Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker Psycho has inspired three sequels and two TV shows—including AMC’s five-season Bates Motel, with Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates; there was also a surreal shot-for-shot color remake in 1998; and a “making-of” movie starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson (they play, respectively, Hitch, his wife and actress Janet Leigh).

But perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Psycho’s legacy is the volume of analysis it has generated.

Besides an endless stream of scholarly discussion through journals and podcasts, Psycho has achieved something no other movie even approaches: 10 full-length books have been written on the film, including one by your Webb critic—The Psycho File: A Comprehensive Guide to Hitchcock’s Classic Shocker (McFarland, 2009).

What follows is extracted from that volume—a mere sampling of what you might expect from the screening I’ll host at the Genetti on Oct. 24.

In this second of three articles in honor of that event, I’ll again avoid spoilers—saving discussion of the most famous scene for after my presentation, just in case any prospective attenders haven’t seen it.

Instead, let’s focus first on why the movie works. After all, compared to the many lurid horror films that followed in its wake, Psycho has relatively few murders—and little actual gore.

Besides the shock of its brilliantly edited central sequence, the film evokes tremendous unease through two of humanity’s most unpleasant feelings: nervousness and guilt.

From beginning to end, virtually every scene involves some character doing something wrong—and hoping they don’t get caught. In the intro, main character Marion and her boyfriend, Sam, are having an illicit lunch-hour tryst (at nearly 3 p.m.!). Shortly thereafter, she steals $40,000 from her boss, then nearly gives herself away in several jittery scenes (one featuring a highway cop). There’s a pervert using a peephole, a cautious creep cleaning up a killing, and then later, both a detective and a plucky lady sneaking about the scene of the crime.

Naturally, all of this makes us nervous too—and thus we identify more closely with the characters; but what’s worse, our concern for them makes us complicit in their guilt—as we, for example, get upset that one piece of evidence (a car) is not going to disappear as hoped; likewise, we really do want potential victims to go into that creepy old mansion—and we look shamelessly through the peephole right along with the peeper!

Another of Psycho’s triumphs is its central theme, so prevalent elsewhere in American culture: the question of whether one can escape from the past (cf. The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn and the famous final line in Gatsby). With its downbeat ending where the past has basically swallowed up the present, Psycho’s answer is a resounding “no”—and since I don’t have space to examine this in detail, let’s look just at one early scene:

When Marion returns from lunch, her fellow secretary, Caroline, indicates that her own mother hovers over her marriage, calling to check up on “Teddy” and providing tranquilizers to help Caroline through the recent wedding (this could not have boded well for the bride and groom’s first night together!).

Then the wealthy Cassidy, strolling in with Marion’s boss, shows in a few short lines that he too will suffocate his soon-to-be married daughter. (He calls her his “baby”— while buying the couple a house that would today cost about half a million dollars.)

All this sets us up for Marion’s forthcoming entry into the dreary world of Norman Bates, who is hopelessly dominated by his own mother. And yet that short, early office scene, which would seem to be a throwaway, offers one even more decisive comment on parental oversight: Caroline is played by Hitchcock’s real-life daughter, Patricia; and what’s more, the director’s own cameo (a staple of his long career) places him just outside the office—keeping an eye on things in his dual role as dad and director.

Now as long as we’re talking parents-and-kids, we might mention that Leigh is the mother of scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis (through Leigh’s then-marriage to fellow icon Tony Curtis); and one final fun fact: Cassidy is played by Frank Albertson, best known as Sam Wainwright in 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.

Sigh…. I could talk about Psycho for another 1000 words—but we are now officially out of space; so we’ll continue next week—and in the meantime, come to my screening and discussion at the Genetti, 6:30 p.m. Saturday.

Or check out The Psycho File for yourself.