, his mother, and it's kind of glossed over. I just want to say that I love Lila. Lilah is a great character. She

gets none of the love for this movie. I mean she's overshadowed by Janetly and Anthony Perkins, which is their better roles. But like Lylah has moxy Llila doesn't take no for an answer. Lah's gonna find her fucking sister. The character holds up to today's scrutiny as far as not being like a fainting damsel in distress, because it's so easily could have just been Sam and Lila being like oh Sam all the time, and it is not. You know. Actually Sam is the one who's kind of useless. Yeah, throughout,

And I mean no one who looks like that is actually useless. There's always a use for him. Okay. So the sheriff and the wife are like Norman's mother a right, what are you talking about? And Lilah insists, like, look arbigast said, there was a woman at the house that was Norman's mother. And the sheriff and his wife informed Lylah and Sam that Norman's mother died ten years ago in a murder suicide. It's literally the only thing

that's ever happened in this town. It's kind of funny that Sam doesn't know about it. Yeah, so it turns out she had a lover, she found out he was married, and so she poisoned him with strychnine and then took it herself. And then poor Norman, who at the time must have been twelve fifteen years old at most, found their bodies together in bed, like, ooh, terrible, terrible story. Sam is like, but I'm

sure I saw an old woman in the window of that house. And then the Sheriff's like, well, if it's not Norma Bates, which is her name. Yeah, it's not Norma Bates. I don't know who the hell that old woman is, but it ain't the woman we buried ten years ago. We cut back to the motel. We watch as Norman enters the house

and goes up to his mother's room. The camera stays in the stairs outside her room, on the landing where she killed Arbagast, and we hear Norman and his mother argue He tells her she needs to hide in the fruit cellar in case the police show up, and she refuses to go. I'm not going into that fruit seller. You'll think I'm fruity son. You're the fruity one. Apparently he's hit her there in the past, and she doesn't like it, which I mean fair, it's cold, and hearken that cellar.

No Norman, no cheap erotic fluozies to entertain me. Eventually, under great protest, Norman ignores her orders and picks her up, and we go back to that same shot from above, and we see Norman carrying this old woman in the outfit that we saw the person murder Arbagasta and so this all checks out, carry her down the stairs and into the fruit cellar. The fruit seller would be a good name for like an underground gay bar. Oh my god, I'm a great name it fruit mee me at the fruit Cellar.

Yeah, haha, it's key. We night at the fruit Seller. Let's go get ourselves a new Zealander. The next day, the sheriff tells Lyla and Sam that he investigated at the motel that morning and he didn't find out anything new about Marian than what Arbagast had found. He also tells them that there's no sign of any older woman living at the house. He's like, I talked to Norman myself. No one's there with him, just poor Norman all alone up in that terrifying Victorian house. Sam and Lyla decide to go

to the motel and investigate for themselves. What they think has happened is that Norman has kidnapped Marian to steal the forty thousand dollars. They still think the original crime is afoots. They go to the hotel. They pretend to be

a married couple and check into a cabin at the motel. At first, Norman doesn't suspect anything unusual about them, even though a Sam insists on seeing the registry and Lila's eyes keep darting around the room like she's looking at everything, and Norman is like, la, Ti da, no big deal. Then when he's like, well, let me get your luggage, they say we don't have any uh huh, And now Norman's figured it out. He's

like, fuck they are here to snoop. Sam and Lilah wait until the coast is clear, and then they go into Marion's room and look for clues. Lyla finds a scrap of paper near the toilet that says forty K and has some subtractions on it. You said near the toilet, doesn't They say it's in the toilet, okay in the movie. I think she says it didn't flush all the way down right. I wrote near the toilet because I

refuse, I just refuse to believe you're gonna fix the movie. I'm fixing the movie because there's no way a scrap of paper in the toilet just sits there for a week, soaking wet. Yeah, and like you can still legibly read forty thousand minus seven hundred, like fuck off movie. This convinces them that they're on the right track. Marian was definitely here and she was doing something with the forty thousand dollars. Is all very suspicious. They decide

to split up. Sam says I'm gonna go keep Norman distracted in the office, and Lylah says, well, I'm gonna go up to that house to talk to that old woman. And Sam is nervous, and Lyla's like, look, I can handle a stickle woman. Get out of my way. I love moxye, I love Moxy Im my ladies. So Sam had like distracts Norman. He goes into the office with Norman, and Lilah sneaks into the house. She goes up. I don't know why she didn't head directly for the kitchen to go a frying pan ley cru say, come on,

what have we talked about? People? The only mistake Lilah makes, Yeah, truly, the only mistake. Otherwise she's otherwise, she's perfect. Also, they should have brought some goddamn luggage to the hotel with them. Come come on. So she walks into the house. She gets up to missus Bates's bedroom. It is insanely ornate. It looks like Louis the sixteenth lives there, but also like old Lady is at the same time. Huh. It's so creepy. It's very weird. It has like an enormous bust of

like Diana or someone. And she walks in like who sleeps here? Haha? Who was Norma? Yeah? They had that TV show Baates Motel to kind of go into the backstory of Norma so that you understand where Norman is coming from a little bit. Part of me likes knowing that, and part of me doesn't I just like, I like just seeing this room and like extrapolating and being like, oh, okay, now I'm understanding Norman a little. I'm getting a little bit more. Yeah, got it, I get

it. Look, I'm not saying killing people is right, but but I see where, I see how it happens. Yeah. Yeah, so Lylah even notices there's an indentation of a woman's body on the bed. It's as though missus Bates never left the bed, like it's permanently pressed down in. Yes, yeah, creepy. Yeah, the only thing missing is missus Bates herself. So Lyla goes to the rest of the house. She's looking for him. She goes into Norman's bedroom. All his childhood toys are still in

it. The score is again no dialogue. Score is amping up, tension is amping up. What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? Yes? Also, like, if you thought Norman's room was creepy, might I introduce you to Norman's room, terrifying bedroom of childhood. Nick Knacks a grown man with like, yeah, freaking marionettes in his room. Ah. Meanwhile, we cut back to Sam Oh, Sam baby, you're so pretty, but you're so stupid. Huh. He's displaying no chill in his

plan to create a diversion. Yeah, all you have to do is walk in there and be like, so those Dodgers huh? Am I right, so funky weather we've been having am I right? Oh my voye's taking a nap and on board? What do you like doing in Fairvale? Yeah? Where should we go next? So that Rita Hayworth, she's a dish am I right? Like literally, that's all he has to do. But instead

he's like, you must be very lonely here. Norman's like not, or I'm good Norman for some reason, well no, not for some reason, because he knows Sam's on to him, stays there and tries to deflect and deflect, and he's like, I'm fine. I love my life, I have no problems. And Sam's like, how much money would you need to get out from under this place? Forty thousand dollars. At that point, Norman is generally like, what the fuck is happening? Why did you talk

about forty thousand dollars? Is everyone talking about forty thou did I throw away forty thousand dollars? Buck eventually Sam, because he's so pretty but so stupid. Lets it slip that Lilah's gone into the house to talk to missus Bates and that's what Norman's like, mother. And the two of them start to tussle because Norman tries to run out of there and Sam tries to hold him back. Norman grabs I don't remember, it's like an antique box thing.

Yeah, like a weird antique box, hits him on the head, knocks Sam out, and then runs into the house. Yeah, no shade on the movie for this, but the moment where Sam gets knocked out as well as as good as the knife has worked, this is very funny. This does not look real at all. Kunk. Yeah. Lilah sees Norman running towards the house and she's like, oh shit, So she hurriedly goes down the stairs into the fruit cellar, which is bumping disco balls. I'm coming,

Oh different fruit seller. Sorry, it's two for one night at the fruit Seller. Come on. She finally twinks drink free after eleven. It's bare night at the fruit celler. It's fruitfly night at the fruit Fellow. What kind of game is a fruit fly? Oh? Wait, fruit flies is actually a thing. Yeah, fruit fruit flies. Fruit Flies is another term for a hag, which is a term that's generally frowned upon. That. Yeah, we don't. We don't like hag. We don't care for

that. Yeah, oh fruitfly, that actually is cute. You know what I'll identify in case you heard a loud clap, Erica just just pulled a fan out of nowhere that is emblazoned with cartoon death becomes her. I will take a picture of this one on the Instagram and started fanning herself with it. Fruitfly. So Lilah creeps into the fruit cellar and there she finally meets Missus Bates, who is just a skeleton of Norman's long dead mother. This

is terrifying. Yeah, the skeleton is sitting back to the like towards the facing the wall. As she thinks it's a person, So she walks up to her and she's like Missus Baits and she taps her on the shoulder, and then the chair she's in swivels around. Yeah, and then the skeleton of this like long dead, realicaated corpse, it's not even a skeleton. It's like there's like a husky skin on it. Yes, it looks it looks like beef jerky. Yeah. Oh it's so scary, fossilized kaffy.

