At the time Psycho was made, Anthony Perkins was very much the popular teenage heart throb both in films as well as on records, which makes his willingness to take Hitchcock up on accepting what was at that time a very controversial and risky film role, a very courageous thing to do. To their credit, both he and Hitchcock created an entirely new genre of film with Psycho. A wonderful actor, who though a bonified movie star, never lost either his humanity or charm.
Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen it. I remember my dad saying Norman Bates was the bad guy in the movie because we were on the universal back lot ride. Anyway when I watched the movie I was so confused about him being the bad guy…it was clearly his mom! When Vera Miles turns Normans mother around and sees she’s a skeleton and Norman Bates walks in dressed as his mom!! Wow. Goosebumps thinking about it.
My own *Psycho* story: I was a teenager in the 1970's and babysitting the two children across the street from my house while the parents went to a dinner party. After I put the children to bed I saw that *Psycho* was going to air that night on the Late Show, so I turned it on and watched it, to kill time. The shower scene came on and suddenly I heard someone crying behind me. It was the little girl, who had gotten out of bed and tried to find me, and she had been watching the film without my knowledge. Apparently she was traumatized and the little girl's mother was very angry with me and never used me to babysit again. Morale: when babysitting never watch a horror film! It could mean the end of your pocket money from babysitting! 😊
One of my earliest memories is overhearing my baby sitter talking to my mom when I was six. She had just seen Psycho when it first came out and I was intrigued by her reaction. I didn't see it until about 8 years later, around the age of 14, when I became a Hitchcock fan and movie fan for life.
That's the movie that the chick wakes up in a bathtub, with her kidney out, right?!? I never saw it. I don't want to buy something on "prime" and have besos take it back too.
@@ashleelarsen5002 No, she is in a shower and suddenly is stabbed by Anthony dressed as his mother, whom he had also killed. Though you don't know for sure it's Anthony till later in the film because all you see is a hand stabbing her.
Just listen to Perkins when he speaks...this is an absolute legend of "Old Hollywood" where actors and actresses HAD to be able to act and communicate WITHOUT script...sad that Tinseltown has degraded into what it now is
*Ya everything WOKE turns to crap and trust me this woke crap started way back there. It was just happening quietly behind the scenes until someone got cancelled from a show or something. The Trump era drew it out into the open.*
Very enjoyable interview. About 45 years ago when I was an usher in an Off-Broadway theater, I escorted Anthony Perkins to his seat. I was very nervous. LOL
The scariest scene in psycho was the last scene where Norman, dressed as his Mother, was sitting still in a chair with a fly flying around him. That scene unnerved me.
The final scene was Norman Bates dressed as himself, not as his mother. The mother is heard in voice- over, beginning with "It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son..."
Its the second identical shot in the movie. When Marion is driving at night imagining what people will say about her she gets the exact same demented face and half smile as Norman at the end.
His work in the first Psycho was the best acting performance I've ever seen. If you think about it, you have to be able to watch that movie twice, thinking totally different things about what you're seeing it, and have it work both ways. The first time you have to think he's just a somewhat awkward supporting character who is no big deal, the second time you have to see that he is a homocidal psychopath who is concealing it. And they nailed it. Hitchcock, Perkins, the editors, whoever played a hand in it, it works perfectly both times.
Even if you don't realise he did it, he still cleaned up the murder scene, hid the body and the car (smiling as it sank) and then lied to the private detective, smiling again when alone. There's no 'innocent' version of Norman Bates.
@@DenkyManner He is innocent until you realize he's complicit in murder. The central gimmick of the movie is that at first you think it's a heist film about Marion stealing money.
Yes, one of the things that make the performance great is you see new things on almost every viewing.. Mannerisms, even the gait changes when the personality changes.. It’s definitely a riser on the all time list for those reasons.. Every time I watch the movie I’m more impressed..
@@WayDog001he is. E.T.'s Henry Thomas is the young Norman in flashbacks and Perkins plays the older Norman narrating his childhood to a phone-in radio show on people who commit matricide.
My Psycho story is that I was always scared of taking showers as a kid even though i’d never seen the movie, but I’d seen the shower scene a bunch of times, and this was the 90s so there were gorier scenes around. But truly, the editing on that scene is incredible. Had me scared without even having any context. And now i’m a big fan of that movie and Psycho 2.
AND, his wife died one day shy of the 9th anniversary of his death. He died Sept. 12, 1992, and she died in a plane that hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. :( What are the odds? I felt so bad for their two sons.
Man, I enjoyed this. I really miss talk shows. Today we have late night shows full of bufoons who just want the quick laugh. Johnny, still the king of late night.
@@patrickdowling529 I saw an interview with Orson near the end of his life where he says that "Chimes At Midnight" was his "least flawed film" ...while I marvel over so many of his movies and performances, he thought of them as "flawed". Shocking.
