Pre-Halloween Screening: Hitchcock's PSYCHO

To help get you into the spirit of the season the Napa Valley Opera House will screen Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO two nights before Halloween - Tuesday, October 29th at 7:00 pm. In 1960, Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense when he released PSYCHO and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly a common moment in a major studio film in 1960), PSYCHO announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that score what followed would hardly disappoint. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is unhappy in her job at a Phoenix, Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with hardware store manager Sam Loomis (John Gavin). One afternoon, Marion is given $40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave Phoenix for good and start a new life with her purloined nest egg. 36 hours later, paranoia and exhaustion have started to set in, and Marion decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel, where nervous but personable innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother. There's hardly a film fan alive who doesn't know what happens next but while the shower scene is justifiably the film's most famous sequence, there are dozens of memorable bits throughout this film. Never has a film been so imitated, talked about, analyzed and criticized. When first released in 1960 audiences were shocked by the film's frankness and boldness in its subjected matter, starkness of the film's black & white photography and shrieking music score of Bernard Herrmann. Tuesday Night Flick's programmer and host Richard Miami will introduce the film with stories on the film's plot source, production challenges, Hitchcock's fight with the censors and other tasty morsels.To quote Norman Bates - "She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?"

TICKETS: Order online NVOH.org Order by phone 707.226.7372
May be purchased in advance or day of film screening at the Napa Valley Opera House Box Office at 1030 Main Street in downtown Napa. Single films are $7 or...... purchase Three-Film Package: Three films for $15 (that's only $5 per film!)