Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh (add more)
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
In the closing scene, right before Marion's car is pulled out of the swamp, Norman Bates, or 'Mother' at this point, is sitting in a chair talking to himself. Watch his face closely before it shows Marion's car, and you can see the skeleton of Mrs. Bates superimposed over him. [Any information that can be gained simply by watching the film is not trivia.]
Corrected by Blibbetyblip
A body-double was used in the Shower Scene when anything else besides Janet Leigh's (Marion Crane) face, neck, shoulders, and arms are seen on screen. [This is not true. Leigh has been asked about this, and said that she was in the shower the whole time. A body double was used in other scenes though.]
The sound of Sam running down the stairs to get to the basement should have been heard, as the stairs are old and he is going quickly, but instead he just pops out and stops Norman from getting to Lila. He probably was just standing nearby. [Lila and "Mother's" screams could have easily drowned out the sound of Sam's footsteps. And we DO hear footsteps just before Sam appears.]
When Martin Balsam questions Anthony Perkins, Perkins says that during her stay at the motel, Janet Leigh didn't make any phone calls. "Did you sleep with her?" Balsam asks. Perkins says no. "Then how do you know she didn't make any phone calls?"
This would have been verifiable on the switchboard, where a record would have been kept, especially in the case of a motel, where guests' phone calls are bound to be long distance. [This a character mistake from detective Arbogast's side. He assumes that Norman would have had to stay in Marion's room the whole time to be so sure she did not make any phone calls, but he does not know anything about running a motel, or how things like this are recorded.]
Corrected by Twotall
In the very brief time between Arbogast's re-arrival at the motel and his murder, Norman manages to disappear behind the motel, reach an upstairs bedroom in the house, and change into "Mother" by the time Arbogast reaches the top of the stairs. Not only that, he does this without Arbogast seeing him, even though it's been established that the house is visible from the office. [Arbogast didn't go straight to the house after he made his phone call. It gave Norman plenty of time to change. Besides, he must have been used to changing into "Mother" by that point, since he'd done it so many times before, so it wouldn't take that long.]
During the filming of the shower scene, the filmmakers used very cold water so that the expression of horror/shock on Janet Leigh's face would be as realistic as possible. Mentioned in the Universal Studio tour. [Untrue, and it's been corrected many times before. Janet Leigh said in an interview that in fact Hitchcock always made sure she was comfortable during the shooting of the shower scene. The cold water is a myth.]
At the end of the movie, Sam is knocked unconscious by Norman. In the next minute or so, he manages to regain consciousness, run all the way to the house, and get to Lila and Mother in the basement. How is that possible? [It's not entirely *impossible*. First, the blow might have just stunned Sam, rather than knocking him out completely. Secondly, the house isn't that far from the motel - Sam could have recovered and reached the house in the time it took for Norman to become "Mother". Lastly, with both Lila and "Mother's" screams, it would have been easy for Sam to find them.]
When Arbogast reaches the top of the stairs and Norman (as Mrs. Bates) rushes out and stabs him, in the wide shot he misses Arbogast's face, no blood appears, and the knife hits him near his chest. But in the closeup, Arbogast suddenly has a bloody slash down his face. [It's a spurt of blood from his chest wound that's on his face, not a bloody gash.]
Before the famous shower scene, the woman removes her gown, and leaves it by the toilet. Once stabbed, she falls out of the shower (next to the toilet), and it has changed position. The gown then disappears when Norman is mopping the blood off the side of the bathtub and floor. [No, it's there the entire time. She drops the gown over the toilet seat. When Norman comes in to clean, it's still there, and he even picks it up and puts it on the toilet tank.]
After being stabbed in the shower, Marion's hair is flatly pressed down on her head. Later, when you see her lying dead, her hair is more curly. [It's possible that when her hair started to dry it began curling up. Mine does this all the time.]
Why does Norman carry a closed umbrella when it is raining? [Norman only goes back to get the umbrella so that he can hold it over Marion. By the time he gets to her, she's already under the porch's overhang, so it's useless. Hence, his later joke about his 'trusty umbrella'.]
When Detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) arrives to question Norman, he gets out of the passenger-side door of his car (we're watching from the driver's side and he's opposite us). The steering wheel looks like it's on the right side too. Flipped film? [The steering wheel is where it should be, on the left side. He parks and simply slides out the passenger side to avoid walking around.]
Something's not right about the money ratio in this film. The guy gives $40,000 to buy a house, which I assume in 1960 was a great deal of money and could have bought a substantial sized property. Yet when Janet Leigh trades her car in, she has to pay a difference of $700. Thats an awful big difference between two second hand cars bearing in mind the cars are quite similar and you can buy a great big house for $40,000. [The dealer knows it's a great deal of money. He starts high and expects the customer to negotiate price. It just happened that Marion wasn't in a negotiating type of mood, and even the dealer was surprised she took it for so much money.]
Norman Bates invites Marion to have dinner with him as he was going to eat anyway. She accepts and he brings down sandwiches. She then says she's not got any appetite, and he said they are all for her anyway as he's not hungry. Odd really, why would he make dinner for himself if he didn't want to eat and why would she accept dinner if she doesn't want to eat either? [Marion IS hungry, she just tells Norman she hasn't much of an appetite, since "Mrs. Bates" had just screamed that she didn't want Marion feeding her appetite with "my food or my son". As for Norman, he was being polite.]
When Norman is cleaning the bathroom, he leaves the toilet seat down. But later, when Sam and Lila go into that same bathroom, they find the seat up. [Several days pass between the two scenes. Plenty of time for Norman to give the bathroom a second cleaning.]
Corrected by Twotall
When Norman carries his dead mother down the stairs her legs are not stiff at all, but wiggle around loosely as he turns at the banister and begins his stairway descent. However, it may have given the plot away if she looked dead and stuffed at that point in the movie, but if she had been dead for many years (I assume stuffed by Norman), they would be stiff and rigid and not bend loosely below the knees. [He probably stuffed her so as to be "poseable" rather than in a fixed position since sometimes she sits in the chair, sometimes she's laid on the bed. Actually it might be easier to do it this way as you wouldn't have to insert rods to prevent the knees from bending.]
After Marion has worked out how much money she owes back when she decides to return to Phoenix, she rips up the piece of paper she wrote it on and throws it into the toilet. Later on her boyfriend and her sister come to find where she is and enter the bathroom she was killed, the sister looks down next to the toilet and there is a piece of the torn paper which she picks up. However when Marion was tearing up the piece of paper you can see that all the bits fell directly into the toilet making it impossible for that piece to be there. [Marion does throw all the pieces into the toilet but Lila (the sister) gets the piece FROM the toilet, not next to it. She says something like "There's something that hasn't dissolved here."]
Hitchcock turned on ice cold water half way into the scene without Janet Leigh's knowledge to get a genuine scream in the shower scene [No, this isn't true. Janet Leigh said in an interview that in fact Hitchcock always made sure she was comfortable during the shooting of the shower scene.]
In the Scene where Norman spies on Marion, he is looking right into the bathroom, but his office is next to her bedroom, rather than the bathroom. Hitchcock did this on purpose though, to see if anyone was paying close attention. [Marion is undressing in the bedroom not in the bathroom, the door to the bathroom can be seen centre frame. Incidentally, early cinema prints had a rather racy shot of Marion removing her black bra.]
When Norman goes to clean Marion's room, he goes into his office and comes out with a mop. Yet when he enters Marion's room, Norman also has a mop bucket with him (which he did not have before). [When Norman goes to get the mop he also has a bucket, when he enters the room you can just see the metal handle in his other hand.]
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