Psycho: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Hitchcock's 1960 shocker was made cheap and fast with his television crew, adapted from a pulp novel, and scored for strings alone. This mix traces its roots in German silent cinema, French thrillers, American realist painting and Freud, then follows the slasher genre it detonated.

The Kynda mix for Psycho

• Key Influence · Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959). Hitchcock's assistant Peggy Robertson found Anthony Boucher's review of Bloch's novel, and the director bought the rights for around $9,000, reportedly buying up copies to protect the twist. Bloch, a Wisconsin writer working from the Ed Gein case, invented Norman Bates, the mother in the fruit cellar and the murdered woman in the shower. Joseph Stefano's screenplay shifted the focus to Marion but kept Bloch's structural ambush intact.
• Influencia Obscura · Les Diaboliques by Henri-Georges Clouzot (1955). Clouzot beat Hitchcock to the rights for Boileau and Narcejac's novel, a defeat that stung and pushed Hitchcock toward Vertigo and then Psycho. Les Diaboliques built a thriller around a corpse in a bathtub, a shock resurrection, and an onscreen plea begging audiences not to reveal the ending. Hitchcock answered with the bathroom murder, the twist guarded by a no-late-admission policy, and a comparable monochrome austerity.
• Local Roots · Touch of Evil by Orson Welles (1958). Shot on the same Universal–Revue lot in Los Angeles where Psycho was made two years later, with the Bates motel and house standing on the backlot. Welles's cheap, black-and-white, morally soiled border thriller showed what the studio's economy sets could yield, and Janet Leigh starred in it immediately before playing Marion Crane, arriving at Psycho straight from a seedy motel of corruption and threat.
• Beyond the Medium · House by the Railroad by Edward Hopper (1925). Hopper's canvas of an isolated Second Empire house, severed from the world by a rail line, is widely identified as the model for the Bates residence designed by Universal's art department under Robert Clatworthy and Joseph Hurley. The painting's frontal stare, blank windows and American loneliness translate directly into the silhouette on the hill above the motel, the single most imitated horror image of the century.
• Peer · Peeping Tom by Michael Powell (1960). Released the same year, Powell's film also centres on a damaged young man who kills women and is explained by a traumatising parent, and it also implicates the viewer's gaze, there through a camera rather than a peephole. Where Psycho made Hitchcock a fortune, Peeping Tom was savaged by British critics and effectively ended Powell's career; the two films are now read together as 1960's twin births of the modern psychological horror film.
• Key Collaborator · Taxi Driver by Bernard Herrmann (1976). Herrmann wrote Psycho's all-strings score, Hitchcock's idea of a black-and-white sound, and famously overruled the director's instruction to leave the shower murder unscored; Hitchcock later doubled his fee. His final work, completed days before his death, was Scorsese's Taxi Driver, another portrait of a lonely man curdling into violence, which carried Herrmann's shrieking and brooding idiom directly into the New Hollywood.
• Legacy · Halloween by John Carpenter (1978). Carpenter has been explicit about Psycho's hold on him: he named Donald Pleasence's psychiatrist Dr. Loomis after Marion's lover, cast Janet Leigh's daughter Jamie Lee Curtis as his heroine, and built his score around a stripped, repetitive string-and-piano motif descended from Herrmann. Halloween turned Hitchcock's subjective camera and masked, mother-haunted killer into the template for the entire slasher cycle.

What influenced Psycho

• Edward Hopper. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) — legacy for Edward Hopper (also via House by the Railroad) “For example, House by the Railroad is reported to have heavily influenced the iconic house in the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959). Psycho (Robert Bloch) — titan for Psycho “So I came up with the idea that the movie would be about a girl who is really in only two chapters of the book, but she comes to the motel and gets killed in the shower.” (The MacGuffin)
• House by the Railroad by Edward Hopper (1925). House by the Railroad (Edward Hopper) — culture for Psycho “Alfred Hitchcock’s use of Edward Hopper’s House By The Railroad (1927) as the specific visual precursor for Norman Bates’ home in Psycho (1960) might be the most celebrated crossover from painting to cinema” (The Open College of the Arts)
• The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1899). The Interpretation of Dreams (Sigmund Freud) — culture for Psycho “== Works == === Books === 1891 On Aphasia 1895 Studies on Hysteria (co-authored with Josef Breuer) 1899 The Interpretation of Dreams 1901 On Dreams (abridged version of The Interpretation of Dreams) 1904 The Psychopathology of Everyday L…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Les Diaboliques by Henri-Georges Clouzot (1955). Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot) — ghost for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• The Last Laugh by F. W. Murnau (1924). The Last Laugh (F. W. Murnau) — titan for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Wiene (1920). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene) — titan for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Oedipus Rex (Sophocles) — culture for Psycho (wikidata.org)
• M by Fritz Lang (1931). M (Fritz Lang) — ghost for Psycho (themoviedb.org)

