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Home > Desert Oracle Radio > Film Society showing Hitchcock’s Psycho on Friday (1/16), featuring speaker from film’s famous shower scene
Podcast: Desert Oracle Radio
Episode:

Film Society showing Hitchcock’s Psycho on Friday (1/16), featuring speaker from film’s famous shower scene
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2026-01-14 16:30:49
Description:

Did you know that there is a group in the desert that regularly shows classic films?

On Friday, January 16, the Desert Classic Film Society will host a screening of Psycho, the 1960 film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, the classic horror flick tells the story of a woman on the run who finds herself seeking refuge at the isolated Bates Motel. The screening will feature guest speaker Marli Renfro, who worked as Leigh’s body double during the filming of the iconic movie by the “Master of Suspense.”

Yucca Valley local Christopher Perry founded the Desert Classic Film Society in 2010. Perry is a lifelong film historian who has presented classic films throughout California and beyond. He also operates the Bijou Cinema, a theater he built into his garage with 35 seats from a 1936 picture house. Perry explains that the ambiance and production quality are intended to create an authentic movie-going experience of eras past.

“Our goal is education in film history, and also to be able to present a classic film the way it was meant to be seen. Even when you go to a theater, oftentimes they show it in the wrong aspect ratio, or on television, they might show it with cuts to the film. We show the films uncut…We have a 7.1 surround sound system; many films in the 50s were made with stereophonic sound. If the film was made in 3-D, we show it in 3-D, the way it was meant to be seen.”

The Desert Classic Film Society currently has over 1,700 members throughout the Inland Empire and Los Angeles. Events feature not only screenings, but also professional presentations of the classic films.

“It’s usually vintage classic films, mostly from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, but we’ve done some films from the 60s. Usually, we want films that are classics or sometimes films that are historical artifacts. They may not be the finest example of a certain genre of film, but historically, they’re fascinating to look at today. We always have a mini-lecture before the film, and a question-and-answer session after the film for people to learn about classic films. When you go back to the 20s through the 50s, the culture was so different that a lot of things need to be interpreted and framed properly to understand what’s going on.”

Friday’s screening of Psycho will be followed with an interview between Perry and Renfro, whose role as a body double was key in the film’s infamous “shower scene.”

“She worked for seven days shooting Psycho. Almost all of that was for the shower sequence. So she’s actually in more shots of the shower sequence than Janet Leigh.”

Even as the art progresses, Perry explains that classic films are important elements of history.

“The 20th century is the first century that was ever covered entirely by film, and it’s also the last, because the 21st century is mostly digital now, and will not be covered by film.”

Psycho will screen on Friday, January 16, at Bijou Cinema in Yucca Valley. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with the screening to follow at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the door, and reservations are required ahead of time.

The post Film Society showing Hitchcock’s Psycho on Friday (1/16), featuring speaker from film’s famous shower scene appeared first on Z107.7 FM Joshua Tree.
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