Psycho (English)

Psycho
House and motel of the Bates family

The mansion in black and white, the same format in which the movie was filmed in 1960.

Presentation

We present the last diorama created by The Brickstons Group (@TheBrickstons). They are the Bates house and motel from the horror and suspense movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960 titled Psycho, starring Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates), Vera Miles (Lila Crane, Marion's sister), John Gavin (Sam Loomis, Marion's boyfriend), Martin Balsam (Milton Arbogast, detective) y Janet Leigh (Marion Crane).

The diorama is made up of five elements:

• The house of the Bates family.
• The hill upon which the mansion is built.
• The sign of the Bates motel.
• The office and seven rooms of the motel.
• Marion Crane's car.

Authors

The authors of this diorama are:

• Pepi Blas (Ayla), member of the Brickstons.
• Emiliano Martínez (Legófito), member of the Brickstons.
• José Luis de la Fuente (Madrilego), member of the Brickstons.
• Alfonso Abeger (FonsoSac), member of the Brickstons.
• David Valderrama (Sankao).

Bates Mansion on top of the hill upon which it is built.

How this project was born

Usually at the exhibitions made by ALE! (Asociación Cultural de Aficionados a LEGO® de España; cultural association of LEGO enthusiasts from Spain) some contests are held in which the exhibitors can participate. One of those was the Mini-scenes contest. For this contest, we looked for something shocking; we considered the scene from the film The Shining in which Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) peeps through the axed-over door.

However, we changed our minds right away to the shower scene from Psycho, in which Norman Bates, dressed as his mother, murders Marion Crane in the shower.

Norman Bates dressed as his mother, murders Marion Crane in the shower.

The next step was designing the Bates motel room, placing a mirror so that when looking through the window of the room, the whole scene appeared, not just the murderer. Then... things got out of hand.

Description

.

 The house can be seen
from any direction.

Both for the mansion and the motel, the team documented themselves, designing all the elements with the original plans that were used during the filming and the construction of the sets for the film.

BATES  HOUSE.- It is made up of 5776 pieces (22 hours of design) seated upon a hill, built ad hoc for both exhibitions at which it has been shown. The first hill allowed the house to be at a 45º angle with respect to the public view, and the second one had the house straight (as in the picture) due to the requirements of the case in which it was exhibited.

The late Mrs. Bates tans her skin
at the porch of her house.

The basement was not made, save for its access, which is located at the exterior of the house, respecting the height the floor should be at. Both floors and the attic are compartmentalized, though it has not been furnished ─due to cost issues─. But what did get made was the pavement, one of the chimneys ─the one corresponding to the late mother's room─, and the staircase connecting each floor.

We must say that some of the decorative elements of the house do not correspond to the ones in the house made for the film, but we decided to do so to break the plain lines of the façades.

General view of the diorama, in its second version, with the motel in the foreground.

BATES MOTEL.- The complex of the motel is made up of 3828 pieces in its first version and 3955 pieces in its second version. After designing the default room for the motel, we proceeded to modify it to make the completely furnished office  ─as a fun fact we could say that we forgot to make the hole through which Norman Bates spies Marion Crane─.

Zenithal view of the office
of the Bates motel.

The counter of the office.

The rest of the motel consists of room number one, where the shower murder scene is taking place, and six other rooms. All of the rooms are furnished in the same manner as the first one, excepting the mirror that was placed in order to be able to see the scene through the window without having to remove the roof panels. The furniture that decorate them are: a wardrobe, a painting, the shower, soap holder, and hanger for the bathrobe, the bed and two nightstands, lamps for both of them and a general lamp.

Norman ready to execute 
Marion in the shower.

For the exhibition TrenBrick 2016 the room was
illuminated to let the public a better view of the scene.

CAR.- In the film it is a Ford Custom 300 from 1958. Our comrade, friend and member of ALE!, David Valderrama (Sankao), made this cameo for the first exhibition. We don't know the number of pieces, but what we can say is that the inspiration came from the Ghostbusters' Ecto I that LEGO® released some years ago for its IDEAS line.

The car, that would end up in the lake, owned by the murdered Marion Crane.

At the second exhibition, it was substituted by another model, the one that can be seen in the general views of the diorama.

SIGN.- This element is one of the things we did in the last moment, but it turned up pretty well. We failed to male some kind of sticker that said No vacancy, but the stress of the exhibition overpowered us. For the moment, we can't say how many pieces it is made up of.

Repercussion

• TRENBRICK 2016, held at the Railroad Museum of Madrid (Spain) in October 2016. 
• , on the occasion of Halloween, in November 2016.
• The Brothers Brick: We all go a little mad sometimes.

Acknowledgements

We thank the collaboration of:

• David Valderrama (Sankao) for his MOD of Marion's car.
• Carlos Rosas (CRS) who very kindly illuminated the scene.
• Javier Campo (Gobernador) for handing us valuable documentation.

This work is under a

 Creative Commons License Atribution-NonComercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.