Psycho was a groundbreaking suspense and horror movie. It was expertly crafted and has been endlessly homaged and duplicated. In many ways, it’s the grandfather of the modern slasher movie and Norman Bates is the grandfather of the modern slasher. Released in 1960, it was unlike anything audiences had seen before. Part of that, was the way Hitchcock marketed the film. He played up star Janet Leigh, who was a big star at the time having been in movies since the 40s (including Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil), only to have her character killed 10 minutes into the movie. Hitchcock did everything he could to simultaneously play up the shocking and surprising nature of the film and build up a little buzz in the media. He did this by hanging signs in theaters stating that no one can arrive to the theater late. If you’re late, you can’t enter. Hitchcock even talked about it in the super long trailer.
This week, to begin AWESOME-tober-fest 2012, I’m going to look at several aspects of Psycho. Today, I’ll look at some advertising. The rest of this week I’ll look at the book by Robert Bloch that started it all, the short lived TV series based on the movie and I’ll finish it all up by reviewing the 1998 remake with Vince Vaughn.
So, let’s start our look at Psycho with some of the advertising. You can click them to see the images bigger on Flickr.
Movie Posters:
Lobby cards:
Newspaper ad:
The original 6min long trailer:
Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.
Cavalcade of Awesome 