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Philip J. Skerry, The Shower Scene in Hitchcock's Psycho: Creating Cinematic Suspense and Terror. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005. 409 pp. $129.95 cloth.
One's opinion of Philip J. Skerry's The Shower Scene in Hitchcock's Psycho: Creating Cinematic Suspense and Terror will likely depend in large part on whether the reader appreciates the author's "postmodern" (3) approach. Following critics such as Linda Williams and Paul Monaco, Skerry argues that Psycho-and the shower murder sequence, in particularrepresents the dividing line between classical and postmodern cinema. His book "weave[s] multiple perspectives and voices into the fabric of the text" (2) in an attempt to create an appropriately unconventional narrative structure, mixing formal analysis, cast and crew interviews, effusive claims for Psycho's cultural significance, and a compilation of accounts by viewers recalling their first experiences of the film. This unusual, varied design is connected explicitly to Skerry's interest in audience response and the film's wide-ranging influence, but also implicitly to the shifting system of character alignment within the film.
Approximately half of the text appears in the form of traditional, critically-oriented chapters, but nearly as many pages are devoted to interviews (there are six, in all) and a concluding "memory" chapter, "The First Time." The latter includes reminiscences of first viewings of Psycho by a few notables such as director Wes Craven and Hitchcock biographer Patrick McGilligan, but is comprised mainly of anecdotes by individuals identified as teachers, attorneys, retired electrical engineers, or in two cases simply "Film Buff." Skerry never explains how he collected these stories and statements, which seems uncharacteristic, as he's not shy about inserting himself into the other chapters, whether it be references to his acquaintance with screenwriter Joseph Stefano and actress Janet Leigh or an explanation of how he approaches teaching Hitchcock to "students from a wide variety of ages, backgrounds, educational levels, and cultural experiences" (3) and the effect of his teaching experience on this book's methodology. I suspect that many of the contributors must be friends, family members, students, and colleagues of the author. Regardless, their stories attest to remarkably similar reactions, with most members split into two camps: either they did not expect the shower murder and were completely terrified when it occurred, or they knew something...