Please be careful

Rating: 10/10 (1 December 2001)

Robert Louis Stevenson's masterful novella "The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde" takes the form of a mystery: at the start we're told that Jekyll and Hyde share a secret, but it's a while before we find out what that secret is. These days, almost everyone already knows what the secret is, and NOT because they've read the story - rather, they've listened to some blabbermouth, who, BECAUSE "everyone already knows", feels himself licensed to spoil things for the few remaining people who don't. Well, that blabbermouth won't be me. And I'm not going to give away the surprises in "Psycho", either.
Nor should you, if you know what they are. This is a plea for people to be more circumspect with such information, even if such circumspection seems futile in the current climate.
P.S. Psycho is a great movie - possibly Hitchock's best, although there are four other contenders for that title. But this much everyone really DOES know already.
P.P.S.: And if you think Hitchcock couldn't possibly have missed with this material, take a look at Gus Van Sant's almost ludicrously incompetent scene-for-scene remake.