One Good Scare - Psycho (1960)
in which we take a closer look at one particular scary moment from a horror movie
"Y’know, it’s Halloween. Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”
- Sherriff Leigh Brackett, Halloween (1978)
Spoiler warning from the jump.
There is a good chance that you clicked on this thinking you already knew what I was going to talk about. Because even if you’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, there are a couple of things that you will know about it:
1 - THAT Bernard Herrmann theme, which I could honestly do a whole piece about in itself.
2- The shower scene.
And yes, the murder of Janet Leigh’s character Marion Crane, which happens about one-thirds of the way into the movie and completely pulls the rug out from under you with regards to what this movie is, is a capital M Moment. It inspired countless parodies, it inspired film makers, it inspired plain and simple. Sixty years on and it’s still regarded as one of the most shocking moments in cinema history; there’s even an entire documentary dedicated to this one scene (Alexandre O. Philippe’s 2017 documentary 78/52: Hitchcock's Shower Scene). My point is, it’s been talked about.
And it’s also not why I’m here.
I’m here to talk to you about the other moment.
but first, a flashback
A couple of years ago, one random evening, a friend’s living room. My other half and I had been invited for a chill evening playing board games and watching a film. I noted said friend had Psycho on DVD and mentioned that I would quite like to see it as I hadn’t. She agreed, and we all sat down to watch.
***That*** moment comes, and it’s terrifying, and horrible and everything I thought it would be (for what it’s worth, I think what makes the shower scene particularly effective is the aftermath of it) because I knew it was coming and I knew it came fairly early in the story.
However.
HOWEVER.
What I did not see coming is the scare that comes later on in the movie - a scare I like to call Martin Balsam Takes The Stairs.
the scare
One week after Marion’s disappearance, her sister Lila (Vera Miles) arrives in Fairvale, California. She’s come to find Marion’s boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), to inform him that Marion has made off with $40.000 (which she stole from her job in order to pay off Sam’s debts so they could get married) and to demand information as to her whereabouts. Sam has not a fucking clue as to where she is - enter Private Investigator Milton Arbogast (what a name, drink that in -he is played by Martin Balsam), who approaches the two claiming he has been hired to retrieve the money Marian stole.
Arbogast goes to the Bates Motel and questions a nervous Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Suspicious of his nervy behaviour and the inconsistencies in his answers, Arbogast finds evidence that Marion stayed the night at the motel as her handwriting is in the guest register. He learns that Marion had supposedly spoken to Mrs. Bates, and when Norman refuses to let Arbogast speak to his mother, Arbogast decides to take matters into his own hands and goes to search the Bates manor for her.
It does not end super well for him.
what makes this scare
as per wikipedia…
Filming the murder of Arbogast proved problematic, owing to the overhead camera angle necessary to hide the film's twist. A camera track constructed on pulleys alongside the stairway together with a chairlike device had to be constructed and thoroughly tested over a period of weeks.
There’s lots to love here - the way Arbogast enters the house, quietly, making sure he doesn’t slam the door or anything as the score trills in the background, building tension as he slowly walks up the stairs, the tease of a door opening upstairs…
AND THEN BAM!
The framing of the shot in which “Mrs. Bates” fucking stalks out, like Michael Myers avant la lettre, with the apex of Herrmann’s theme playing on a sudden, full blast as Arbogast gets a knife to the chest and tumbles down the stairs, his face frozen in shock as he plummets down before his killer finishes him off with a few more stabs for good measure.
It’s the way the building tension is cut so suddenly, so quickly, that really takes my breath away. You can easily imagine a version of this movie where Arbogast makes it up the stairs into the corridor, where the tension keeps building as he explores the rooms and is eventually attacked. But Hitchcock essentially said fuck that, and provided us with a moment that, while not as famous and canonized in film history as the shower scene, is still pretty shocking when it comes.
We’ve legitimately just met Arbogast; the man has been in this movie for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes at best. We know, like, two things about him: 1) his name is Milton Arbogast and 2) he was hired by Marion’s boss to retrieve the stolen money. This man could have easily made it to the endgame of this movie, be it as a nuisance to Lila and Sam’s own investigation or as an ally. But instead, he is killed off - and acts as the catalyst for them making their own way to the motel. It’s a deeply effective moment and one that genuinely got to me the first time I watched Psycho.
There is no one consensus on what makes a good scare; to me (and I imagine to many others) it depends on a whole bunch of elements coming together to do what the moment has called for. A good scare can provide such effective catharsis (this is why I will defend a well executed jump scare), and the death of PI Arbogast is, for me, up there with the best of them.