Peers and kindred spirits

• Anatomy of a Murder by Saul Bass (1959). Anatomy of a Murder (Saul Bass) — collaborator for Psycho “Psycho Sep 8, 1960 · summary Ocean’s Eleven Aug 10, 1960 · summary North by Northwest Sep 26, 1959 · summary Anatomy of a Murder Jul 1, 1959 · summary” (Art of the Title)
• The Outer Limits by Joseph Stefano (1963). The Outer Limits (Joseph Stefano) — collaborator for Psycho “as well as Hitchcock 's Psycho and Van Sant's Psycho . Joe was the original producer for the sci-fi television series The Outer Limits and he wrote many of the episodes in the first year of that series.” (The MacGuffin)
• Taxi Driver by Bernard Herrmann (1976). Taxi Driver (Bernard Herrmann) — collaborator for Psycho “Take Mean Streets . He does it like Italian opera. I’m doing his next film, called Taxi Driver .” (The Bernard Herrmann Society)
• Peeping Tom by Michael Powell (1960). Peeping Tom (Michael Powell) — peer for Psycho “In both films, we learn that the killer has been damaged by the mistreatment they have suffered under the hands of a parent – in Norman’s case his overbearing mother, in Mark’s his scientist father.” (Liverpool University Press Blog)
• Vera Miles (1930). Miles played Lila Crane in Psycho. “he continued to work with Miles, eventually casting her in what is arguably the role for which she is most remembered, that of Lila Crane in Psycho .” (Wikipedia)
• Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder (1950). Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder) — geography for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• Touch of Evil by Orson Welles (1958). Touch of Evil (Orson Welles) — geography for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• In a Lonely Place by Nicholas Ray (1950). In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray) — geography for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• The Innocents by Jack Clayton (1961). The Innocents (Jack Clayton) — peer for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• Eyes Without a Face by Georges Franju (1960). Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju) — peer for Psycho (themoviedb.org)
• Alfred Hitchcock (1899). Psycho — created by Alfred Hitchcock

Who Psycho influenced

• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre by Tobe Hooper (1974). The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper) — legacy for Psycho “Hooper’s camera stays on Marilyn, running alongside her, and the dread is as alive in that moment as it is in the shower scene of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).” (Interview Magazine)
• Halloween by John Carpenter (1978). Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) — titan for Halloween “many critics credit the film as pioneering the slasher genre, alongside other films such as Psycho (1960), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas (both 1974)” (Wikipedia)
• Dementia 13. The script for Dementia 13 incorporated elements of Psycho. “Coppola wrote a brief draft in one night, incorporating elements from Hitchcock's Psycho , [ 39 ] and the result impressed Corman enough to give the go-ahead.” (Wikipedia)
• Dressed to Kill. Dressed to Kill is a homage to Psycho. “Dressed to Kill was a note-for-note homage to Hitchcock's Psycho , including such moments as the surprise death of the lead actress” (Wikipedia)
• Dr. Samuel Loomis. Character name derived from Psycho's Sam Loomis. “Dr. Loomis' name was derived from Sam Loomis ( John Gavin ) from Psycho , the boyfriend of Marion Crane” (Wikipedia)
• Bette Davis (1908). Davis assessed What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in relation to Psycho’s audience. “Davis believed it could appeal to the same audience that had recently made Alfred Hitchcock 's Psycho (1960) a success.” (Wikipedia)
• Namwali Serpell (1980). Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) — culture for Namwali Serpell (themoviedb.org)