Shyamalan's Top Ten List. August 2002.
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jenkinsdaniel — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 05:39 AM)
The first real movie ever made where all the different compartments of film-making came together in an irreplaceable way.
Anyway, Hollywood's brand new king, Spielberg, paid homage to this film at the end of the 1982 film Poltergeist. Both Psycho and Poltergeist had a scene of people checking into a motel (as did Rain Man).
Both Psycho and Poltergeist also were followed by dreadful sequels in 1986. -
ecarle — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 09:55 AM)
1972 The Godfather
1973 The Exorcist
1975 Jaws
1981 Raiders Of The Lost Ark
1991 The Silence Of The Lambs
1976 Rocky
1989 Dead Poet's Society
1975 One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
1977 Star Wars
1960 Psycho
A rather impressively "mainstream" blockbuster list for M. Night.
It seems to me that the only one which wasn't "monumental" in its box office impact is: The Dead Poets Society. So something about that film's message of carpe diem and challenging authority must appeal to M. Night.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a bigger hit, and Best Picture, but its of the same thematic type as Dead Poets Society: Anti-authority, anti-bureaucratic, in favor of individual freedom (and yet the heroes fail in both films personally, if succeeding as martyr-role models.)
Rocky and Star Wars: The "uplift" movies that shut down a near-decade of downers and unhappy endings at the movies, movies which, said George Lucas, "made you feel worse when you came out of the theater than when you went in." Both films are extremely well-written and filled with memorable characters, though.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Noteable then and now for having BOTH Lucas and Spielberg as co-creators. At the time, I liked it better than Star Wars because I could relate to the action-adventure "realities" of the film more than to the SciFi fantasy of Star Wars. "Adult romance," too(Indy and his tough girlfriend.) There are Hitchcock touches: the boulder chasing Indy is like the crop duster chasing Grant; and Spielberg "borrows" the Sea of Red Caps scene from NXNW for his scene of "Sea of Baskets with the girl in one"). I always felt that the flaw with Raiders is that it climaxes at the two-thirds point(Flying Wing Fight/Truck Chase) and rather trickles down to an anti-climactic special effects climax in which Indy is tied up and does nothing. Compare to how NXNW stays exciting right up to the final 30 seconds.
Psycho, The Exorcist, and Jaws: I call these "The Trilogy of Superthrillers" thrillers which went beyond being movies and became nationwide, worldwide events. Box office blockbusters, great cinema AND memories to last a lifetime. As thrillers became more gory and as SFX and comic book heroes took over, the Age of the Superthriller ended as quickly as it began.
The Godfather: Is it a drama? Or a thriller? It was pitched as a Best Picture type dramatic epicbut it sure has a lot of violent murder as punctuation: the horse head, Luca Brasi at the bar(in one of the two disturbing strangulation murders at 1972 theaters Frenzy had the other), Sollozo the Turk and McClusky in the Italian restaurant, Michael's Italian bride, Sonny at the toll booth(probably the biggest murder in the picture); the massacre at the endand the coda revenge killings of Abe Vigoda(off-screen) and Carlo(satisfyingly ON screen).
All these years later, The Godfather stands with one other movie as perhaps the greatest confluence of Great Box Office and Great Cinema in movie history. Psycho is the other one though The Godfather also represents that much beloved "Golden Era of the 70's," a bit after Psycho's time.
And that leaves Silence of the Lambs. It is perhaps too much the procedural policier to join the Trilogy of Superthrillersand I don't think it was quite the blockbuster those other three were. But it gave us Something New in Thrillers Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter (5 years after Brian Cox did Lecter in the unseen "Manhunter"). The deal with Lecter is that he is a supergenious sophisticated villain on the one handand a monstrous psychopathic killing machine on the other. In the same guy. He's rather "Philip Vandamm and Norman Bates" in one character.
And "Silence of the Lambs" finally won all the Oscars that Psycho should have: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay -
ecarle — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 10:39 AM)
Yes, Psycho should have won for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Adapted Screenplay, as well as Best Score, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Film Editing.
And the "Psycho" thing of it is, most of those categories didn't even get a NOMINATION. Picture! Perkins! SCORE!!! Editing! (The Shower Scene.)
