Steve Schwartz wrote, in part:

>I hesitate to call Herrmann's score to Psycho his masterpiece, because
>he wrote so many of them.  Certainly, however, it counts as one of his
>most readily-identifiable, lifting a macabre, pungent campfire tale to
>something truly creepy.

I will always remember a TV program on the importance of music in
films.  Psycho was obviously one of its subjects.  The program did more
to illustrate its point than play the classic shower scene.  It clearly
made its point by twice showing the scene where Janet Leigh's character
is driving out of town with the stolen money.  When it was played with
the sound track shut off, it had absolutely zero emotional impact (even
though I had seen the movie several times).  The rather uneventful scene
was immediately repeated with sound and its scariness was restored.

Dum-dum-da-dum!

Bill Cutler
(with scary background music)