Question 1

True or false: The film was shot in just 36 days on a tight budget of less than $1 million.

Accepted Answer

True. Hitchcock shot Psycho in 36 days for $806,000 (about $8 million today), using his TV crew to save costs.

Question 2

True or false: Anthony Perkins based Norman Bates's nervous mannerisms on his own mother.

Accepted Answer

False. Perkins modeled Norman's voice and tics on his father, not his mother. He later admitted he wasn't close to his mother.

Question 3

True or false: Janet Leigh refused to film the shower scene without a body double.

Accepted Answer

False. Leigh did use a double for the nudity, but she performed the stabbing and screaming herself without hesitation.

Question 4

True or false: The famous shower scene uses chocolate syrup, not red dye, to simulate blood.

Accepted Answer

True. Director Alfred Hitchcock used Bosco chocolate syrup for the blood in the shower scene because it photographed better in black and white.

Question 5

True or false: Hitchcock banned all critics from advance screenings to protect the twist ending.

Accepted Answer

True. He forbade press screenings and even had theater owners sign agreements to prevent audiences from entering after the film started.

Question 6

True or false: Vera Miles turned down the lead role because she was pregnant, so Janet Leigh got it.

Accepted Answer

False. Miles was pregnant and had to drop out, but Hitchcock originally wanted her for the role, not Leigh. Leigh was his second choice.

Question 7

True or false: Psycho was the first American film to show a toilet flushing on screen.

Accepted Answer

False. A toilet flushes in Psycho, but the first American film to show one was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

Question 8

True or false: Hitchcock insisted on real human skeletons for the taxidermy scene to save money.

Accepted Answer

True. Real skeletons were cheaper than buying realistic plastic ones at the time, so the prop department used actual human bones.

Psycho Trivia Questions