Why am I such a Sicko for PSYCHO?

April 8, 2008 | By: William McCamment

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Was he based on a real person? I have a somewhat unique knowledge of this movie (one of my favorites) and will share some of the creepy details with you in this blog post.

You can’t take me anywhere. If you do, I’ll embarrass you by walking up to the first stranger I see and offer obscure trivia relating to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 movie, Psycho. You will know I’m doing this even if you are out of earshot because the look on the person’s face will exactly resemble that of someone who has just been handed a gift-basket of dog-doo cupcakes.

The fact that I know so much about the movie Psycho is disturbing; even to me. In all fairness, though, my freakish knowledge came to me, not because I’m some kind of vintage horror movie junkie, or that I have a secret desire to conceal my dead mother’s mummified corpse in the fruit-cellar, but because of a series of bizarre coincidences and serendipitous accidents.

When I was sixteen-years-old I found a mangled paperback containing a bunch of horror stories by various American writers. After reading the first few without so much as a yawn, I came across one entitled, The Animal Fair, by some guy named Robert Bloch. Up to this point I had never heard of the guy. But, I will never, EVER, forget my reaction after reading that story. It was the sickest, most twisted piece of literature I had ever encountered. I was hooked.

I began reading everything of his that I could get my hands on, most of it in the form of short stories. Amazingly, I didn’t read his most-famous novel, Psycho, until years later and long after I had seen Hitchcock’s adaptation several times.

Most people would probably consider Bloch’s work terrifying, but to me, almost all of it, at least on some level, is funny—even Psycho. The guy was hilarious.

Although I never got to meet Robert Bloch, I heard stories about how funny he was in person. When people found out he was the author of Psycho, they’d often accuse him of being deranged; seeing no other way he could have come up with such a tale. Bloch’s response was priceless: “Actually I have the heart of a small boy,” he would reply. “I keep it in a jar on my desk.”*

My Weird Connection: Psycho was first published by Simon & Schuster in 1959 (the year I was born) and Robert Bloch died on September 23, 1994 (my 34^th birthday).

In 1993, my (then) wife and I moved from Huntington Beach, California (population 180,000) to Almond, Wisconsin (population 455). I don’t have the space here to explain such an insane move, but maybe I’ll write about it some day. After we learned our way around, we began going out to Sunday breakfast. Since the local restaurant in Almond was closed on Sundays, we would skip over to the adjoining town of Plainfield and eat at the local Truck Stop. It was there that I learned about Plainfield’s most notorious historical resident: Ed Gein.

Eddie, it turns out, was the inspiration for Norman Bates in Robert Bloch’s novel. On November 16, 1957 he, Gein, walked into Worden’s hardware store in downtown Plainfield, brutally shot and killed Bernice Worden, then took her body home where he hung it up in a shed and dressed it out like a deer carcass. His intention was to make a female-vest to wear around the house while taking on the personality of his dead mother (I’m not joking).

When the authorities caught-up with him they found not only Mrs. Worden’s body, but a whole house full of human remains cobbled into furniture including lamp shades made of human skin; bed posts topped with human skulls, and much more. (I’ll spare the gory details here—after all, this is supposed to be a humor blog)

It seems Eddie had been doing a bit of grave-robbing to furnish his house. One of his favorite graveyards was Spiritland Cemetery which happens to be located in—tada!—my happy little town of Almond (I have since moved back to Southern California—not because of the Gein connection, but because of my divorce).

If you are one of the few people still reading this, can you see how it’s not entirely my fault that I’m so knowledgeable about this movie? I just happened to move to an area that was closely connected with Psycho. But, wait! There’s more!

While writing Psycho, Robert Bloch lived in the small town of Weyauwega which was about 30 miles from Almond. Every week-day on my way to work I passed this small town and its small motel sitting right off highway 10 called, The Lakeside Inn. I’m sure you have already guessed that this was the inspiration for the Bates’ Motel in Bloch’s novel. I drove by the Bates’ Motel nearly every day. I didn’t plan it. It’s not my fault.

Not far from Weyauwega was the town of Waupaca. We would often go to a movie there since it was the closest place to do so, and then grab a bite to eat, check out the antique shops, or just wander around admiring the town’s many beautiful old Victorian style houses. One house near the post office was quite impressive. I later found out that it was Alfred Hitchcock’s inspiration for the Psycho House in the movie (this is according to a newspaper article I read and also what a local Wisconsin Convention & Visitor’s Bureau employee told me).

I could seriously go on and on about my accidental brushes with Psycho history and other, unrelated Psycho trivia, but this post is running way too long already, so I’ll just give you one last unrelated, but interesting tidbit: the blood in the shower scene is actually Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup (true, I swear. They used it because it looked more realistic on black & white film than stock movie blood).

*NOTE TO STEPHEN KING FANS: The “heart of a small boy” quote above is often attributed to King but is indisputably Bloch’s. It appears, in full, on the rear dustjacket panel of his 1947 novel, The Scarf. (Stephen King was a new-born baby in September of 1947).