I don't think many people can say this but, my name is Anthony Perkins. Yes, the same as this fine actor. So, as you might imagine going through life with a famous person's name would be fun and for me it was fun. Naturally, since Anthony Perkins was so well known for his performance in Psycho, comments I would hear from people were always associated with that movie. I guess your wife doesn't take many showers and so on. It always resulted in a good laugh.......Ever see "Fear Strikes Out".
Tony Perkins was such a gifted actor. Not without his personal challenges, and he was such a professional it’s hard to know how he felt about his career direction, but he really was a pro and took the work seriously. A huge shame he was taken from us so early, he could’ve carried on forever. Sorely missed, a good family man and a true icon of cinema. God bless you Tony.
@@samsmith4216 To long time Hitchcock fans- the Vera Miles character of Lila 'Crane in Psycho 2. is a disappoointment. She is made deliberately coarse, unlikeable- in order to satisfy fans of this later horror genre who like her grisly demise to satisfy their slasher movie appreciation. Her character in Hitchcock's original was someone the audience cared about - as the concerned sister investigating the disappearance of her sister. The director of the sequel , as well as the writer seemed to forget that, or didn't care, and were willing to pander to fans of the resulting slasher movies coming out by that time.
@@boborrahoodThat's a very short sighted view of it. In 'Psycho II', Lila has been eaten away by grief and resentment at losing her sister so horrifically and she naturally has vindictive feelings towards Norman Bates. Outraged at his release, she acts on those feelings in an attempt to get him incarcerated again. That is not a script writer or director 'pandering' to gore fans at all, rather a true characterisation and depiction of how the violent death of someone can affect their loved ones. Vera Miles herself said in the interviews that she loves the motivation of her character in 'Psycho II', adding: "If somebody had killed, so brutally, a member of my family and they were about to get out, I think I would feel just as angry..."
@@rnw2739 I do get that Lila Crane would have taken on a more vigilant, aggressive attitude after what happened to her own sister. But when I saw that in a theater when it came out in 1983, there were audible laughs and noisy reactions from some 18- 20's guys in the audience over Lila's grisly manner of killing. They got the excessive violence and gore they wanted. If you were fortunate enough to see the original Hitchcock version in a theater, you may remember there were no audible laughs about Marion Crane or even detective Arbogast.There were screams from some, though, especially when Lila turned back around to enter that fruit cellar with Mother. That was an example of Hitchcock's suspense working on the audience. As Hitchcock would say "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." Even the director of the sequel, Richard Franklin, had enough integrity to say "How can you top the original murder in the shower? A hatchet in a hot tub?"
Th omitted clip had to be the “No one ever does” line in the office. He had another great reaction on Letterman when they ran the bloody ice cubes bit 😂
I always adored Anthony Perkins and after seeing Psycho I never showered or bathed without a locked door and a giveaway. (Something that would fall and make noise if the door was unlocked from the outside☺️) Seriously 74 years old and still uneasy in the shower.😳
I watched Legally Blonde fur the 10th or 11th time again a few months ago ,I decided to look at the full cast ,omg I didn’t realize his son was in the movie ,I loved Psycho ,i heard that Janet Leigh was never able to shower after that movie .
Sad how his ex-partner Tab Hunter kind of drifted off into obscurity while Anthony's star continued to rise, and the two men never really spoke again. I highly recommend the documentary Tab Hunter Confidential
I was so traumatized from the original Psycho…that even now at age 74 I never want to shower alone in the house. Never watched the rest of the movies. No way!
"I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and claw but only at the air, only at each other. And for all of it, we never budge an inch."
From 3:00 to 4:00 - spoiler alert for Psycho 2 - Tony Perkins spends a minute revealing everything about the Psycho 2 murders - the whole video is a spoiler for Psycho 1, of course - but the sequels are less well remembered nowadays, tho they're decent
**Spoiler** Surprisingly, Perkins gets it wrong here about Psycho II. The Vera Miles character, Lila Loomis is not the k!ller. Neither is the Meg Tilly character Mary. It’s Mrs Spool. She clearly states it at the end of the film. Then Norman grabs the shovel as Perkins describes.
I agree, but the boy was a freak show in real life. In one of the movies I watched the extras where he was interviewed. He had the personality of a dark mortician. I wonder what happened to him.......
Johnny says it's unbelievable it's been 26 years ago!! Now try "it's been 62 years ago"!!!....Perkins was such an eloquent, elegant artist and a charming queer gentleman, loved both men & women!!!
Watch his movie Five Miles To Midnight with Sophia Loren. I thought he was awfully good in that pretending to be dead to defraud the airline insurance company. He was a bit sinister in that too but without the knife. Sad he died so young.
3:12 "... the Vera Miles character and her daughter..." Probably nothing in that statement, but it's interesting he mentions Vera and does not name Meg Tilly. Perkins did not like Tilly (for real) during the filming of Psycho II.
