Hello again. The buzz this week is about Psycho. Several web boards have mentioned the existence of an uncut copy shown on German television -- Tim Lucas tipped off the rest of us at his Video Watchblog a few days back. Back in 1998 Savant reported on the curious inclusion of cut frame grabs in the Truffaut/Hitchcock book, but my conclusions there appear to have been wrong. Hitch didn't give Truffaut the peek-a-boo frames as a prank.

The core evidence is at a German site called Schnittberichte that specializes in cataloguing cut scenes. On their page can be seen images from two of the three scenes in contention. It appears that the extra five seconds of shots showing Norman Bates watching Marion Crane disrobe were officially part of the movie, and not just an outtake as shown in making-of extras on the Psycho special edition -- in fact, the shots are said to have been intact in the English release. But this German telecast showed close-ups of blood on Norman's hands after the shower murder as well. Not shown on the site but alleged to be part of an "uncut" print are an extra knife stab or two in the famous demise of Arbogast, extending the fade-out the bottom of the stairs.

So fans naturally are demanding that the "uncut" version be restored, which brings up a tricky issue. First, Universal may not have intact printing elements for all the new footage on this pre-censorship version. But also, Alfred Hitchcock had twenty years in which to replace the scenes, had he wanted to; and he certainly had the ability to do so at any time, considering his power as a major Universal shareholder. When Psycho was reissued in 1970 or so the ads touted that it was complete, but the prints were the same standard U.S. cut. So it's difficult to make a case for anything but the standard shorter version as Hitchcock's preferred cut. Then again, the disrobing scene was included in an official release version (in the U.K.) so a strong argument can also be made for its restoration.