Lights out at the Bates Motel
Sad to hear that the star of my favorite scary movie, and one of my ten favorite films of all time, has passed on: Janet Leigh, who changed the face of motion pictures forever as Marion Crane, the victim of the world's most famous shower-stall murder, in Alfred Hitchcock's nonpareil Psycho. Is there a more indelible image in all of cinema than Leigh's horrified scream as Anthony Perkins's butcher knife swings down and Bernard Herrmann's violins screech in the background?
Ms. Leigh's lengthy Hollywood career held more delights than just her best-known role. She was equally fine as Meg March in the 1949 version of Little Women, as the master magician's longsuffering wife in Houdini (opposite then-husband Tony Curtis), as the bride of Charlton Heston's Mexican detective in Orson Welles's classic film noir Touch of Evil (if you haven't seen this picture, run — don't walk — to your local DVD outlet and pick it up), and one of the key players in John Frankenheimer's original Manchurian Candidate (ditto). In light of that sensational body of work, we can forgive her for Night of the Lepus, can't we?
And of course, Ms. Leigh provided the cinema an additional gift by bringing another scream queen into the world: daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, with whom she costarred in John Carpenter's The Fog.
A great loss to entertainment, though her films live on.
One related thought. To today's audiences accustomed to bucketloads of faux gore splattered across the screen, the terror engendered by Psycho (during its original 1960 theatrical release, people with weak hearts were cautioned against seeing it) may seem inexplicable. But I recall watching Psycho for my umpteenth time in a university auditorium on Halloween night in 1980 with a roomful of college kids, most of whom had never seen the film before. Trust me when I say that more lights were left on in dormitory rooms that night than on any other occasion in the history of that campus. Hitchcock knew what he was doing.
Ms. Leigh's lengthy Hollywood career held more delights than just her best-known role. She was equally fine as Meg March in the 1949 version of Little Women, as the master magician's longsuffering wife in Houdini (opposite then-husband Tony Curtis), as the bride of Charlton Heston's Mexican detective in Orson Welles's classic film noir Touch of Evil (if you haven't seen this picture, run — don't walk — to your local DVD outlet and pick it up), and one of the key players in John Frankenheimer's original Manchurian Candidate (ditto). In light of that sensational body of work, we can forgive her for Night of the Lepus, can't we?
And of course, Ms. Leigh provided the cinema an additional gift by bringing another scream queen into the world: daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, with whom she costarred in John Carpenter's The Fog.
A great loss to entertainment, though her films live on.
One related thought. To today's audiences accustomed to bucketloads of faux gore splattered across the screen, the terror engendered by Psycho (during its original 1960 theatrical release, people with weak hearts were cautioned against seeing it) may seem inexplicable. But I recall watching Psycho for my umpteenth time in a university auditorium on Halloween night in 1980 with a roomful of college kids, most of whom had never seen the film before. Trust me when I say that more lights were left on in dormitory rooms that night than on any other occasion in the history of that campus. Hitchcock knew what he was doing.
SwanShadow was randomly pounding the keyboard at 12:16 PM
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