I think he was referring to the plot that Vera Miles and Meg Tilly's characters were carrying out ...trying to drive him insane with voices and mysterious "Mother" notes. The actual murders on the other hand, were committed by Mrs. Spool, who in trying to defend Norman, carried them out.
Well, apparently "Johnny Carson"' 's YT channel can't afford to get copyright approval to play a clip that they played on his own show 37 years ago! Now, I'll run look up that clip on ANOTHER YT video and see Normal interviewing this grifter.
My folks used to tell a great Psycho story: the morning after they had seen the film, my dad was in the bathroom, shaving. My mom, thinking she had a great prank to scare him with, grabbed a kitchen knife and came running into the bathroom. My dad, screaming, kicked her so hard in the stomach that she fell back on the floor outside the bedroom and puked. Last time she played a prank on him like that . . .
We never know what people are truly like, I watch a bio on Afred, apparently he wasn't a nice man, I saw the birds, n she was forced to do more n he lets the birds do a little more then nibble, Alfred I guess like to see people suffer, I watch Roadhog, n I think Jimmy Stewart fought a man for a long time, showing how hard was to kill a man untrained,. Their a Podcaster who talks about these older movies, Judy Garland was the called the chubby girl n had to wear a corsets ? the munchkins would get drunk n try to go up her dress, the tin man 1st they used paint n then a powder,I think he bit it from that powder, the lion cape 90 lbs ,2 people were to dry it from sweat, the scarecrow, after the movie was done 2 months for his face to come back from the tight panties hoes, or netting on his face, spell check! Bob Crain Hogan's Hero's, his stuff in a motel room, pretty sick, how they found him, I don't want to describe what I think I remember, Bonanza, Adam wanted to be on Broadway he quite n Mike, Dan Blocker, Hoss was 14 lbs when born, a super nice guy, Loren ? Green an all split Adam 's $ . The original house is a couple miles out of Taho, I toured it, all is smaller then what looks like, no upstairs, hop sings kitchen was a mock up, Green built a copy of it in NM or AZ. The Hearst Castles 3 tours, Gone with the wind original showing was their, no hand bags or big pockets,u want the pool n the bedroom, million $ rug above his bed 200 knots per square inch not slave labor children tighted those, that vase, 20 gs, Charly Champlin n Winston Churchill had the run of the mill, if you were to stay, a Taylor 2 short sleeve one long, 1 windbreaker, 2 shorts 1 long pants, dry cleaned, n stored if returned not to a tailor twice, The Winchester House,,the Great granddaughter, opposite bedroom carpenter's adding on, slits to spies on kitchen staff, 13 steps open door brick wall, nuts. MUSTANG RANCH, no mention imbarressed in funny on the way back me n best friend didn't talk, then I said what wrong with er Willy? What, that chubby meme u chose came n ask Stephanie check u said nothing to it, we get their buzz the fence walk in this lady clapped gently 8 or more, Nancy, sandy Stephanie candy meme 5 more , take er pick, iam shaking go ahead bud softly, meme I thought what, the 3rd almost falling down I said iiiiiltake you beitful, why ? do this I thought, $$$$ drugs, college, later being young n a 3rd stupid I thought ill hang out, target shoot, Tahoe Yosemite, Fremont drag strip couldn't spend $ fast enough 11,65 n all overtime I wanted or take days off plant manager was great a mentor, Cali 9 years the world's longest burning light bulb Livermore Cali Fire house, Lawrence Livermore Labratorys smash atoms together, very very secure, in my 30s started growing up, to much clean fun n a few dumb things, left the fast life back to minasota ya u betcha, don't say anything wasn't me !!!!. 😷😏🤓.
@@samsmith4216 Only “normal” people born to your liking as straight and cis are entitled to discuss who they are? Thankfully the overwhelming majority of Americans and ALL educated, decent, compassionate people abhor your thinly veiled bigotry. FYI, hatred and bigotry are NOT admirable human traits, “Sam Smith”.
He was a great actor - as was Anthony’s former partner, Tab Hunter, who died in 2018. It was truly awful that so many revered actors and entertainers had to hide who they were due to societal views at the time, which are now rightfully viewed with shame and disgust. May all these talented legendary men (Anthony, Tab and Johnny) who enriched the lives of millions of Americans for so many years Rest In Peace.
And that scene and the stairwell scene were blocked and directed by Saul Bass. Sure Hitch could pick em but he did not like to share. Bass and Alma Reville, in other instances, deserves co-director credit.
Alma Reville had very little input, if at all, into "Psycho"-other than when Hitchcock gave screenwriter Joseph Stefano an indirect complement by saying "Alma liked your script."
@@sandrashevey8252 As for Saul Bass on Psycho alone, it's well known he did the brilliant titles, in addition to storyboarding the shower scene, and was pictorial consultant. (the vertical against horizontal visuals, such as the horizontal motel next to the vertical house on the hill, to name the most obvious one).