I'll throw in that I think Janet Leigh (who WAS nominated for Best Supporting Actress and lost to Shirley Jones for Elmer Gantry) should have been moved up to Best Actress ..and won. Janet is only in the film for about 49 minutes, but she's there ALL THE TIME. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter won for far less creen time.
I'd also give Martin Balsam a Best Suppporting Actor nominationbut maybe not the win against Ustinov in Spartacus(the real winner.)
For the record, the four REAL Psycho nominations were:
Hitchocck Best Director(lost to Billy Wilder for The Apartment)
Leigh Suppoprting Actress(lost to Shirley Jones)
Best B/W Cinematography (lost to The Apartment)
Best B/W Art Direction (lost to The Apartment, but THAT HOUSE!!) -
jenkinsdaniel — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 10:27 AM)
Reading your well-thought-out response to my post is a breath of fresh air. Pleased to meet you.
Psycho, Jaws, and The Exorcist: I believe those very three were at the top of the AFI's most thrilling movies list. -
ecarle — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 10:05 AM)
The first real movie ever made where all the different compartments of film-making came together in an irreplaceable way.
Its all there, isn't it? "Cinematically," we've got montage and camera movement and camera angle and composition and soundtrack and musical score
and "dramatically" we have a story that builds and builds and builds to a fever pitch of audience screaming, with plot reversals and shocks all along the way. And some of the greatest characters in movie history, led by Norman Bates.
Someone called Psycho, "The Citizen Kane of Horror Movies" but honestly, I just think it IS "Citizen Kane." At the same level of historic cinematic dazzle. And, let's face it, a more interesting and relatable storyline "for the kids." Which means all of us. Honestly, is the story of Charles Foster Kane as interesting as the story of Norman Bates(and Marion Crane? And Arbogast?) ?I don't think so.
Anyway, Hollywood's brand new king, Spielberg, paid homage to this film at the end of the 1982 film Poltergeist. Both Psycho and Poltergeist had a scene of people checking into a motel (as did Rain Man).
Indeed. Here's a jump backwards to 1960 on the OTHER major movie that year with a motel in it:
A MILDLY envelope-pushing film of 1960 starred Bob Hope and Lucille Ball in "The Facts of Life." The envelope-push is that Hope and Ball play a couple of people who are married to others but seek to have an affair. FOR REAL. But all of their attempts to consummate that affair keep falling apart(its 1960, after all.)
One of the fails is this one: Hope brings Ball into a motel and leaves her in their room while he goes out to buy aspirin for her. While driving back to Ball after making the purchase at a druge storeHope finds that there are SCORES of motels on the main thoroughfare, and he can't remember which one has Ball in it. There are notable "checking in" scenes in this sequence, as I recall Hope has a least one long dialogue with a motelkeeper.Both Psycho and Poltergeist also were followed by dreadful sequels in 1986.
Yeah, I guess so. I like Psycho III of '86 better than Psycho II of '83, but neither of them are up to the par of Psycho. -
jenkinsdaniel — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 10:22 AM)
The dreadful 1986 sequels Poltergeist II and Psycho III both attack God and are sequels to classic thrillers (from famous film-makers at the height of their careers) with critically important scenes in which characters are seen checking into a motel. Psycho points to the very last scene in Poltergeist, in much the same way that the very last scene in Poltergeist pays homage to Psycho.
The scene in Rain Man in which Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman pull up to their motel room is just a bonus, I guess, which should help undermine any doubt that the Psycho/Poltergeist is a true revelation worth considering. If you're uncertain about what I'm talking about, then I'm referring to the last words from the song "Dry Bones". -
jenkinsdaniel — 9 years ago(February 04, 2017 10:44 AM)
1986 has four movie franchises with dreadful sequels that attacked God.
Poltergeist II and Psycho III were the dreadful 1986 sequels. Aliens and Star Trek IV were successful 1986 sequels that were immediately followed by the dreadful sequels Star Trek V and Alien 3.
So it's not just Poltergeist II and Psycho III, which point to the last scene in Poltergeist that came from Hollywood's brand new king. But it's also Star Trek V and Alien 3, which considering a question repeatedly asked in Star Trek V, points to a line in Star Trek IV about people escaping the 20th Century written by the director of The Day After.