ABSTRACT
What to do with a dead body is a difficult problem for both the practitioner of crime fiction and the preacher of the Gospel. A common response from both quarters is to skip over the presence of the body as accidental to truly significant mysteries that demand people's attention. Psycho stands as a completed film, a unified narrative unit, the moment Marion Crane's car is swallowed by the swamp. Alfred Hitchcock knows this and marks the event with the only complete screen wipe in the film. Hitchcock then adds four other possible endings. Ending two, the longest of the alternative endings, requires a reiteration of the body of the film. Two matters remain in the body of the film that need attention before people turn to a final assessment of the film remembered. First, there is matter of opening title, which identifies time and place of the film's action. Second, Advent hails coming of God in the flesh.