Ough. Oh, she screams, fair, fair Yeah. Norman runs into the cellar. He's dressed in one of his mother's dresses and a wig. He's brandishing in a knife and he screams, I'm normal, baits and he moves to stab Lilah. Luckily, beautiful, beautiful Sam has woken up. It's finally made himself useful. Finally made himself useful. He rushes in just behind Norman and manages to subdue him as we kind of like zoom in on Anthony Perkins's maniacal face. Yes, his twisted face. He's playing something really

weird here. Rage but also like going in and out of two personalities at once or something. I don't know what. It's a lot to ask an actor to do. I'm not saying he one hundred percent nails it, but I don't even know how you could nail I don't know what. I have no notes on it, Like what would you do differently? Like, yeah, he looked because there's a there's a he looks like he's in pain. Yeah, a Rictus Grin. Yes, let's talk about this scene because this

is very famous. First of all, I want to say one thing. When I saw this film at the Philharmonic a few years ago, clearly like forty percent of the audience had never seen the movie. So it was a lot of like people who brought like a date there or like their kids there or something. They're like, oh, we should see Psycho together at the Philharmonic. And like during the shower scene, no one said anything. During

the arbigast scene, you had a few gaps. Yeah, when this happened, people in the theater went, yeah, like forty percent of the house went, oh my god. Yeah, they did not know this was coming. Excellent. Yeah, So this scene is just it's iconic and it's important, right, Like it's truly terrifying. Yeah it is. It happened so quickly. U huh. And like there's also one other cool thing Hitchcock does, where like Vera Miles hits the light bulb. Yeah, so you a

lens flair. Yeah, you get a lens flair, and then you get just like light and dark, light and dark happening because the light is like moving around the room. What did you think when you saw it. It was great. And also I had read they that to do this scene like so many times to get that light hit right. Oh, I will admit I did not the mother thing I found scary. And then I literally just had time to be like, Okay, I know, I know what it is. I know what's going to happen. Yeah, when are they going

to do it? And they rebusted it in that like as RuPaul would say, quick drag school marm. She Yeah, the look of the look is weird. I had a moment of like almost, oh my god, that's a little funny, and I think that took the teeth out of it for me. And then like one then I was like, holy shit, is he Is he gonna kill Lilah? Is she? She? She could die

conceivably because now the sheriff knows something's going on. So this could be a situation where Sam and Lyla die and the sheriff shows up yeah and catches him or something. Yeah, but she didn't, So like then it got scary. But that first moment where he like pusted and he's like I'm noma bait, So I'm like, oh god. I also think there might be some what like in nineteen sixty seeing this person dressed in drag let's call it drag

for now. Yeah, that must have been a that must have added a level of fear because it's so different from anything you've seen before, and it's so menacing because it's it's a young it's a young man dressed as an old woman and like angry. Yeah, there's so there's so many combinations of images and of like things happening all at once that I don't know. It's so I didn't find it funny. I found it really really scary the first time I saw it, where I was like, what the fuck am I looking

at? And I grew up. I'd seen drag queens, I've seen you know, funny versions of men dressed as women, you know, like and so this to me wasn't funny. This to me was like it added an extra level of like everything about this is somehow wrong, yeah and off kilter and like and none of this is fun you know what I mean? Like yeah, yeah, yeah, because there's nothing very like celebratory about Norman being his mother. It's horrifying. Yeah. Yeah. We cut to the county

courthouse where Norman is being held. There are a couple dozen towns people waiting outside to find out what the fuck happened at the Bates Motel tonight. Inside the building, Lila, Sam, the sheriff, the chief of police, they're all there. They asked the psychiatrist, doctor Richmond played by Simon Oakland, frankly the hardest working man in show business. For the next three minutes, this scene is interminable, Yeah, terminable. I this might be anecdotal.

I don't know, but I had read somewhere or maybe someone told me one time that this scene was shoehorned into the movie to explain what the fuck was happening, huh, Because Hitchcock was like, well, isn't it obvious, and like test audiences were like, no, no, it's not obvious. I would like to know what the fuck just happened, What the fuck is actually happening, And so they had this, like they wrote this like scene as a coda to fucking explain everything that had just happened in the movie

to the audience. It's a meeting that could have been an email, you know what I mean. So the doctor is there to he has interviewed Norman. He's going to explain to everyone, wtf was going on. He says, Norman Bates is no longer with us. He is now Norma Bates, his mother. Very, very long story, as we said short, Norman had a psycho sexual obsession with his own mother, so when she took a lover he couldn't hand. He murdered them both in a jealous rage. So

