June 16 - "Psycho"

Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Psycho” was released in theaters on June 16, 1960. It was a huge box office success. The suspense-horror film is based on a 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, inspired by the murders and body snatching of Wisconsin criminal Ed Gein. Like Norman Bates, the movie’s protagonist, Gein was a solitary murderer whose deceased mother was domineering. Nearly the entire movie was shot with 50 mm lenses on 35 mm cameras to closely mimic normal human vision and keep the audience involved. The famous shower scene, in which the “main” character, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is stabbed to death by Bates, was shot over seven days. It lasts three minutes and involves 77 camera angles and 50 cuts. Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the scene because it filmed better in black-and-white. The stabbing sound was created by plunging a knife into a casaba melon. “Psycho” was the first U.S. film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen when Marion destroys an incriminating piece of paper.