SOREN ANDERSEN | Opinion 'Psycho' shower scene is still a pure slice of horror

Janet Leigh's death got me thinking about one of the most frightening moments in my moviegoing life. It's a fall evening in 1967, and the lads of West Quad at the University of Michigan are gathered in the dining hall for a movie. It's "Psycho."
We all knew about the Shower Scene, of course. It was legendary from Day One. But, seven long years after "Psycho's" 1960 release, we're thinking: How scary can it still be, really?
This is in the days before video, remember, and the picture is one that's more talked-about than recently seen. And we're young men of the world, after all.
Students at one of the world's great universities. Sophisticates. Or so we like to think.
And besides, the setting -- an institutional dining hall -- and the presentation -- a 16mm copy of the film running through a noisy projector -- are guaranteed to take some of the edge off. Or so we think.
Screams
The lights go down. The picture unspools. The shower curtain is yanked back. The blade comes down. And Janet Leigh screams. And screams.
The lads gasp. And cry out.
Afterward, back in the light, back up on our corridor, everybody is talking about the picture.
We're talking out in the corridor, one can't help but notice. No one wants to go back into his room. No one wants to leave the protective presence of the crowd.
We're talking in excitable, high-pitched voices. We sound for all the world like gelded chipmunks. Sophisticates. Su-u-ure.
And that night, nobody wants to go down the hall to the showers. For sure.
That scene is all about vulnerability, and violation. Naked, alone, enclosed in a bubble of steam, deafened by the sound of rushing water, Leigh is in a comfortable, intensely private reverie when in an instant it's all ripped away: shower curtain, privacy, sense of safety, life itself.
We're unhinged
Bernard Herrmann's shrieking strings meld seamlessly with Leigh's screams as the knife comes down and comes down and comes down. We think we see the blade enter flesh, but we really don't as our terrified mind's eye fills in what Alfred Hitchcock's artful editing left out. And that's really chocolate sauce, not blood, swirling down the drain. But the mind doesn't know that, either -- certainly not back then -- and we're momentarily unhinged by the horror, the horror.
In the more than four decades since "Psycho's" release, that scene has been copied and parodied to the point where it's lost much of its shock value. But it's burrowed deep into the world's collective consciousness in a way few movie moments have. Since "Psycho," we've never regarded showers in quite the same way ever again.
Whether we ever admit it to ourselves or not, somewhere, way down, we feel a tingle of fear when the sound of the water blots everything out.
What waits on the other side of the curtain?
Norman?
Is that you?
XAndersen writes for Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune.