Alfred Hitchcock Tantalizes Audiences with a Playful Trailer for Psycho (1960)

You can’t say that Hitch­cock did­n’t think through the angles when he released Psy­cho in 1960. As you may recall, Hitch­cock tight­ly con­trolled the pro­mo­tion for the film. The stars of the now clas­sic movie — Antho­ny Perkins and Janet Leigh — did­n’t talk to the media. Crit­ics weren’t giv­en pri­vate screen­ings. And Hitch­cock put a firm “no late admis­sion” pol­i­cy in place. If you did­n’t see the film from the begin­ning, you didn’t see it all. It’s a hard­ball approach that the direc­tor pub­li­cized in a video out­lin­ing The Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho.

But then there was a car­rot to accom­pa­ny the stick — a play­ful trail­er (above) that gave view­ers a light-heart­ed tour of the Psy­cho set. You know, the infa­mous Bates Motel. In the trail­er, Hitch­cock teas­es the audi­ence, almost giv­ing away spoil­er details, but nev­er quite goes that far. The cheer­ful music play­ing in the back­ground comes from Hitch­cock­’s lost mas­ter­piece The Trou­ble with Har­ry. And, it all ends with .… ok we won’t tell … but just keep in mind that what you see is not Janet Leigh. It’s actu­al­ly Vera Miles, who played a sup­port­ing role in the film, sport­ing a blonde wig and look­ing like Janet Leigh.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can’t watch Psy­cho on the web, but you can catch 22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video