9 Famous Movie Facts (That Were Never Actually True)

6. You Never See The Knife Puncture Flesh During Psycho's Shower Scene

Alfred Hitchcock's legendary horror film Psycho is famous for a bunch of reasons. For starters, it's a very well-made, effective film that manages to consistently crank up the tension throughout its 109 minute runtime. It also subverts expectations of narrative structure, thanks to the iconic shower scene in which the main character is killed off halfway through the film.

A frequent claim is that during the shower scene, Hitchcock never actually shows the knife puncturing flesh. Instead, the violent effect is achieved entirely through clever cuts and the mind filling in the blanks. This isn't true. As shown in the above still, there is a single shot in which the knife is visibly penetrating the abdomen of Marion Crane, though it only appears for a brief moment.