Psycho is the original great horror movie. Its the ultimate spine-tingler, the definitive creep-show, the perfect chiller. But its also much more than that: Psycho is the reason why people these days always lock the bathroom door when taking a shower. Well, that and fear of having someone walk in and see our botties, that is.
Anthony Perkins takes a career-defining role as motel-owning loner Norman Bates. His hobbies are taxidermy, talking incessantly about his dear old mum, and knifing visitors to death. Clearly hes quite a catch, but theres little chance of romance on the cards when he treats his latest visitor Janet Leigh as cash-embezzling Marion Crane to the stabby-stabby treatment.
Unfortunately for our Norm, things start to escalate out of control when Marions friends and family as is probably to be expected become a little worried and decide to hire a private investigator (Martin Balsam) to find out what the devil happened to her. Its a good job theres plenty of room in that swamp at the back of the motel.
From master of mystery Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho is the sort of film thats simply impossible to forget about. Of course we all know the plots big revelation by now, but its only as well-known as it is because its so heavily cemented in the top handful of all-time great twists (perhaps matched only by Darth Vaders whole I am your father spiel in The Empire Strikes Back and Chucky Heston slumping on the beach in Planet of the Apes). Whats interesting upon watching it today is that, even knowing exactly whats going to happen, the film has lost little of its effect.
This isnt a gory film, and what few instances of violence take place with relatively little actual on-screen violence. In fact, it contains just three big shocks, with the rest of the 110-minute running time devoted to setting scenes, building suspense and playing with our minds. But those three shocks comfortably better practically anything from the modern day canon of horror fair Hitchcock sees to that nicely.