Psycho – 1960 Genre: Thriller MPAA Rating – R
Synopsis:
A woman on the run after embezzling $40,000 from her company finds shelter at the Bates Motel and meets its proprietor Norman Bates, a man who is overseen by his controlling mother.
Review:
An absolute classic, Psycho is, at least for me, Alfred Hitchcock’s best film. It and many of its elements continue down to today’s thriller and horror films. Whenever we’re taking a shower and have those horrifying but totally unreasonable thoughts about someone entering the bathroom to harm us when we’re at our most vulnerable, that is all because of Psycho. Psycho put the fear in showers.
Being made in 1960, this film had a large share of controversy when it was released, with the first scene being a woman in nothing but her underwear after being intimate with a man. Later, the entire outline of the woman can be seen in that infamous shower curtain. The blood seen in this film’s murders was certainly more copious than just about any other film of the day. Many of the governing boards of the MPAA initially refused to allow the film to be produced and the studio even refused to make it citing its content and the budget that Hitchcock wanted. How times have changed.
So Hitchcock paid for the movie mostly out of his own pocket and did everything he wanted. We, as film audiences, can respect that and thank him for the movie we now have.
The film’s opening credits introduce us to the soundtrack that we’re going to sit through for 1 hour, 45 minutes – that famous soundtrack that has the uncomfortably high screeching notes that we now associate with slasher films. We know it’s going to be intense.
After Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) leaves with a large sum of her company’s money and heads to California, she does everything she can to avoid detection, buying a new car and checking into the Bates motel under an alias. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) appears polite, nice and even genuine as he invites Marion to dinner. But we and Marion hear his mother’s objections even over the pounding rain.
It is during the subsequent conversation between Marion and Norman that we get some of the best lines of this film and I think it’s fascinating to watch Norman’s face as he delivers these lines. He speaks about birds, taxidermy and how we all enter into a trap that we can never escape from. His emotions and his face, combined with the excellent black and white cinematography that casts shadows over his face in all the right places make it a creepy, intriguing and disturbing conversation.
For those of you who don’t know how this movie goes, I will try not to spoil it for you. But some of my next few paragraphs could give you some definite hints. So with that, let me say that possible spoilers are in store.
This film is one of the first of its kind that deals with mental illness and the basing for why many of us think of a mental institution as one of the scariest places in the world and the location of many of today’s haunted houses. It was one of the first to show how a mind so perturbed and twisted can be a horrifying thing. That smile at the end of the film just before the end credits will forever go down as one of the most frightening images seen on screen.
Anthony Perkins is fantastic as Norman Bates. I spoke about his face and expressions when he talks. The complicated relationship he has with his mother can be seen play out in his eyes. He’s afraid of her, he loves her, respects and honors her and then despises her. We see all of that in a matter of seconds, but then he says, almost childlike, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
The performance from Anthony Perkins is simply amazing to watch. Somehow, Perkins wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar, but I thought it was amazing to watch. He finally got recognition as the second greatest villain on the American Film Institute’s list of villains.
Janet Leigh was nominated for best supporting actress for her role as Marian Crane. It’s certainly deserved and she, frankly as well as Perkins, will forever be immortalized by that shower scene.
A colored remake of the film was released in 1998 with Anne Heche in the role of Marian Crane and Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. It’s not nearly as good, in fact, I might call it even laughable. There’s just some films that need to stand on their own and not get a remake. The black and white of this film makes it seem more mysterious and allows Hitchcock to use the shadows in the movie so perfectly. The contrast between light and dark could not be more pronounced that way.
It’s thrilling. It’s disturbing. It’s horrifying. It may be old still, without some of the special effects or the blood we’re used to in today’s slasher films, but this is still a very good, very scary movie.
Grade: A
scotthansensports 
I too feel it’s one of Hitch’s best films…and I’d go on a limb to say one of my favorite early horror films in general. Like many of my interests, the history surrounding it is often more intriguing than the film itself. You touched on some of that history that is just fascinating. The road to making Psycho was such a thrilling ride and a phenomenon that had never been seen before.
I ask all of my students in my “Film and Culture” class to watch the film for extra credit our first week as to not spoil the film. I use clips and have discussions in so many of my lectures. “Psychology,” “Symbolism and Metaphor,” “Sound in Film,” and of course “The Hitchcock Legacy.”
Although I absolutely despised the 1998 remake in every respect, I have enjoyed all of the films in the franchise, especially Psycho II and Bates Motel. I can not get enough of the world of Norman Bates. What does that say about me?
A+ all the way!