The Third Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 13

It’s Friday the 13th. Which is considered unlucky by some. And possibly it is for the entire population of the UK who might well be waking up to find out that someone truly awful is now their prime minister. I wouldn’t know as I’m writing this in the past. Although given that both of the leading contenders were pretty dreadful, it’s probably a safe bet that no-one good actually won. In fact even the outsiders were all very much in the ‘hard to like’ mould so it probably is a safe assumption that we have a rubbish leader of the country this morning.

Then again – plus ça change.

What I do know with absolute certainty is that today is the 13th day of December, which must mean that it’s time for door 13 of The Third Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films.

Because it is Friday the 13th, maybe it would be appropriate to go for something from the darker side of cinema. And what could be more appropriate than Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, Psycho?

I had never seen Psycho before this year, but, because it’s a classic and it’s almost sixty years old, I had read one or two spoilers over the years. At least part of the appeal of this movie is that it contains a lot of twists, and given that I knew about a lot of those twists before I started watching, I assumed that I wouldn’t get that much out of the movie.

I was wrong. Even though I pretty much knew what was coming, I was on glued to the screen for the entire running time. In 1960  Psycho was pretty ground-breaking stuff, but it still seems pretty unique and certainly holds up well today. So much so, that the 1998 remake (which to be fair I’ve never seen) seems like it was probably a pretty pointless endeavour.

 

Score for Christmasishness

Ok, so this one is not even remotely Christmas(ish). Except for one scene, right at the start of the movie, when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is leaving town and we can see Christmas decorations on the high street. This wasn’t intentional – they were just there on the day that scene was filmed but this visible reference to Christmas led to the whole movie being set in December. Indeed, at the beginning of the movie a caption informs us that the date is the 11th December. This would in turn, according to the movie’s own timeline, mean that many of the events should actually take place over festive period. But aside from that one scene, Christmas is never mentioned again.