Hitchcock’s ‘Uncut’ Version of ‘Psycho’ Is Coming to U.S. Home Video For the First Time
Universal has released many different Alfred Hitchcock box sets through the years. There’s Alfred Hitchcock: The Essentials Collection. There’s Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection. There’s the plain old Alfred Hitchcock Collection. And on and on and on.
So the news of a new Hitchcock box set called The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection is not major news in and of itself. When you read the official description of this four-film set on the Universal Pictures Home Entertainment website, however, you see this box has something unique. In addition to new 4K versions of Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds, this set also contains “hours of bonus features as well as the original uncut version of Psycho for the first time ever.”
Their site doesn’t offer additional details, but when you go to the page for The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection on Amazon, you can see the back cover art, which reveals a few more details about this “Psycho Uncut.” It claims the film is “the extended version of the movie as seen in theaters in 1960 is exactly as intended by Alfred Hitchcock and now available with additional footage for the first time.”
Rumors of an “uncut” Psycho have been around for several years, after eagle-eyed viewers noticed minor differences in the film when it was aired on foreign television. The video below identifies several changes between the Blu-ray release of Psycho and the German television print:
While these changes are small, the opportunity to see the film exactly as Hitchcock intended, and how it first played in theaters 60 years ago is still a pretty big deal. I’ve reached out to UPHE asking for more info on exactly what the differences are in this new version of Psycho; I’ll update this post with any additional information they provide. The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection will be available on September 8.
Gallery — The Coolest Director Cameos in History: