Trivia: Hitchcock Used Chocolate Syrup as Fake Blood

1. Skipweasel
   January 8th, 2008 at 10:46 am

   Such a shame I can’t use fake blood as chocolate.

2. Pudifoot
   January 8th, 2008 at 10:54 am

   A strange note is that in It’s A Wonderful Life, in the scene at the soda fountain where George works, they used blood as fake chocolate syrup.

3. Sid Morrison
   January 8th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

   In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the chocolate river Augustus Gloop falls into is made from the blood of other gluttonous predecessors.

4. Tempscire
   January 8th, 2008 at 4:39 pm

   And yet there’s people out there who swear they saw red blood for that scene.

5. Bobby the K
   January 8th, 2008 at 5:52 pm

   I read this years ago.
   Hitchcock also had someone stab different kinds of melons until he heard the sound he wanted and went with that one.

6. Nicholas Dollak
   January 8th, 2008 at 6:21 pm

   Two reasons for the chocolate syrup “blood”: One, although MPAA ratings didn’t exist yet, and Technicolor red “blood” had appeared in movies before (An example of a kid-appropriate film to do this would be the delightful 1940 “Thief of Bagdad,” which contains a brief shot of a guy with his cheek slashed open in a sword fight), the context and quantity of blood would have pushed “Psycho” onto the Censorship Board’s black-list had it been red. Two, some B/W film stocks don’t translate certain colors well. Fake blood thinned in water into a pale pink, nearly invisible on film; chocolate syrup provided better contrast.

7. Nicholas Dollak
   January 8th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

   Another bit of “Psycho” trivia: Although the slow pull-back from Janet Leigh’s open eye after her murder creeped out many viewers, at least one proto-nerd (a doctor) wrote a letter to Hitchcock in which he pointed out a problem with her pupils. Pupils dilate at death, and hers were shrunken to pinpoints under the bright studio lights. The doctor suggested that in the future Hitch apply belladonna drops to the eyes of his “victims,” to dilate the pupils. The director took his advice, probably most noticably in “Frenzy.”

8. k
   January 8th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

   I thought everyone knew that o_O

9. Ali S.
   January 13th, 2008 at 2:46 pm

   I had always guessed they used a mixture of corn syrup and raspberry jam/juice.

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