By the time Universal Pictures released Psycho in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already one of the most famous directors in Hollywood, and a household name. As “The Master of Suspense,” during the 1950s he’d produced massive hits like Rear Window, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. Most importantly, his weekly TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which he hosted, was a massive hit for the network. So anticipation for his first feature for the new decade, Psycho, was at an all-time high. The original trailer for Psycho capitalizes on Hitchcock’s fame and reputation. But what’s really shocking about it is how much it outright spoils for the film. And we mean a lot. You can watch that original trailer in all its glory right here:
In the Psycho trailer, the esteemed director walks the audience through the sets, including the Bates Motel and its adjacent creepy house. There’s no footage of its stars, Janet Leigh or Anthony Perkins, at all. One of its stars, Vera Miles, appears briefly in a recreation of the shower scene, itself a misdirect. But Hitchcock literally tells the viewer how many victims there are going to be in the film, and where they die. For fans today who complain that trailers today give away too much, the Psycho trailer can tell them “Hold my beer.” This trailer literally spells out the body count for them.
Of course, this all still works because the reveal of Psycho isn’t the amount of victims or where they die. The actual reveal is the true identity of the killer. Throughout the trailer, Hitchcock paints the woman of the house as the murderer. So the film’s biggest surprise, the one about Norman Bates, might remain preserved. Still, it’s wild that Hitchcock even gave away this much. There’s also a strange use of light and jaunty music throughout the trailer. The kind that today we connect to 1950s PSAs, indicating wholesome frivolity. It’s almost like he was trying to assure suburban ‘50s audiences this all wouldn’t be too terrifying.
Despite his iconic status in Hollywood, Hitchcock’s home studio Paramount didn’t want to finance Psycho. They thought the subject matter was just too grotesque for American audiences. Serial killers existed in real life, of course, but they weren’t daily front-page headlines yet. This wouldn’t happen until after the Zodiac killer and later Charles Manson. Many Americans were blissfully unaware of even the term “serial killer.” So Hitchcock convinced Universal to finance his adaptation of Robert Bloch’s pulpy novel, using his TV show crew. He chose to shoot in black and white to keep the budget down. Remember, Psycho came after his big glossy technicolor epics of the ‘50s. One would think any studio would give him carte blanche. However, the subject matter was viewed as unmarketable, even for a “name” like Hitchcock.
Until Psycho, Hitchcock’s films had the label of a thriller, or a mystery. The term “horror” was reserved for B-movies and classic monsters. But without a doubt, Psycho, with its creepy old manor home and knife-wielding killer, was a pure horror film. Yet, it was maybe the first truly modern horror film. Alfred Hitchcock brought the bloody terror out of the distant past, and out of far-away European castles, and placed it in present-day America. It might not have been the first move to do that, but it sure was the first to do it to blockbuster success.
It may seem tame by today’s standards, but audiences in 1960 had never seen anything so outwardly horrific as Marion Crane’s stabbing in the shower. And this promotional campaign suggesting Psycho was boundary-pushing worked like gangbusters. Psycho had huge box office business, making what amounts to 323 million dollars in today’s money. It would be a rare anomaly if any horror movie made that much these days. Psycho changed the face of horror cinema forever, even if it took the rest of Hollywood almost a decade to catch up to it.