it was not a murdered suicide. It was a double homicide. Dune done done, a mattricide again at twelve or fifteen, which, according to the doctor is the absolute worst thing a son can do. Yeah. He then felt so guilty about what he'd done that he began to become his mother, forming a split personality. That way, she was never dead, She's never dead life. Yeah. Whenever Norman became attracted to a woman, his mother,

the mother half of his personality, couldn't handle her jealousy. Because Norman can only process the world through what he thinks everyone else would feel, so he thinks his mother would be jealous of him and would then murder the woman, which is what happened to Marian and possibly what could have happened to the two other missing girls in that town. Yeah. That moment, the doctor turned to the sheriff and he's like, do you have make missing cases?

Yeah? And the Sheriff's like two girls and he's like, yeah, I'd checked that, Pond. I checked that mudpit out back. There's a whole school bus with the cheerleaders back there. And also Norman wanted to fuck our bigas canonically now canonically, so could we cut it so short? The scene is so long. It's like seven minutes of this doctor explaining, and there's some interesting stuff in the scene. We should probably talk about the elephants in

the room here, right. I think that the first thing I would say is that while they are not, I think they do a decent definition of transvestite in the scene. It's I realized that too. One of the officers says, oh, okay, so he's a transvestite. Yeah, and the doctor's like, no, that's not what transvestite isn't is I don't know if it, it just isn't there, And so he explains in nineteen sixties parlance, yeah, what a transvestite is, and it's it's not the worst step

for nineteen sixty it's it's pretty good. But I think it should be acknowledged that whether or not the movie does successfully do that. The people who catch the backlash for this is still a transgender community, so it's still not a great example for them and for the violence that they are current like trying to protect themselves from like this, this is a part of that quilt that pop culture has always portrayed transgender people as violent outcasts, you know, all of

that stuff. So so acknowledged, but also acknowledge that the movie does specifically say that's not what this is. Yeah, this ain't no j Edgar Hoover, Yeah, exactly. This is a whole other thing. This is a split personality disorder. This is a psychotic break. There's there's just a lot happening here. Yeah, And so as you acknowledge, yes, but also the movie is very clear like Norman is not They don't get into his sexuality

outside of his obsession with his mother. Yeah, yeah, like it's it's not it is not putting it on like the queer community in any way. Even though again the backlashes felt from so many of these types of movies then becoming a thing, and I wonder if this was like it was not the beginning of gay people and transit of people being like feared in that way. But like this was perhaps the first time it was dramatized, and then people

like Brian Depalmer were like, what a great idea. I know, I can show snooch like do it, baby, No, leave it, leave it to the professional. Let's not do that. Brian de Palma. I think also nineteen sixty like the concept of transgender vacency. Yeah, like most people would be like, I have no idea what that means. What do you mean, Oh, there are people that do that. That's you know, like like they would not have that concept in their heads. They might

have a like the conception of transvestite. They might be like, oh, I get it, he's one of those homosexual transvestites. Yeah, And I do love that the movie is put the kabash on that and is like, Nope, that's not what's happening here. We are not putting that out there into the world. I don't know if it's a progressive thing, if the if Hitchcock was like, we have to put that in there, or if the it's just the movie wanted to be as I'm trying to think of the

word like medical as possible in the description of this character. Although I like I don't know how like medical, the rest of the shit is like, I don't know that this happens very often. It doesn't seem like a common thing. Yeah, like where someone like disassociates their own their own personality and then creates the one of their mother. Like yeah, to be clear, all gay men do that. Oh of course, that's what makes you get But but it's not mother like your mom. It's mother. You know how

I feel about that term America. I don't care for it. Everything is mother, Everything is mother, mother is mothering. Shut up, fruits fruit flies. So yeah, there's just there's just so much here and we want to acknowledge like the science quote unquote yes it's not actual at all, but they do do that service, I think, to the very real community that people would have about at the time, which transvestites, right, Like,

oh okay, so it's not that it's something else. Yeah, I know Anthony Perkins was very involved, like he was never out while he was alive, but like he did champion LGBT causes, and I wonder if maybe he had a hand in that of being like can we make this clear here, Yeah, that's not what this is like you know, and I'll put it this way. It was not as directly offensive as I was expecting it to

be. Yeah, I agree, it's the society has caused this to age poorly because of our reaction to that community and to the queer community in general. But I don't think the movie had that intention. Agreed, Agreed, Yeah, I think that it's a fun misdirect. The movie thinks it's a fun misdirect. You are expecting there to be this homicidal female running around, this old woman who seems in firm one minute, but then is like hale

