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Psycho (1998)
Rate:
1
Viewed:
6/06, 7/19
6/06:
What the fuck was going on in Gus Van Sant's head when he agreed to plagiarize
Psycho?
Not only Gus did that abominable piece of shit, but he also went an extra step further to insult Alfred
Hitchcock by including a masturbation scene which is absolutely unfathomable. I'm sure everybody went, "Oh, yeah.
Psycho, that's an American classic," and then proceeded to unzip his fly to
piss on it.
It's one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life. It was copied scene for scene. Everybody who was part
of the remake should be shamed, and Vince Vaughn will burn forever in cinema hell for what he did.
All in all, Alfred Hitchcock is fucking spinning in his coffin.
7/19:
Gus Van Sant's Psycho is what gives remakes a bad name.
The point of them, which he totally misses, is to improve on the original after discovering some faults.
The Thing and Cape Fear are good
examples. Yet Psycho had none to begin with and is a bona fide horror
masterpiece. Instead, Gus practically lifts everything from it by looking at the movie itself and tells
everybody, "I want you to do this and that the exact same way." In fact, it isn't even a remake but a pure
rip-off which was gladly green-lit by Universal Studios.
Pat Hitchcock commented that his father would've been thrilled with the whole exercise. No, she's wrong. He
would be spinning in his grave, having been appalled at what the fuck just happened. Not only is the remake
a virtual scene-for-scene (shot-for-shot isn't exactly the correct term) of the original, but it's also
masturbated upon. I can imagine Anthony Perkins losing five years of his life by this alone. He would've
been pissed off, too, about the gay innuendos made by several commentators in the DVD special
Psycho Path. That's not what the movie was about; it's Norman Bates murdering people while pretending
to be his mother.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the 1998 version is the original and that Alfred Hitchcock's
picture doesn't exist. It'll still get a '1' from me because of the terrible performances. Plus, every single
scene is poorly executed with an E.T. doing the butchering in the shower. Now, to change the circumstances by
assuming the original exists, there are no surprises or shocking moments; it happened in 1960, the very first
time the movie was shown, and it's history. When the plagiarized remake came out, everybody, including me,
was already past the point.
As for the two central characters, Anne Heche is awful. She even sucks in math by missing the subtracted total
by a dollar. Vince Vaughn is goofy stupid. To compare them with Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, respectively,
is night and day. It's obvious by their facial expressions alone.
What's with the Boogie Nights cast? I see three of them: Julianne
Moore (with her walkman on!), William H. Macy, and Philip Baker Hall. The first two have done a great job of
stabbing Psycho to death with their abysmal performances. Robert Forster
is like, "Ah, fuck it," when he gives the Simon Oakland speech.
Andrei Konchalovsky said remaking Psycho could be compared to doing
Hamlet or Othello for the umpteenth time. But there lies the difference: both are plays which
are left to open interpretation while Gun Van Sant lifted everything from the original with slight differences.
In fact, I think it's the only film ever to have been done this way.
Joseph Stefano's writing was given a face-lift to make it more attuned to the 90's, yet I shudder at the line,
"If it don't jell, it ain't Jell-O, and this just ain't jelling" when the following original line sounds
better, "You see, if it doesn't jell, it isn't aspic, and this ain't jelling."
All in all, Gus Van Sant ruined his reputation by plagiarizing Psycho.