Hollywood -- In the shadow of the very hills where forty years ago armed guards on horseback drove away spies at gunpoint, Alfred Hitchcock this week began filming "Psycho" --with greater secrecy than surrounded the old Universal Studios of the silent era. In those early days of Hollywood it was common practice for studios to spy on one another, learn the competitor's story line, then rush into production with a quicker and cheaper version.

While Mr. Hitchcock has (so far) refrained from posting armed guards, he has succeeded, thanks to his own cherubic guile, in cloaking his new production with more mystery than normally embroils his stars of screen and television.

After purchasing the screen rights to "Psycho," a Simon & Schuster Inner Sanctum Mystery, Mr. Hitchcock violated all Hollywood cardinals of publicity by deliberately concealing the title, permitting only a few short news releases to reach columnist and trade paper. The property was announced simply as "Hitchcock's new shocker," with none of the usual flamboyancy outlining story, star roster or budget. (One rumor persists that Hitchcock bought up all available copies of the Robert Block novel in a monopolistic shopping spree calculated  to insure secrecy.)

The title, however, remained a mystery for several months until an alert reporter triumphantly revealed it as "Psyche," starting a rumor, which died aborning, that Mr. Hitchcock was delving into Greek mythology. To all subsequent inquiries Mr. Hitchcock has blandly described "Psycho" as the story of a "young man whose mother is a homicidal maniac."

The young man is played by Paramount's bright young star, Anthony Perkins. Mr. Hitchcock has partially unbuttoned his cloak of secrecy by ruminating aloud on the possibility of securing some top feminine star for the "mother" role, mentioning en passant Helen Hayes and Judith Anderson.  Already set for other top roles with Mr. Perkins are Vera Miles, John Gavin, Janet Leigh, John McIntire and Martin Balsam.

Though the original story was set (somewhat vaguely) in the Southwest, Mr. Hitchcock has further confounded the curious by making furtive location-hunting trips to Phoenix, Ariz. and to Bakersfield and Fresno in California.

Filming, however, began this week at a closer location, Universal-International Studios, home base for Mr. Hitchcock's (Revue) television activities. Appropriately, first scenes were filmed at black of night on the studio's back lot, with a watery crescent moon lending a macabre  Charles Adams atmosphere to the proceedings. In black-and-white for Paramount release, "Psycho" is being photographed by Mr. Hitchcock's regular television camera crew under John Russell, presumably a loyal and dedicated group sworn (on a stack of Varieties) not to reveal content or the climax of the Joseph Stefano screenplay.

Moreover, and again violating standard studio policy, no story synopsis will be released. The only previous example of this synopsis veto was in the case of "The Ten Commandments," when rumor had it that the late Cecil B. De Mille refused to sanction a story synopsis-- lest it give away the plot.

Old-timers in the industry, mindful of the heavyhanded security thrown around Lon Chaney and his grotesque make-ups, have been further nonplused by Mr. Hitchcock's beaming assurance that there will be no far-fetched "monsters" or mechanical fabrications in this film. Mr. Hitchcock believes, a la Grand Guignol, that horror is human, not a blob of fly. Despite his obsession with secrecy, the producer-director will permit visits to the set by the working press during actual production, on days (one suspects) when scenes being filmed will in no way disclose story line.

While concealing the plot of "Psycho," Mr. Hitchcock has shown a remarkable eagerness to discuss its filming from a technical point of view. The film will open with the longest dolly (moving) shot ever attempted by helicopter. As laid out in his pre-filming sketches (a policy Hitchcock has followed ever since his advertising-layout days in London) the four-mile scene will start at the edgeof town, presumably Phoenix, move in low over factory, residential and business areas, to end in an intimate close-up through a hotel window of a clandestine interlude between Miss Leigh and Gavin.

For one violent bathroom scene, showing a young woman murdered while taking a shower, Mr. Hitchcock will rehearse "with film," staging the scene and photographing it simultaneously from several angles with hand-held Eyemos. The results obtained from these lightweight cameras will be assembled, edited, then used as the basis for Mr. Hitchcock's sketches from which he will later photograph the grisly scene with regular camera.

Queried about possible censorship problems with this intimate homicide, Mr. Hitchcock pouted through petulant lips, "Men do kill nude women, you know."
 

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company