and hardy and killing people the next. Yeah, and then it turns out to not be the case, And it's the actual scariest thing you can think of. It's like, it's like a young man who's keeping the corpse of his mother like preserved in her bed, and then like and then taking on her personality. Like it's it's so much scarier than where you think it's going to go. Okay, now we're gonna come to the actual scariest scene in the entire movie easily. We cut to one of the uniformed officers bringing Norman

a blanket because he's cold. As he enters the room, where Norman is being held. The camera stays in the hall outside. We don't go into the room with the officer, and we hear Norma, the mother's voice, thank the officer for the blanket. Thank you so much. Right. The officer leaves, and then we cut to inside the room and we see Norman sitting there like on a bench with a blanket around his shoulders, and we

hear in voiceover Norma's voice as the camera pans slowly to Norman's face. Throughout the course of like thirty seconds, we hear Norma be like, I had to convince the police. It wasn't me. I know it's wrong for a mother to convict her son, but I can't go to prison. Norman needs to go away. He's always been bad. Then a fly lands on Norman's hand and he looks down at it, and we hear Norma's voice say, that's right. I won't even swat the fly away. They'll know I'm just

an old, old woman and I couldn't even hurt a fly. And at that moment, Norman or Anthony Perkins looks back up at the camera at the end of the speech, and it's a tight close up as he smiles directly into the camera, and we see the evil face of Norma Baits. We see him performing Norma Baits, and then there's a quick shot, almost imperceptible, of a skull superimposed on his face as he keeps smiling right at us. Yeah, fade to black mothers. Mothers, Am I right? It's

fucking hitting. Is It's scary on a completely different level of anything else. Yeah, because it's Anthony Perkins selling the fuck out of that moment. Yeah, the sweet boy is gone. Yeah, it's this evil, evil woman in there now. Yep, yep, all right, stick around. We are going to come right back with our random observations and final rankings for Psycho. All right, Erica, we are back. Any final little eights that you want to share with the with the listening audience. Any stabbings, any

stabbings. We gotta acknowledge it. The famous Hitchcock sighting in the film. That's right in this film. Did you spot it? I did? I did? I forgot to look honestly, Yeah, so he he always looks right at the cameras. How you can, even if it's a crowd scene, which it usually is, you can see him. I don't know if he always looks at the camera, but he usually does in this one,

he does. He's standing outside the realty office when she comes back in from her afternoon sex rump with with Sam, and he's wearing a ridiculous looking stetson hat because the film is in Phoenix. You know what, I would not be surprised if the film was originally set somewhere else and then Hitchcock bought him off of stetson hat was like, I need an excuse to wear this. We're gonna go to Phoenix. We're moving the stairs. There's a couple food

metaphors in the movie, very nineteen fifties, very nineteen fifties food. The first one is if it doesn't gel, it is an aspic, which was which was kind of fun and quirky. The second one is just disgusting. It's as hot as fresh milk. We are talking about the fresh milk directly from the utter. Yeah, yeah, who says that? Is that the

used car salesman. It's the lech. It's the rich letch, the one who's forty k it actually is. Yeah, it's ah, it's Sam Wayne Wright from It's a Wonderful Life. Oh yeah, oh, it's hot as milk out there. It's hot as fresh milk. Well now I'm never having dairy again, so thank you. So yeah, that will do wonders for my figure. Well, speaking of food, there's a runner through the movie where Norman is always eating. Did you notice that every scene he's chewing on

something. I think it's a couple of things. One, it's it's usually candy in the movie, which I think is supposed to signify how like infantilized he is, like how he sees himself as a little boy always. But also I kind of wonder we talked a little bit about that during the like James Dean Rebbel Without a Cause episode about how like that oh that method acting style, and like they almost always felt like they needed to have some bit

of business to feel more natural. And I wonder if that was ancestor and Brad Pitt has picked up on it. I kind of think that might be part of it. For Anthony Perkins, that's his like entre into the characters. He's always he's always chewing on something, He's always having a little snack. Yeah, we left out one of my favorite uh missus Bates lines when she's talking about the cheap erotic fashion. She also mentions that strange girl's fine

soft flesh. Really, that's on us for not realizing this is all Norman all the time, Like if you didn't figure out from just that line and that's not an actual woman, Like that's not the old lady, you're like, come on, come on now, that's that's that's Norman in his like cheap erotic fantasies. Yes, exactly, fine soft flesh. Her firm talked bosom or buzzom is taught as this score. I love how people in older

