Influence of Hitchcock's Psycho on Culture and the Movie Industry

When Alfred Hitchcock was originally shooting Psycho (1960), he realized that it would make an impact on many viewers. What he did not realize is the cultural impact that it would still have almost fifty years later.

One of the more obscure facts about Psycho concerns the paperwork that the actors and actresses were forced to sign along with the rest of the crew. This paperwork explained that Universal Studios and Alfred Hitchcock would sue anyone for a large sum of money if they were to speak about anything to do with the movie.

While this had been done to a small extent before Psycho, the exasperating amount (that has never been fully disclosed) was a first. Ever since then, nondisclosure agreements have become the norm in Hollywood.

Many directors believed that it ruined their vision for a movie if the theatergoers were not all in their seas when the movie started. Hitchcock made it a rule that no one was allowed into the movie theater once Psycho had started. Once again, he made movie theater owners sign statements that explained this rule, and the fact that they would be sued if they did not follow.

On top of this, they would no longer be given Universal Studios movies to show ever again. This was a major threat to any theater owner since most of the movies out of Universal Studios were big moneymakers.

There were very few directors that ever believed that this was possible. Once they saw Psycho, and realized that the main female lead in the movie was actually a thief, they realized why Hitchcock made this requirement. They realized that she had to die since she had done something evil.

This became a norm later on when the slasher movies came out. Many of the victims in slasher movies die because of the fact that the have done something illegalal, or unethical. The most common victim became the high school teen who was doing drugs or having premarital sex. This was all inspired by Psycho.