Spend the Night with Norman Bates Midnights at the Tivoli – PSYCHO

What a weekend for St. Louis-area horror fans! NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is screening midnights at the Hi-Pointe (and at Webster U Sunday night), the living dead doc BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD is playing Saturday night at Webster U with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD screenwriter John Russo in attendance, and if that isn’t enough big-screen classic horror madness, Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960) is this week’s midnight show at the Reel Late at the Tivoli series.

Nowadays, when any psychological thriller featuring a loony with a knife is designated “Hitchcockian” in some quarters, it’s easy to forget just what a dramatic change of pace this was for Hitchcock. Inspired by the life of the demented, cannibalistic Wisconsin killer Ed Gein (whose gruesome acts would also inspire THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and DERANGED), PSYCHO’s importance to the horror genre cannot be overestimated. PSYCHO has it all: romance, embezzlement, disappearance, secrets, voyeurism, a dead corpse, a split personality of a man who thinks from time to time he’s his dead mother, and of course Janet Leigh hacked to death in the shower. None of Hitchcock’s films had as profound an impact upon the American psyche as PSYCHO. When it was initially released in 1960, it was a huge box office hit (there are stories of 3-mile long lines at drive-in entrances), and its popularity has not waned over the last five decades.

If you’ve never experienced PSYCHO on the big screen, you’ll have your chance this weekend when it plays midnights at the Tivoli October 4th and 5th. I said this two weeks ago when BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S was the midnight choice: I hope it gets a good crowd, though these type of classics have hardly been packing them in (and TIFFANY’S didn’t either). MEAN GIRLS and SPICE WORLD have played midnights recently to large crowds, and SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD was a hit last weekend, but not CASABLANCA or VERTIGO. I know the Tivoli late-night crowd is an 18-25 demographic but they’re the ones who really need to see PSYCHO in all its big screen glory, so if you’re the parents of St. Louis teens, encourage them to take in Hitchcock’s masterpiece this weekend!

The Tivoli’s located at 6350 Delmar Blvd., University City, MO. Admission is a mere $8!

The Tivoli’s website can be found HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm

And here’s the ‘Reel Late at the Tivoli’ midnight show for  next few week:

Oct. 11-12       DONNIE DARKO (original version)