Up until June 16, 1960, a trip to your local cinema was always a safe, peaceful outing where you could escape to a fantasy world where the lines between good and evil were clear and you didn't have to deal with the darkness that exists deep beneath the surface of the human psyche. But 50 years ago today, that all changed, because Alfred Hitchcock's immortal masterpiece "Psycho" premiered and changed cinema forever.
Based on the Robert Bloch novel of the same name (which in turn was based on the crimes of serial killer Ed Gein), "Psycho" is largely considered the first slasher film and was an incredible step forward for on-screen violence and the erosion of censorship in film. The flick is best known for the iconic shower scene, in which Mario Crane (played by Janet Leigh) gets stabbed to death while completely nude in a shower at the Bates Motel. The sequence doesn't actually show any real violence (there is only one image of the knife piercing Leigh's skin) or nudity (though some people were convinced they could see one of Leigh's nipples), the sequence is cut together so adroitly and the sound mixing handled so deftly that it ends up being absolutely terrifying. Even in a post-"Saw" world, "Psycho" still holds up.
The depiction of Marion Crane's murder was just the tip of the iceberg for "Psycho," as it contained a number of scenes that made spines tingle and eyebrows raise. The film opens with Leigh only half dressed (and she spends at least one more scene in her underwear), while the murder of Detective Arbogast (played by Martin Balsam) is only slightly less shocking and brutal as the shower scene. Interestingly, perhaps the most controversial moment in the movie comes only a few moments before Leigh's untimely death when she tears up a piece of paper, tosses it in the toilet and flushes it. Up until that time, there were rarely toilets on screen (they suggested something base and prurient) and never before had any of them flushed. It was just one more way that Hitchcock pushed the boundaries of filmmaking — something he did repeatedly over the course of his rich career.
"Psycho" is a masterpiece that still holds up today, and new viewers still say they are skittish about taking showers. Whether or not Kix had "Psycho" in mind when they wrote "Cold Shower" is a mystery (OK, they probably didn't), but it rocks anyway.
