A trip to the movies.

I like the type of films when you see someone in a situation, and you think, hmmm something is not quite right here. Is it the music, or have they done something strange with the colouring of the film? Something is not quite right though, you know that much. Then the situation becomes more and more strained and bizarre until at a certain critical point the person you’ve been focused on wakes up, you then realise that they had been dreaming all along. It becomes calm and peaceful again, and they start to make a cup of tea or something normal.

Then something bizarre happens again, the kettle turns into a beetle and crawls across the table. What’s happening, are they are still dreaming? Yes they are, and a new sense of relief occurs, but it kind of sets you up for the rest of the film, anything can happen now.

It was Johnny Musto’s idea, he kept talking about a film that was coming out soon, and it was, so he said, the scariest film ever made. This was how he hooked us, us being about ten 13-14 year olds school friends. The film in question was Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’, and it was showing at a now long gone cinema in Ealing called the ‘Walpole’.

Off we went on the 207 bus along the Uxbridge Road to a destination that would have some pretty strong impact on me. The Walpole was a strange cinema as far as I can remember, and it was my one and only visit. It was a double bill, with Orson Welles’, ‘War of the Worlds’ and Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’, what a bargain!

We sat through War of the Worlds, which was a real unexpected treat. Full colour Martians attacking Earth and the main actor Gene Barry, the guy from the 60’ TV series,‘77 Sunset Strip’ fame. It was a fantastic war between man and machine- like creatures whose ultimate destruction was caused by the intervention of the common cold no less. Wow!

Then the main moment, the one we had all been waiting for arrives. For what seemed like months we had waited to see this, the scariest film ever made, the time had finally came. But wait, what is this? It’s in black and white! This is not good, not after the Technicolor Martian stuff we had just been engrossed by.

The story begins, the story of a boring middle class, and to me at that age, what seemed like a middle-aged woman who had stolen some money. The music was a bit weird too, of course as I now know it was typical Hitchcock, but then it just seemed weird. It was slow and boring with all these grown up people doing boring grown up things.

Being thirteen and afflicted with what is now commonly known as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), I was ready to go home after fifteen minutes of this, I wanted out of there. I’d had my fill; the Martians had done it for me. But then, hold on a minute, she’s pulling up outside this creepy looking motel; hmmm this guy looks a bit odd. I waited, sitting literally on the edge of my seat.

It got better as she went into a room and got undressed; my thirteen year olds dreams has come true, and wait a minute, the guy is looking at her through a hole in the wall, oh my God, what a lucky fucker he is.

The music is quieter now, in fact it might have even stopped as she takes the shower, the oh so famous shower. But we had no idea. Hmmm she’s having a shower, and there is a very peculiar kind of tension floating around the place, something is going to happen, you just know it. And then suddenly the curtain pulls back, the shrieks of the violin, or is it the screams of the woman. Then we see the figure of what looks like a tall old woman, we see the knife, and the slashing of the knife, and blood running down the body of this poor woman, and all in black and white. Oh my God!

Suddenly it stops and goes quiet. We see the victim’s blood draining away down the plughole. Phew!!

There was more terror on the way from that point on, lots more. In fact it was relentless, and all through the rest of that film I think I never looked away from the screen once, and never acknowledged the existence of any of my partners in terror, all sitting along the same row.

The scenes get scarier, as the master of suspense tightens the strings. The most terrifying scene for me is the one where, thinking it is an old woman, the heroine runs into the room, and spinning what she believes to be the old lady around in the rocking chair discovers that ‘she’ is a corpse. Then of course the full horror of the story implodes into the brain box. It is the young guy, the hotel manager dressing up as the mother, the jaw drops a bit more.

I don’t remember leaving the cinema or the trip home or talking about it ever again with my friends, but we must surely have done.

So, like I said at the beginning of this story. The types of film I like are the ones where you see someone in a situation and there is something strange about the situation. You cant quite put you’re finger on it but somehow, you know something is going to happen. You know what I mean?