movies kiss. In the scene at the beginning of the movie with Sam and Marian when they're they're kissing in the motel room, it's that like old timey kiss of like their their chins are swushed together and they're talking to each other while their chins are actively touching, and they're like, we can't do this, Yes we can. I love you, I love you, And it's so hilariously over the top, and like just the way all people kissed in

older movies was excellent. It's a whole skill into itself. I think there was like an actual rule that kisses couldn't be longer than like ten seconds or something. And so that's how people like, that's how like directors got around. It is like they're not kissing. Just shug your chins together. It's hot, don't worry. Their faces are touching. It feels weird, but it looks great. It's weird again. I hate to bring it up again, but it's a wonderful. Life is a wonderful. One of those where

it's like they're not kissing. You can't dig us for this, Yeah, but boy, their face is touching for a while. I only have one more. So marian Us to walk around with forty thousand dollars in cash, which again is the buying equivalent of four hundred thousand dollars just in her fucking bag, her fucking bag, I would be a mess. Talk about poop attacks. When we bought our wedding rings, I had to bring like cash to something and it was like three thousand dollars and I you would have thought

I was on heroin. I was sitting on the subway like sweating. You took the subway. I would have taken a car with what money. All my money was going to this jeweler. I would have taken an armored vehicle if I could have. And I think I actually think it was more than three thousand dollars. I don't remember. I know it was a lot of fucking money. I didn't care for it. Yeah, walking around with fine jewels in my bag ha ha, sweating like a horror church. Sure I

am. I know why I'm Southern in this situation because it's funnier. Yeah, everything's funnier if you're Southern. I just have one more and this is I'm gonna go back to Caroline, the secretary played by the Great Pat Hitchcock at the beginning of the film. Yeah, there's a bit of dialogue that I that lives rent free in my brain. So Marian comes back to the office. She says she has a headache, and Pat's like, oh, here, take one of these, and she pulls out a bottle of tranquilizers.

Yes, she says, tranquilizers from her purse. And she's like, they're tranquilizers. My mother gave them to me for my wedding night. And Marian looks horrified. Sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm glad, we're all we're all all well on board that that's the fucking worst thing you've ever heard Paul? How should we rank Psycho? One to ten? Hot tufted tails, John Gavin, John Gavin, We salute you, John Gavin. Cheesecake, Shine me up. I'll have two slices. Aha, I'll have mine

with whipped cream. You know what I'm saying. I do One to ten absolutely destroying the shitter at a motel. Just checking in and then checking in. That saves your life. Yeah, a life saving diarrhea, A life saving diarrhea attack because the man who was sexually attracted to you and therefore must murder you sees you shitting for five minutes straight and is like, nope, I'm good, totally good. That's good. Yeah. One to ten.

Taxi Germist rom coms Ah starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. They're back together, you guys, get back together on the screen at least, yes, Emma Stone's taxidermist. He's the more worker, delightful starring Zin Daya and Tom Holland. Tom Holland might be able to do Norman Bates, but he's very tiny. That actually might but that works in the favorite Garfield. Oh my god, Andrew Garfield like he's a little older now, but like twenty five

year old Andrew Garfield could have fucking nailed Norman Bates. Actually, yeah, one to ten. Cheap erotic fashion, fine soft flash and cheap erotic fashion. Candlelights in that cheap erotic fashion, tramps vixens. You disgusting boy, Go go cleanse yourself in the pond. I don't care that it's full of metal this one. Do you want to go first or should I go first? I'll go first first. This is one of my all time favorite films. Yeah, I'm gonna give it a lot ofly way because it was filmed

like decades before I even born. Yeah, and so, yeah, there are no people of color in the film. Well, everyone's white. John Gavin is Hispanic. Yeah he's white, but he's Hispanic. That's kind of cool. But of course the movie doesn't engage with that. It's not like his name is Huan Yea, yeah exactly. So yeah, like it's it's not diverse. Gay content is dicey, yeah, dicey. But I will give the movie this amount of credit. I don't think it thought it had

gay content in it. I think it was trying to turn the lens away from it. I think the movie was trying to create a situation where an audience was had to keep guessing because the two suspects to all these murders were so diametrically opposed, and then it accidentally stumbled into this minefield. Yea of possible, like trans hate crime. Yeah, but it's genuinely I think stumbled into it. Yeah, unlike Dressed to Kill, where they definitely thought of

it and got it all wrong one hundred percent. I'm gonna give it a little more leeway I think on that, because again, it is the pop psychology of nineteen sixty is also all kinds of wrong. Yeah, but that's because it's the pop psychology of fucking like sixty years ago. Yeah. Main

