I learnt about the Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho from a short story in a 1982 comic-book called House of Mystery, published by DC comics – in which a character says something about getting nightmares from seeing the Hitchcock movie when she was a kid.
Now my uncle owned a video cassette parlour back then, one of the swankiest ones in Guwahati at that time, in fact. Just for the record, his was named Kareng(Kareng is the Assamese word for palace, and it was actually a store selling everything from swanky gift items to (slurp) Leo Mattel toys.) The other good parlours in the city at that time were Forbidden Fruits and Channel 2000, both of which had good collections, but demanded an advance payment of two hundred rupees before you were allowed to rent any tapes, so no wonder that I preferred to stick to the goodies Kareng offered. Needless to explain how much fun it is, for a thirteen-year old kid, to browse through the racks of VHS tapes. Occasionally, that is, after half-yearly and annual examinations were over, my father would borrow a VCR (my mother, worrying about the state of her son’s educational tendencies, vetoed the idea of buying one) and I would be given carte blanche to watch movies.
My uncle was, of course, very particular about which tapes I took from the library. But that was ok, because there were tonnes of good stuff I was allowed to watch. Nagina and Nigahen were perennial favourites of mine – and so were movies like Commando(both the Mithun and the Schwarzenegger version), Rambo – all the standard bang-bang stuff that’s part of one’s boyhood.
But then there was the sudden urge to watch Psycho, based on a recommendation in the aforementioned comic-book, and further aided by the sight of this nice looking lady screaming on the back-cover, and she was, of course, decidedly wet – a potent combination, you’ll agree. A sinister looking house on the front cover and a silhouette of a man standing there – can you imagine how much an over-active imagination can make out of all these black-and-white images? I wanted to see Psycho, boss, and as far as things were concerned, the world would end the next day if I didn’t find a way to see it. ( These kind of world-will-end-if-I-don’t-do-this- feelings still persist, I am sorry to say )
I was a nice little mamma’s boy back then, so I followed the best option I could think of – I went to my uncle with the videocassette and asked him – “Can I watch this, please? A friend told me it’s very good.” ( Let it be pointed out that comics are indeed a boy’s best friend, so this wasn’t technically a lie)
My uncle took a good look at the cover. “Hmm, Alfred Hitchcock, eh? Your friend is right – it’s a classic movie, but you might get scared. You sure you can handle it?” I tried very hard to look offended by that query, but of course, the grin just wouldn’t go away and I walked home a happy man. Woo-hoo, it’s great when a scary movie turns out to be a classic movie at the same time.
My mother threw a fit. “I don’t care if it’s Alfred Hitchcock or Pomfret Some-hen. I won’t have you seeing these frightful films at this age. Go and return this AT ONCE! And tell your uncle that I’ll have a word with him sometime about this.” Foiled! And inspite of being so close. Ah, well, I was thirteen anyway, and I decided it was high time I got into the adolescent rebellion phase every thirteen-year-old guy indulged in, at least back in those days. So I went to the my corner of the room me and my sister shared, and sulked. I didn’t dare refuse dinner,but chewed my food in a very cold way, which I am fairly sure convinced my mother about my teenage angst.
She relented, of course. But I knew she had a talk with my uncle, because the next time I asked my uncle for a videotape, he said – “Are you sure baidew knows about this?” before handing over the tape. Poor guy.
As I was saying, she relented, and I watched Psycho with all the enthusiasm I could muster. Which involved locking up all the windows, and in particular the door that led to my parent’s bedroom – so that the screams wouldn’t be too audible ( I was also concerned about whose screams they would be, mine or those of the nice lady on the cover) And I began, prepared to be scared out of my wits.
The movie began with a (gulp) scene in a hotel room, which made me extremely glad that Ma wasn’t around to check out classic movie what her son was seeing. Then the slow parts began. This happens, that happens, everything happens except for the GOOD bits, you know, the scary stuff I was preparing for. But the background music made me queasy at times, especially when the girl with the money was on the road and she thinks her boss is crossing the road ahead of her. To be frank, I had a hard time following the story, it was too “talkey” for my taste, and I had the vague idea that this girl was running away with a lot of money and wanted to be with her boyfriend.
Then she checks into a motel, and things get suitably atmosphery, because I recognised the house in the background as the same one on the cover. Could the silhouette be the same nice, embarassed guy who runs the motel? Let’s see, but things were definitely getting interesting, because the guy tried to spy on the girl through a hole in the wall behind a painting.
Woohoo, and then it happens. The “infamous shower scene”, as the back cover of the videocassette put it, the one that was supposed to give me nightmares and make me scared of going inside a bathroom for at least a week. Bloody hell, it came and went, and the only thing I could make out of it was the screaming, definitely not mine, and strangely not the lady’s, but that of the violins in the background. And what was this? A black figure whose hand lifted and struck, and the girl JUST DIES? What an obvious con-job of editting, I thought, of course, those two are in seperate frames, and it was all camera angles and sticking different bits of film together. And what a waste of a pretty face!
At this point, I confess that the finer points of film-watching was lost on me. I had been cheated out what had been promised to me – and it appeared obvious to me who had killed the girl. Of course, it was the mother, that old lady with the scary voice. Poor Norman Bates, his tentative affair with the girl was ruined because of his mother! Humph!
But sanity still remained, and I decided to stick with the movie. Let me see how she gets her just desserts, the old crone, I thought.
About an hour and a half later, when the movie ended, I was stuck in my chair, grinning to myself. Because I had realised why Psycho was a classic movie, and why my uncle had said that Alfred Hitchcock made good movies. I wasn’t still scared – nosirree – but just awed by the twists and turns of the story, how I had been pulled into believing what was not, how everything, right from the silhouette on the cover, to Norman’s vaguely embarrassed attempts to make conversation with the girl, to his scream of “Oh NO, MOTHER!”, and everything else – made sense, and was tied with that thread of completeness that warms every little boy’s heart. I loved the way every question was answered towards the end, and I loved the ending. Though I would have been happier if the pretty lady in the shower hadn’t died.
I saw Psycho many times again, the same tape, which I never returned, because my uncle sold off his videotape section of his store to some lucky guy from Shillong, and that part of Kareng became a showroom for television sets. Over the years, I recommended, and passed it over to friends, and would occasionally watch it with them too, maintaining a suitable dead-pan face on the good bits, especially at the points they would try to guess what happens next. Guess who laughed loud when the ending came about, and those guys were gaping at the screen? But there were times when people would accurately predict the outcome, and that would make me vaguely disappointed about my own inability to have done so, once upon my first time. But then, I would console myself, a thirteen-year old is only supposed to know so much.
Nowadays, I doubt if anyone would be taken unawares by the first viewing of Psycho. There are far too many ripoffs, far too many stories about serial killers, and pretty young things getting killed at the beginning of the movie, and of course, television shows. I think I got lucky, and saw it at the right point of time in my life, eh?
Miscellaneous Personal Trivia about Psycho and Beyond
