Psycho (1998) is a horror film co-produced and directed by Gus Van Sant. It remakes Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho (1960) with Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates, Anne Heche as Marion Crane, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen and William H. Macy. Both films adapt Robert Bloch‘s 1959 novel. Van Sant’s version is unusual among remakes. It is shot in color and set in 1998, but it is close to a shot-for-shot retelling. It reuses Joseph Stefano‘s script and Bernard Herrmann‘s score and copies many of Hitchcock’s camera moves and cuts. The violence and sexual content are more explicit, and surreal images are cut into the murders. Critics were polarized, audiences were hostile, and it won Razzies for Worst Remake or Sequel and Worst Director. Van Sant later called it an experiment.
At a glance
| Release date | December 4, 1998 (US) |
| Director | Gus Van Sant |
| Writer | Joseph Stefano (screenplay of the 1960 film, largely reused) |
| Based on | Psycho (1959) by Robert Bloch |
| Starring | Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Anne Heche |
| Runtime | 104 minutes |
| Rating | R (US) |
| Budget | $25 million (estimated) |
| Box office | $37.1 million |
| Franchise | Psycho: remake of Psycho (1960) |
Plot summary
In Phoenix, real-estate secretary Marion Crane (Anne Heche) and her boyfriend Sam Loomis (Viggo Mortensen) can’t marry because of his debts. Entrusted with a $400,000 cash payment, she steals it and drives toward Sam’s home in Fairvale, California. Caught in bad weather, she stops for the night at the Bates Motel. Its owner, Norman Bates (Vince Vaughn), invites her to supper and talks about taxidermy, his sick mother and the “private traps” people try to escape. Marion decides to return the money. Then, in the shower, a shadowy figure stabs her to death.
Norman sinks her car, with her body and the cash, in a nearby swamp. Marion’s sister Lila (Julianne Moore) and private investigator Milton Arbogast (William H. Macy) come looking for her. Arbogast enters the Bates house, where a figure that looks like an elderly woman kills him. The sheriff tells Lila and Sam that Norman’s mother died in a murder-suicide ten years earlier.
Spoiler section: the ending
Lila and Sam check into the motel. While Sam distracts Norman, Lila searches the house and finds Mrs. Bates’s mummified body in the fruit cellar. Norman lunges at her in his mother’s clothes and a wig, and Sam subdues him. A psychiatrist explains that Norman poisoned his mother and her lover years ago and recreated her as an alternate personality. That “Mother” kills women Norman is attracted to, and has now taken him over completely. In his cell, Norman hears her voice blaming him for everything, as Marion’s car is pulled from the swamp.
Production and behind the scenes
Van Sant had long admired Hitchcock’s film. As a film student he shot a parody “Psycho Shampoo” commercial that recreated the shower scene. After Good Will Hunting (1997) became a hit, Universal agreed to option his shot-for-shot remake. Casey Silver, then head of production, thought it “a very strange idea.” Asked why, Van Sant said, “Why not? It’s a marketing scheme.” Nicole Kidman was originally set as Marion but left over scheduling, and Drew Barrymore was also considered before Heche was cast. Moore deliberately made Lila more aggressive than Vera Miles had. Macy stayed close to the original Arbogast, while Vaughn and Moore read their scenes differently.
Filming ran from July 6 to August 26, 1998, mostly on the Universal backlot, with exteriors in Phoenix, including the Hotel Westward Ho. Van Sant said the team started out “fanatical about doing it exactly the same,” but some scenes couldn’t be matched, because they couldn’t work out Hitchcock’s blocking. Fake blood replaced the chocolate syrup of 1960, and Rick Baker designed the Mrs. Bates dummy. The stolen money rose from $40,000 to $400,000 to allow for inflation. The shower scene shows stab wounds and blood on the tiles, and sound makes it explicit that Norman masturbates while spying on Marion. Danny Elfman and Steve Bartek arranged and re-recorded Herrmann’s score in stereo.
Release and reception
Universal released the film on December 4, 1998, in 2,477 theaters. It opened at No. 2 behind A Bug’s Life with $10 million and earned $21.5 million in the US and $37.1 million worldwide on an estimated $25 million budget. Van Sant later said he thought the producers “broke even.”
It holds 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, whose consensus calls it a “pointless remake” that “neither improves nor illuminates Hitchcock’s original.” Metacritic gave it 47, and CinemaScore audiences gave it a “C−.” Roger Ebert gave it one and a half stars. He felt Vaughn lacked Norman’s “secret pool of madness,” and called the film “an invaluable experiment in the theory of cinema, because it demonstrates that a shot-by-shot remake is pointless.” Besides its two Razzie wins, Heche was nominated for Worst Actress. The film also earned Saturn nominations for Heche and for Stefano’s writing.
Legacy and influence
The film is now usually discussed as an experiment rather than a conventional remake. Van Sant described it as an exercise in appropriation: “If I hold a camera, it’s different than if Irving Penn holds it.” Stefano thought that Heche, speaking the same lines, made Marion an entirely different character. A 2013 LA Weekly retrospective argued it had been misread as a cash-in and concluded that “experiments don’t always have to work to be worth doing.” Hitchcock’s daughter Pat said her father would have been flattered. In 2014, Steven Soderbergh’s website posted Psychos, an unexplained mashup of the two versions. It removes all color from Van Sant’s scenes except the shower murder. For the sequels to the original, see Psycho II.
Trivia
- Stefano’s script originally had uncredited contributions from Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville.
- Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl” plays when Marion trades in her car.
- Heche lost the Worst Actress Razzie to the Spice Girls for Spice World.
- At the 1998 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, Universal received a sarcastic “Founders Award” for the remake.
- Camille Paglia said the only reason to watch it was “to see Anne Heche being assassinated.”
Related links
- Norman Bates and Marion Crane (characters)
- Psycho franchise
- Psycho (1960) and Psycho II (1983)
- Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph Stefano and Bernard Herrmann
- Gus Van Sant (director)