Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho has been copied, studied, referenced, broken down, rebuilt, and turned on its head many times over since it first shocked audiences in the fall of 1960. Just this week, A&E’s Bates Motel offered a new twist on the film’s most infamous scene—and one of the most famous scenes in all of cinema history—with pop star Rihanna in the role of Marion Crane.
The new Wondery podcast Inside Psycho breaks down the production of Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece in detail, and in a new clip exclusive to The A.V. Club, producer and host Mark Ramsey tells us what happened behind the scenes of Psycho’s infamous shower scene. In the clip, Ramsey describes the intense seven-day shoot, and all the negotiations, moleskin fabric, and Playboy model stand-ins than went into it. And the hand seen holding the knife stabbing Leigh in a frame-by-frame analysis of the scene belonged to Hitchcock himself, an especially unsettling detail given Tippi Hedren’s recent allegations about Hitchcock’s sexual abuse of his actresses.
Episode four of Inside Psycho premieres this coming Thursday, April 6, and you can catch up with the first three episodes at the Inside Psycho website or on your favorite podcatcher.