"Mother.... What is the phrase? She isn't quite herself today," says Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. It's not until you've seen the ending that you're in on the macabre joke.
Perhaps the most famous theme music for a horror film ever recorded, the score for "Psycho" is by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann. (An all-Herrmann-scored film festival started at New York's Film Forum, on Houston St, October 21 and continues through November 3.) Mr Herrmann created the memorable music for a variety of films including Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Jason & the Argonauts, Cape Fear and tv's Twilight Zone.
It wouldn't be Halloween without this famed theme music that has become shorthand for the weird and frightening. So, Happy Halloween, all; and here's hoping that you're yourselves today.
Can't you just see Janet Lee, behind windshield, trying to see thru windshield wipers in heavy rain w/ this music?
ReplyDelete