James Burrell’s blog on Things Psycho pretty much illustrates how a film can impact a viewer.  Bernard Herrmann’s score wasn’t the first one I bought; that was, er, Jerry Goldsmith’s The Swarm, for $2.97, using coinage from returned Ginger Ale bottles, because I figured it would be ‘funny’ to have the score for the Golden Turkey Award for “The Most Badly Bumbled Bee Movie of All Time.”

The Swarm turned out to be a fun and good score, and that led to buying the Twilight Zone LPs (because Herrmann scored a number of primo episodes, as did Goldsmith), as well as the Psycho LP, which I saw for around $15 at Cheapies, near Wellesley Street in Toronto. This was the Italian RCA pressing, but it was the same 1975 Herrmann-conducted recording that was released in the UK by Unicorn.

I think the clerk thought I was nuts – Why wasn’t I buying an indie band? U2? Madonna? – but then another clerk also snickered not long after when I grabbed Leith Stevens’ Destination Moon (1950). His comment was something along the lines of “I think we sell one of these a year.”

Smart ass.
But I didn’t care because, like Psycho, I was getting the most complete experience of a score outside of the movie. The only available source for Psycho at the time was Herrmann’s superb Psycho suite on the Great Movie Thrillers LP via London Phase 4, but it didn’t have my favourite cues.
The RCA/Unicorn recording was slower, though, and that took me by surprise, considering the main title music in the movie blazes with a fury; if not because of the need to establish an intense opening (“the story you’re about to witness is HORRIFIC!”), then because Saul Bass’ horizontal lines just kept slashing across the screen, creating and tearing apart credits.

The funny thing is, it took maybe three years for me to see the film. When I was around ten or eleven, Alfred Hitchcock was bestowed the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, and I watched it because it was about movies. Then they showed the shower scene, and not knowing a thing about it, it permanently ruined my ability to take showers without a locked door.

My mother forbid me to watch any more horror films, but that proved pointless when lunches at the library were spent looking at coffee table books on horror films. (I still remember some image of a wolf-like monster with ripped out eyes. Gross, lurid, and kind of hypnotic when you’re ten – like staring at the flattened but still attached head of an otherwise normal torso of a cat who lost a fight with the morning Canada Post delivery truck.)

When my parent’s basement was renovated, I preferred to use the shower down there because it was bigger, the water was hotter, and the illumination was profound. (Green geometric wallpaper patterns were preferrable to the banana yellow paint and orange/white/green faux watercolour stripes that decorated the upstairs W.C.)

The door was also lockable, but there was one drawback: the shower stall faced a wall-to-wall mirror.

One morning I chose not to lock the bathroom door, because I felt confident no one would creep into the bathroom and attempt to make minced meat of me while my eyes were closed during the shampoo rinsing stage. I may have done this before on another rare day of bubbling self-confidence, but on this particular day, as I wiped the water away from my eyes, I thought I saw a dark blob through the foggy plastic curtain.

And then it moved to the corner, and then turned around, and came closer.

And then I knew I was dead, but I wanted to see who would dare shatter my confidence in showering with an unlocked door. So I pulled back the curtain, and through watery eyes saw my mother holding clean towels.

“Mom! Don’t do that!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“You scared me!”

“Mark, I told you to stop watching so many horror movies. You have to stop!”

The issue is that said mother did not understand that no one must EVER enter a bathroom if the shower is in use. It’s just a pop culture rule that’s accepted: You just don’t do it. You let the person finish, and then you knock and request entry.

Call it the Bates Rule, and it’s really quite civil. My mother was civil, but she never watched creepy movies. She just watched Maude, and referred to TV as the Idiot Box. (I’m not making this up. She hated TV, and the 12” B&W Admiral set we had for years was bought by my father while she was recovering from delivering me. My dad was a genius that day.)

So buying Psycho at 14 was an accomplishment because it meant I had seen the film and survived both it and the music to the extent that I wanted to relive it again via LP.

That vinyl platter led to an appreciation of Herrmann, reading the famous Hitchcock Truffaut book (a reprinted Q&A between the two directors discussing every Hitchcock film), and a rabid fascination with Hitchcock, which naturally led to Herrmann, not to mention composers Dimitri Tiomkin (Strangers on a Train), Roy Webb (Notorious), Franz Waxman (Rebecca, Rear Window), and Ron Goodwin (Frenzy).

Psycho opened the gates to film music history, as well as film history, which is why it’s so important to me. I would’ve stumbled upon it at some point, but fourteen was the magic age, and if I were to be stuck on an island, alongside Greek food and schnapps, I’d want that score with me, along with a few others, because there’s always little nuances you discover, rediscover, and re-appreciate.

In writing the appreciation of Herrmann’s Psycho for this month’s issue, we contacted a great group of composers, all of whom were asked to answer three questions. A few quotes were used in the article, but a lot of personal thoughts were too detailed, and really worked better as a straight Q&A, so in the first of a handful of Psycho-related blogs, here are some reflections by Elia Cmiral (Splinter) Daniel Licht (Dexter), and John Frizzell (Legion).

What in your eyes are key reasons Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho has managed to endure as a superlative example of horror film scoring?

Elia Cmiral: First of all, he was a great composer, and he was able to write very original scores, and managed to write something which is essential for the movie; to make a perfect marriage between music and the movie. That’s what I think we all [try to do].