character. I still think the main character is Marian, because even though she disappears halfway through the movie, her disappearance is still the reason for the rest, Yeah, exactly, And she's still a character in the film in a way. Her loved ones are the ones who are keeping her alive. I would say the main character is Marian Crane and not Norman Bates. I know that's a that's a like I would call them co leads. I think a

lot of people would disagree with me. Because Norman Bates is the iconic character. It also doesn't help or it does help. I suppose that Anthony Perkins is giving like the performance of a generation. Yeah, that is unacknowledged, I think by in its time, but is truly one of the all time great performances ever put on film. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a seven. Okay, I'm gonna give it a seven out of ten cheap eerotic fashions because I think it comes by its mistakes very honestly, and it

is I don't believe trying to cast dispersions on a group of people. I think it is creating a mystery, and it stumbles into those aspersions. Ye. And because it's nineteen sixty, there's no voice in the room that's like, excuse me, hi, we're raising my hand here. I don't think we should do this. Or let's talk about like the ramifications of this.

Maybe there was someone, which is why that one line was put in there about the transvestite when the cop is just like, ah, it's a transvestite and the doctor is like, Nope, this is what a transvestite is. What we are looking at is not that this movie is really a movie about someone with multiple personality disorder, right, which is what we would have called it back then. That's actually what we're watching, not a movie about someone

who is transgender or even a transvestite. Right. So yeah, I'm gonna say seven out of ten. Not perfect obviously. I mean, killing women is bad. We shouldn't do that, and it's generally frowned upon, kind of a problem to put it in a film. But I do like that the second victim is Arbigast. Yeah, there's only two victims in the film. Yeah, and the unnamed earlier victims. But you know, but what are you gonna do? Well? Those poor cheerleaders anyway, But the Arbigast

is also killed. And so it's not just women, not just like young naked, prone women being killed. There's a little bit of some diversity in the Killers. It is a little bit of yeah, exactly of equality I suppose in the Killings. How about you? Uh, yeah, I tend to agree, like I think that, you know, we were talking about how long that last scene is. I had enough time to actually say, are they actually not going to say the word like transvestite or gay or something

like that, or homosexual or whatever? They would have said back then, he's temperamental, you know. And then it goes on for songs like I guess they're not gonna acknowledge it at all, and then they do and they kind of like again offer not a perfect explanation, but one far more accurate than I would have expected. Yeah, So, because I was surprised by that, maybe I am even more inclined to be more forgiving than otherwise would.

But I agree with you. I think the movie, the people who made this movie, and the people who first watch this movie would not even have had the vocabulary to understand what they were doing. So I'm inclined to, like, I'll be more lenient with my judgment of it. Whereas, just to bring it up again, Brian to palmert and just dressed to kill would have had something available to him where he could have spoken to someone about what he was doing, and it seems like he didn't. It's a full

twenty years later he knew what he was doing. Yeah, Yeah, so I'm inclined to be forgiving of it, even though it's gonna cause some harm. It is one of the most iconic, like man dresses up as a woman and kills people, images, and that's a trope, and that trope is a big problem, right and and people are suffering because in part because of it. Right, you give it a seven. I will agree with you, because I don't really see anything else to knock off points for,

Like it's not diverse. I don't think anybody is expecting a movie nineteen sixty to be diverse. Lord even only knows if like that would even have been allowed on certain levels, Like certainly Sam could not have been a black man, and that's a different film. Yeah, like maybe maybe Arbagast could have been a black man maybe, but like or or or a you know, a person not a non Caucasian person. Yeah, I'm not gonna ding it for that. No one, no one with a brain is watching the film

from nineteen sixteen. Me, Like, I bet I'm going to see a united colors of benettona presented to me. So I think the only the big ding is that, you know, you gave a seven. I'll give it a six, So we'll we'll we'll balance it out. I think six, knocking all four points for that is is fair. Yeah, so a six out of ten cheap fashions one would get from Michaels of Hollywood for Psycho. But I'm not going to offer a palate cleanser like I. It's a great

movie. It's a great movie, right, Yeah, it's so good. Yeah, it's so well made. It's so clean. There's like there's not a bit of fat on it. Every minute counts towards what's going to happen next. Yeah, it's it's well made. It's just a great movie. So that is the end of our show, Erica. We would love it if everybody listening would follow us on all the social media's, on the instagrams, on the twitters, on the threads, on the spoutables. We have

