Who'd have thought it; Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was meant to be a comedy. Shower murders, psychos and sexuality - not exactly what we'd call a barrel of laughs though, would you? Reported by The Telegraph, through research of old BBC archived interviews, it has come out that Hitchcock had hoped it to be received as a somewhat 'tongue-in-cheek' affair. So much so, he was actually 'horrified' by audiences' reactions.
Sure to stick a pipe in the mouths of film buffs everywhere (his true intentions have fuelled debate for decades), Hitchcock revealed his intentions on a TV show called Monitor in July 1964: "I once made a movie, rather tongue-in-cheek, called 'Psycho'... A lot of people looked at this thing and said what a dreadful thing to do, how awful, and so forth... The content as such was, I felt, rather amusing and it was a big joke. I was horrified to find that some people took it seriously."
He continued: "It was intended to cause people to scream and yell and so forth, but no more than screaming and yelling on a switchback railway... I'm possibly in some respects the man who says in constructing it, 'how steep can we make the first dip?' If you make the dip too deep, the screams will continue as the car goes over the edge and destroys everyone... Therefore you mustn't go too far because you do want them to get off the switchback railway, giggling with pleasure."
I certainly don't recall giggling with pleasure myself. Learn something new every day, eh?
Hitchcock's autobiographical movie - Hitchcock - hits Irish cinemas today! Review here.
