“There was violence in American film but nothing like Psycho-nothing that intimate, nothing that designed, nothing with that kind of remorseless.”
PALMA MEANING ON EFFECTS CAMERA SERIAL
The film announced that “murder was now going to be an acceptable form of entertainment,” observes Bret Easton Ellis, author of the serial killer novel American Psycho, in 78/52. He also invited them to the set where he would reshoot the offending opening scene, but none of the censors showed up. He sent back a copy of the shower scene that was unchanged, confusing the censors as to whether they had seen something or not. The censors wanted that changed, too, but the savvy director tricked them.
But there also was the opening scene, in which Leigh’s Marion wears only a bra and slip, sharing a hotel room with her divorced lover. Leigh wore moleskin patches to hide sensitive areas, as did her body double, pin-up model and future Playboy cover star Marli Renfro, who took over for more exposed moments. The censors balked at what they perceived as nudity in the shower sequence. The film also rattled the censors who executed Hollywood’s slackening Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, which was in effect from 1934 to 1968. So Hitchcock financed its budget himself, against the advice of his own producers.
Paramount, the studio that had produced several of the director’s 1950s successes, refused to bankroll it. Psycho became Hitchcock’s most successful film at the time-its box-office take, $32 million, was the second best of 1960, after Spartacus.
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