Daniel Licht: I think one of the reasons is that it is actually very melodic as well as being suspenseful. The music isn’t just functionally underscoring the suspense; it’s actually creating its own kind of mood within the score that brings something to the picture.”

John Frizzell: Two reasons. One, he was able in the murder cue to create an iconic sonic depiction that had never been presented to the public that way, and he was able to create an iconic sound.

The second is the use of twentieth century techniques of expressing the emotional state of the characters, in particular when Marion Crane is driving out of town. The cue there depicts her emotional state in a way that I don’t think had ever been done in a film; it wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t quite minimalist, but it stood on its own as a new genre of music. In fact, maybe you can hear it reflected in other earlier works, but this was the first time that it had ever captured the public’s attention in a way that made it a landmark. A quantum shift is kind of a clichéd term to use, but it really did shift the way emotional context was expressed in film music.

What scene in Psycho represents the most perfect creation of visceral terror, as well as a sublime marriage of score, sounds, and image?

Daniel Licht: I keep starting with that driving scene. It’s just a person driving, but it’s the cue that creates a whole imagined storyline in the viewer’s mind.

I think that tends to be the best example, and more so than the shower scene, because it’s really just someone who’s driving and occasionally glances over and sees someone (a police car) pursuing her, but when you add the music to it, it becomes something different.

Daniel Licht: And there’s a romantic element to it that makes it interesting. If the score to Psycho was just the shower scene, I don’t think it would be as famous, even though everyone remembers that shower scene.

John Frizzell: For me, I’d go to the opening of Vertigo (1958) [because the music] is expressing another form of psychosis and neurosis musically, which is so interesting. The murder scene in Psycho is just an amazing amalgamation in connection between music and visuals that forever changed the way I ever saw films after the first time I saw it.

It’s pretty amazing that a score that was done 50 years ago and managed to impress people still sounds timeless, and doesn’t relate to the year 1960.

John Frizzell: It really doesn’t, and I think part of the element that does that is there’s a brilliance and a simplicity in it. There’s also the use of primarily strings, and so you have instruments that continue to be dominant in film music today, where perhaps woodwinds – Herrmann was particularly great at using woodwinds, particularly low woodwinds – but these scores particularly focused on strings, and maybe that adds to the timelessness.

Elia Cmiral: I remember I really loved the scene at the very beginning in the car when she’s driving away in the rain. That’s such a great piece of music. His music is great contemporary music, twentieth century music.

A number of composers have cited that sequence because the score adds information that the filmmaker didn’t really put in there.

Elia Cmiral: It’s a perfect example of what we try to do: the emotional impact, the subtleties, the tension; everything is there in the music. You only see a woman driving in the rain, but the music says everything. That’s what good score should do… In this case it was also a great match of two creative people: the director and the composer; without this chemistry, it’s very difficult to achieve the same kind of result… They probably understood each other without saying anything. I remember I read many years ago a biography on Herrmann that Hitchcock hadn’t heard the music until it was recorded and was completely done.

In your own work within the horror genre, have you sometimes found inspiration from Herrmann’s writing?

Daniel Licht: Absolutely. All the time. I just finished a film called Wake [that] is more of a supernatural psychological thriller, and it takes place in a motel in the desert, and I decided to do it with strings with ambient pads, and then orchestrating the strings around the ambient pads. It was a bit of a nod to Psycho. That was definitely an influence, but I think if you work in thrillers, we’re all influenced by Bernard Herrmann all the time. Part of it is his approach to write the music and just change the tempo to get into a scene… [It’s a style of writing] that has been picked up by a lot of composers everywhere.

John Frizzell: He’s constantly with everybody who writes about these subjects. If you didn’t feel a connection with his work, you probably wouldn’t be doing good work in any way, shape or form. He dramatically changed the landscape of film, and continues to.

Special thanks to Elia Cmiral, John Frizzell, and Daniel Licht for participating in this Q&A during their busy schedules, Ray Costa at Costa Communications for making the interviews possible in the blink of an eye, and Alea at Costa Communications for coordinating the interviews so beautifully.

Elia Cmiral has written scores for a number of genres, and much of his horror music is available on CD. His debut score, Apartment Zero (1990), is a mix of early synth sounds and a great title track patterns around the tango; Wrong Turn (2002) can best be characterized as a barbed wire ball of orchestral nastiness, whereas 20^th century meanness and electric guitar create a chilling soundscape in The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007). Also of note is Splinter (2008), which blenders music, experimental sounds and sound design. Inarguably one of the most underused composers around, comfortable in any genre, and adept with orchestral and electronic sounds.

Daniel Licht’s experience in horror includes a number of orchestral gems, such as his debut work, Children of the Night (1991), Bad Moon (1996), and the eerie Thinner (1996). His best-known credit is TV’s Dexter (2006-present, and covered in RM #74), a perfect fusion of eclectic sounds that are reflective of flawed characters and their unique psychoses, and a great showcase of his skill as a versatile musician.

John Frizzell’s scored comedies, dramas, and historical films, but his huge interest in pushing the boundaries of technical and creative scoring techniques have made him a popular choice for horror filmmakers. His early works are remarkable for their massive orchestral scope – Alien Resurrection (1997), 13 Ghosts (2001), Ghost Ship (2002) – and there’s an eloquence to the way he creates sonic malevolence. Frizzell’s interest in digital gear has yielded striking sounds in scores like Legion (2010), and Whiteout (2009).