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this episode, you do that. You let us know it's you. We will send you with that age weel tope bag that aged well is produced and expertly edited. I am dying to see how much of that farting you put in you keep in there, because guys, you have no idea. I did that for minutes. I'll release the fart cut. But basically like he didn't stop laughing, and I was like, well until he stops laughing, I'm going to keep going, and he just didn't stop laughing. Farting is

funny. It's funny every time. And I am a whore. And if you just if you give me even the slightest bit of attention, that's it. That's all you're gonna do. Like I'm gonna keep doing the thing so expertly edited by this man here, mister Paul Kayola. We would like to thank d. We would like to thank K. We would like to thank Josephine for reaching out and letting us know what you want to hear. If you want even more power over the topics we discuss, you can join our

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come here and thanks someone named Kayla or Feisty Feisty. I knew someone named feisty ones. Feisty Ravine was her full name, and she was a wild cat. Do you think this is the same? No, no, you well, there's no need to shake your head so vigorously, your fay little fruit cocktail. It was an honest question. Why don't you tell your friend over there to smile more and give me the paper you want me to read? All right? Thanks to Feisty not Ravine. Although Feisty, if you're

listening, send me a telegram. Thanks to You're Gonna Die out There podcast for a recommend You're gonna die out there. This is a coded message for money Penny. That's the mission command. I've got all shit now, look what you've done. You've gotten me thinking about Feistier Ravine and I jumped up, and now my panties are split open like a rotten cantelope. Call money Penny immediately, tell her to air drop me a pen that turns into a gun, a gun that turns into a pen, and of course no fewer

than a baker's dozen pairs of panties. And be sure to contact me if Feisty Ravine should get in touch, and don't you try to handle her, fancy boy, she'll ruin you faster than my panties get ruined on a stag night in Amsterdam. Agent double OW panties out. Ha wow, thank you, Agent double O panties. You lead a very intricate life. There's a lot going on, so much happens. You'll give balls in the air, and not just the ones from his panties. Yeah, he gets more done

in a minute than I do in a month. It's fair, frankly. He is the kind of secret agent you want defending the realm, you know. Yeah, And now we also we have another guest. We have we have fan favorite, truly truly fan favorite, Catherine Hepburn. Thank you so much, Peter, for that introduction. I'm here once again to thank Astrid for listening to that Aged Well. Spencer. Spencer, make sure Scarsdale puts

lavender in the martinis, otherwise it is not a French martini. I just want to thank Astrid for listening to that Aged Well, the podcast that teaches me things every week. For example, this week I learned the term fruitfly. I don't know what it means, but I do know Elizabeth Taylor was one. I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary and it says here that it is a woman who has friends with a gay or bisexual man. Spencer, they're talking about bisexuals again. Get over here and bring me an elder

flower. Collins tell Scarsdale to take the rest of the day off and to walk out slowly. I like to see him walk away anyway. A woman who is friends with a gay or bisexual man but does not have any interest in seducing him like many hags do, according to the Urban Dictionary, and then in parentheses, it says, Spencer, come here. What does this say? Could be for a variety of reasons. They themselves may be lesbians or just enjoy being friends with a man who isn't trying to get in their

pants all the time. Did you hear that, Spencer, Some men just like to hear women talk. Well, that was very interesting. Thank you so much, Astroid for listening. Now I'm going to enjoy my delicious elderberry martini I've now mixed them together, and watch my homosexual butler Scarsdale as he mows the lawn. Scarsdale is really a jack of all trades. I found that. Like, I mean, he's both an object of desire, uh huh and a gardener. He's a landscape artist. I think Scarsdale perhaps is

I don't want to say the word prisoner us. That's that's intense. Look, I don't believe Catherine Hepburn would keep it prisoner in her house. You know, I'm concerned they're not letting him out enough. Forget. We're getting to a point to blink twice if you need help, Scar, I think so. I think so. I think you're held against your will. Yeah. I think they've hidden the car keys from Scarsdale. Yeah, I think so. And they're not letting him off the property exactly. Yeah. Yeah,

I think I think we should we should look into that. Uh. Erica any final thoughts on Psycho. Stop looking at me, boy, I don't like the way you searched me in that cheap, erotic fashion. I'm wearing a fruit of the loom. Yes, you are fruity, aren't you. Your loins are plenty fruity. I hear your disgust me, boy, go out back and lash yourself. So we cut to the County County Tornhouse, the tenty Tornhouse, the Tounty Tornhouse, the County Cornhouse, the County

Cornhouse. That's the fruit seller's neighborhood. That's the fruit seller's sister bar. That's the sister bar. Yeah,