Psycho

Fay Wray, King Kong (top); hear Fay Wray's King Kong scream (middle); hear Janet Leigh's Psycho scream (bottom) Claire Bloom, Julie Harris, Mary Philbin, Jane Wyman: Top Ten Scream Queens Pt.2 5 – Janet Leigh, Psycho (1960). I don't recall myself recoiling in horror while watching Janet Leigh's shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but I do recall quite vividly one night long ago when I was showering at an acquaintance's place and imagined myself facing the same fate as Leigh's unlucky bank teller. So, [...]

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho caused a sensation when it opened in June about fifty years ago. There were a number of reasons for that, one of them being the fact that Psycho was seen by some as a sensational, perverse, "cheap" horror flick like those William Castle, a master at promotional gimmicks, was making in the late '50s, e.g., The Tingler, House on Haunted Hill, Macabre. It was certainly not something for the director of the Academy Award-winning Rebecca, The Lady Vanishes, Rear Window, and North [...]

Janet Leigh, Psycho Janet Leigh, whose shower scene in Psycho has become part of cinema's pop iconography, died yesterday, Oct. 3, at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 77. In the past year, Leigh had been suffering from vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels. Though best remembered as the greedy (and unlucky) office worker who gets stabbed a zillion times in the shower in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), a role for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, Leigh had a [...]