02 January 2011

Episode 1: Psycho

In which an Oscar nominated director is accused of being a tracer, masturbation is declared to be wrong, and our guest is broken on more than one occasion....

Illustration by Dana Miller. Check out her deviantART page.

Download MP3.

A big huge wonderful sensational not at all desperate thank you to Dayna from Made of Fail. While child services would likely disagree, she's the best parental figure any podcast could ask for.

As we're sure you'll note early on, Noel doesn't talk for long stretches during the first half, and when he does, there's often the sounds of banging in the background. That's because, we kid you not, a maintenance dude showed up to fix a leaking faucet, something Noel requested two months ago, literally less than a minute before we were about to start recording. Since we'd rescheduled things twice already, we just decided to plug ahead, and an extra thanks must be given to Dayna's ranting skills so Noel could often mute his mic over the noise.

For more information about the 1960 version of Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, visit its IMDB and Wikipedia pages.

For more information about the 1998 version by Gus Van Sant, visit its IMDB and Wikipedia pages.

And for more information about the original 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, visit its Wikipedia page.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Came over from MoF, and loved the first episode (well, episode 1 and 0). I've never actually seen the Psycho remake- which I've thought that's a good thing, but after listening to your podcast, I really want to check it out.

Keep up the great work! I look forward to the next episode!

NoelCT said...

Thanks a lot, Princessstarr!

The Psycho remake is almost worth checking out just for how strange a beast it is. It's not only interesting for what it gets right, but for what it gets spectacularly wrong.

Anonymous said...

after listening to your podcast, I really want to check it out.

NOOOOOO YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR

xenelle said...

Came over from MoF - still listening to ep 1 but felt the need to comment - I saw the remake first and TBH I think I had to lamp shade hang some parts to keep watching - I found the dialogue stilted and the pacing (especially as i knew how it ended thus the surprise ending =not a surprise) off. I think that the main lamp shade hanging I did was the nooner - I don't remember if this was in the remake or not but I told my self it was because the b/f was cheating, and that's why they had to hide the relationship. I thought that the wanking scene was skeevy but that the dir. was trying to use that as a 'switch' for Mother to come out and kill Mary-Anne for 'forcing' Norman to wank. Though I have a tendency to lamp shade things where possible to help me get through something some films/tv that I want to keep watching/paid for.

The only casting issue I had was that I found it to be rather white. Granted I'm not quite sure if there was a choice to go with people who looked like the actors in the original or not - seeing as it was a shot for shot copy of the original but it was something I pondered.

Marcoast said...

After I listened this episode I decided to watch the remake, its not as bad was I thought it would be, but its not great either (5/10).

Of course the opening aerial shot is awesome, and Julianne Mooroe as Lila is a more captivating character than the original. The mains problems of the remake are like you said, the scrit is outdated and Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.

Other things that disturb me are the random images that appear during the death scenes, the stupid jump scare with the mirrors in mother's room, and the last scene with Norman Bates [SPOILER] when his face and mother's appear superimposed, as the last scare, I know that also happened in the original, but it was more subtle.