Friend of the Gutter Mimi Kramer writes about they mystery of Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho (1960)! “It’s become fashionable among Hitchcock fans and aficionados to dismiss the $40,000 Marion steals as a ‘McGuffin,’ the term Hitchcock invented for whatever sets the plot of a picture in motion—the point being that it doesn’t have to make sense because the audience doesn’t really care about it.

Marion’s theft of the money, people argue, doesn’t make any sense, so it must be beside the point. And anyway the money gets buried in a car at the bottom of a swamp.

It doesn’t stay buried, though.”

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.