“Why do we want that car to go down? … I think it's because we just watched him do all this work. He really takes us through the cleanup. And it's like, we didn't just watch all that and now the car won't go down.”
Very Bad Wizards · Art & Philosophy · October 2026
The hosts were discussing the scene in Hitchcock's Psycho where Norman Bates sinks a car in the swamp and it stalls halfway. Sommers was puzzling over why an audience that had been on the victim's side minutes earlier finds itself hoping the car goes under. His co-host said he had never thought of it that way and agreed.
Transcript
Totally. So then you get this long cleanup scene. And it just seamlessly switches from her perspective to his perspective. Now we are with him as he's doing all this cleaning. And it's so brilliant the way, okay, now like we've been passed off to this guy now. And, you know, like famously, when he takes the car finally, he's done with the cleanup and it goes into the swamp and then it goes down and he's kind of nervous, eating the candy, watching it go down. And we're like right there, like we want the car to go down. And then when it stops, we're like, oh, shit. You know, even though we were just so on Janet Lee's side, now all of a sudden we want the car to go down.
Incredible. Like you said, seamless. Because in that moment when the car isn't going down, like, I'm sorry, you just feel it. You're just like, and his performance there is just like his turning around and looking. It's just so natural. It's so well done. And you're like, oh, shit.
And he's kind of praying. You know, he's got his hands together and kind of a praying thing. And I think, like, why do we want that car to go down? You know, because it's weird. I think it's because we just watched him do all this fucking work. You know, like he really takes us through the cleanup. And it's like, we didn't just watch all that and now the car won't go down or something like that. Like, I think that's one of the ways he gets us to, you know, like that has to lead to something, you know?
Yeah. I think that's totally right. Like, I never thought about that, but that is that for sure gets me. Like, you're kind of satisfied at like all the cleanup, you know? Yeah. And it's weird because it is so fast because that amazing shot of the drain swirling, you know, the chocolate sauce and then her eye. And that's when like it hits the hardest to me that her story is over. Is it like her lifeless eyes and then just the cleanup? Like it's just boom. Like, okay.
Yeah. So then we go to a hardware store, which is Sam Loomis's, where he works. And a weird scene with the woman feels like it's significant, you know?
Yeah, but you don't know why. Yeah.
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