Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was a pioneer in many ways. It is one of the first slasher movies released in mainstream cinema, challenging the strict censorship that existed at the time.
It was also one of the first horror films that dealt with psychological issues and paved the way for horror that explores inner demons.
But beyond that, Psycho’s release changed how theaters operated, forcing audiences to take the movie-watching experience seriously.
Exactly how? In this article, let’s unveil just that.
Movie and Theater Culture Before Psycho
About 65 years ago, theaters didn’t function as they do today. Films were screened on a loop under the double or triple feature system, and you could simply walk in for any show whenever you wanted and watch the movie in any order you liked.
You could walk in during the second act, then watch the third act, and then stay back to watch the missed first act of the film. You could also catch another film after, since a single ticket permitted admission to the screening of two or more films, shown one after another.
At the same time, the vast majority of the audience was unruly, which made screenings often chaotic. In short, watching a movie in peace was a near myth in theaters.
But with Psycho’s release in 1960, all of that was about to change.
What Changed When Psycho Was Released?
‘Psycho’ (1960)Source: Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures
Hitchcock didn’t just make a great film; he was determined to ensure that not even a spoonful of his and his team’s creative efforts went unnoticed. And boy, did he go all-out to ensure that.
Strict regulation of theater timings and audience entry and exit was his approach. Here’s what came before that.
FBI-Level Secrecy
Hitchcock’s promotional strategy seems to have been in place for a long time, much before the film ever went on the screen.
Right after purchasing the rights to the Robert Bloch mystery, Psycho, Hitchcock reportedly had his assistants buy as many copies of the book as possible, to ensure fewer people knew the story before the film was released.
Additionally, he banned all critical pre-screenings and prohibited the lead actors, Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, from giving any interviews about their roles and experiences in the film.
No Title or Synopsis Reveal in Promotions
For the longest time, the title for “Hitchcock’s new shocker” wasn’t revealed to the audience. The film was vastly promoted as a tagline, which was quite an outrageous promotional stunt back then.
Hitchcock didn’t even comply with the traditional studio policy of releasing a film synopsis to prevent the story from leaking.
Intentional Misdirection
Perkins was Paramount’s rising star back when Psycho was released, and Leigh was one of the biggest stars of that decade. Hitchcock dared to do something unthinkable at the time. He deliberately pitched Leigh as the lead in his Psycho promotions and tricked the audience into believing she was the star of the story, when in reality it was Perkins.
Marion’s death is a major plot twist in the story, which means Leigh is definitely not the protagonist—a fact that Hitchcock wanted to hide from the audience.
He already knew that he was going to translate this misdirection into a real shocker, with the infamous shower scene, where Bates brutally murders Marion.
Hitchcock formulated his final rule only to ensure that nothing could tamper with the shock he had prepared for the audience.
No Entry for Latecomers
Hitchcock’s “no entry for latecomers” rule sealed the deal for Psycho. Since he financed the film through his own production company, Shamley Productions, and deferred his director’s fee for 60% of the shares in profit, Paramount Pictures gave him free rein in the promotion of his film.
The filmmaker’s condition was to enforce a blanket ban on all latecomers and deny them admission at any cost, in any theater across the U.S.
This worried theater owners, who feared the audience would be deterred from watching the film by such strict rules. But Hitchcock wasn’t ready to budge. He had uniformed Pinkerton guards stationed outside the theaters to ensure that the condition was met.
Advertisements reminded audiences that lateness would not be tolerated, and no exceptions would be made for any latecomer, even the queen of England, if she were late to her show.
The impact of “no latecomers allowed” was equally shocking as the shower scene.
The rule and the secrecy had intrigued the audience, and soon theaters saw people queuing up, patiently waiting for their turn to watch “Hitchcock’s new shocker” from start to finish.
The queues attracted more curiosity, and Psycho, which was made for a measly budget of less than $1,000,000 (one of the reasons why it was shot in black and white), raked in $32,181,230 in its lifetime box office.
Hitchcock wasn’t the first to blanket-ban latecomers. In 1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot had adapted a similar promotional strategy for Diabolique in France.
Psycho not only shook the audience to their core with its psychological horror but also disciplined them as patrons of art. Psycho closed the gap between the artist and the patrons with some rules, and we can’t thank Hitchcock enough for that!
Would you dare to be this rigid about creative control?