Psycho Shower Scene

The shower murder scene in psycho is probably the most iconic image of a thriller to date. Made in 1960, without any special FX, it was all created in black and white, and was very clever when it came to the stabbing itself. The knife is never seen actually entering the body and we also do not see any wound where the blood comes from, yet its still one of the most effective killings in film history.

The sound used in this scene gives a massive addition to the atmosphere's tense and suspense feeling. When she is in the shower, the clip is full completely of natural sound, there is nothing else going on, this works well when we can see the silhouette of the killer through the shower screen. As soon as the screen is pulled back, and the killer is a little more clear, the non-digetic sounds start. The background sound is the iconic screeching as the knife enters her body repeatedly. It becomes more intense as her struggle with the killer grows. It could be said that the screeching noise represents her heartbeat, as it gets louder and faster as she panics more. The sound starts to slow down as the killer leaves the room and she is left for dead. It's intensity and speed starts decreasing as she slides down the wall and grabs the curtain, it has then stopped by the time her body hits the floor, and natural sound returns when we see the images of the blood flowing in the bath.

The camera angles are another key point when it came to the production of this scene. It is claimed that the camera takes a POV of the knife, and this prevents us from seeing any blood and gore. There were over 70 different camera angles used when filming this relatively short sequence, and this is what is known as a montage. It is also said that when filming from all these camera angles, not once do we see the knife touch or impale Janet Leigh - This isn't strictly true. In three frames, the knife does actually penetrate her skin just below the belly button, it goes in about a 1/4 of an inch.

Another clever bit of directing from Hitchcock was that he felt filming in colour would show too much gore, so he decided to shoot the film in black and white to give more suspense rather than horror. He also understood that stage blood appeared grey when in black and white footage, so decided to use chocolate syrup to get the blood that goes down the bath into the plug.