The killer is....
April 21, 2005 7:58 AM Subscribe

Hitchcock's infamous shower scene from Psycho overlayed with the '98 remake by Gus Van Sant: .mov (via Waxy)
posted by dirtylittlemonkey (22 comments total)

Whoa. Still scary, but the first half is now a hot lesbian shower scene.
posted by NickDouglas at 8:11 AM on April 21, 2005

I thought Van Sant was doing a shot-for-shot. Why'd he reverse a lot of the angles?
Anyway, never saw the Van Sant, and don't ever feel the need to. Definitely goes in the top ten of "Why'd you remake that, anyway?" (Especially shot-for-shot. Jeez.)
posted by klangklangston at 8:16 AM on April 21, 2005

Heh, it's almost frame-for frame. Nice mix.
posted by carter at 8:22 AM on April 21, 2005

"Hitchcock's infamous shower scene..." Gross.

Actually, isn't it a famous scene from Hitchcock's Psycho and an infamous scene in the Van Sant remake?
posted by blefr at 8:26 AM on April 21, 2005

NickDouglas: Priceless!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:29 AM on April 21, 2005

Why'd he do it? Because he could. Personally, I'm glad Van Sant's been veering back from the commercial and towards the experimental and outre again.

To me, the best part of his classic "My Own Private Idaho" was that half of Van Sant's ideas were breathtaking and half sucked ass - "What were you thinking?" That's the nature of experimentation.
posted by fungible at 8:31 AM on April 21, 2005

blefr: "Hitchcock's infamous shower scene..." Gross.

Actually the scene did cause quite a stir when the film was released causing censors to scream for a reedit.Regardless, your point taken.
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 8:38 AM on April 21, 2005

I thought the Psycho remake, as a concept, was brilliant. How do you improve a classic film? You don't. It really does underline the stupidity of remaking unimprovable films.

Wait until they remake The Wizard of Oz with Will Smith as the wise cracking lion, Jim Carey as the scarecrow, George Clooney as the tin man and Lindsay Lohan as Dorothy. Gah!
posted by dodgygeezer at 8:49 AM on April 21, 2005

Lest we forget.
posted by eatitlive at 9:26 AM on April 21, 2005

Even though I've heard it a hundred times before, it's amazing how powerful Bernard Herrmann's score is.
posted by Staggering Jack at 10:12 AM on April 21, 2005

Interesting that the only real difference I could see -- Van Sant rotating the camera on the final zoom-out from the eye vs. Hitchcock's straight zoom -- is clearly inferior. Hitchcock's choice emphasizes the stillness of death, while Van Sant's just says "look at me, I'm rotating the camera!"

Although I agree that visually i prefer the still Hitchcock shot I think what Van Sant was trying to do was create a parallel between the blood flowing down the drain and the girls last moments of life. That way we see two shots of life "draining" away. But a crappy shot is still a crappy shot regardless of the symbolism.
posted by cyphill at 10:43 AM on April 21, 2005

You missed the most important difference: BUTT.
posted by damehex at 11:19 AM on April 21, 2005

I've never understood this. Why would someone want to follow up a perfectly good career as a founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd by remaking a Hitchcock movie?
posted by koeselitz at 11:33 AM on April 21, 2005

that was surprisingly cool...

hey, no need to make fun of the Van Zant's... Momma Van Zant has the best venue in town out on the beach.
posted by trinarian at 11:54 AM on April 21, 2005

klangklangston: Perhaps whoever cut the scenes together (pun intended) deliberately "flipped" some/all of the Van Sant footage. It would be easier to see each Marion Crane if they weren't mostly overlapping in every shot?
This is just a theory- I have only seen the remake once, so I can't say for sure.
posted by Lord Kinbote at 11:59 AM on April 21, 2005

Van Sant said in the DVD commentary to his version of Psycho that one of his main reasons for remaking Hitchcock's film was to win it a new audience among young people--who, if you hadn't noticed, don't watch any film made before last Thursday. The DVD commentary is actually pretty good on that film, except for every time Anne Heche opens her mouth.
posted by wheat at 12:52 PM on April 21, 2005

klangklangston and Lord Kinbote:

Actually, it looks like the original Hitchcock footage was flipped for the demonstration.
Compare the first image on this page with the same frame roughly 1:19 into the posted quicktime movie.
posted by nobody at 12:56 PM on April 21, 2005

You know, I admire the creativity in blending these two videos more than Gus' experiment. Does he get splatter credit from inspiring something like this?
posted by Busithoth at 2:02 PM on April 21, 2005

Van Sant said in the DVD commentary to his version of Psycho that one of his main reasons for remaking Hitchcock's film was to win it a new audience among young people--who, if you hadn't noticed, don't watch any film made before last Thursday.

O.k. - props to Van Sant for the effort, and NOT remaking it 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' '03-styly, but for the cinephiles among us, it still sucked @ss.

Bravo on the $20M budget. Bravo on the actors who must have worked for scale, but come on - the writer could have done better than a straight transcription. The period-update was nice, but they could have inflected the whole thing with a bit more Brian DePalma.
posted by vhsiv at 2:03 PM on April 21, 2005

Wow. I knew I liked the original version better, but now it's really obvious why. Janet Leigh's face is a million times more expressive than Anne Heche's. Of course, the best character in either version was Herrmann's excellent score. Great link.
posted by carlitos at 3:17 PM on April 21, 2005

Huh, it's true white people don't use a cloth to wash. Use the cloth, people. I might wanna wash my face, or my feet.
posted by Eideteker at 4:18 AM on April 22, 2005

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The killer is.... April 21, 2005 7:58 AM Subscribe

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