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Psycho
The music, the setting, the shower scene, the mother in the cellar... everything about this iconic film has passed into cinema history. Alfred Hitchcock directs a genuine classic and the grandaddy of all slashers
Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a clerical worker bored with her job and frustrated by her relationship with earnest lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin). She absconds with $40,000 of her company's money and heads out of her home town, Phoenix. Caught in a sudden downpour at night on a dark road, she seeks refuge in a roadside motel run by shy amateur taxidermist Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). The rest - especially the legendary shower scene - is Hollywood history. Hitchcock approached this as a quick, cheap production - using the crew from his TV show to knock off an adaptation of Robert Bloch's moderately successful, pulp fiction novel. The result was a superb thriller unlike anything he or anyone else had ever done; one that continues to have a profound influence on countless filmmakers. Hitchcock decreed 'no entry' once screenings of the movie were under way to preserve the build up to the shock ending. He was right in demanding respect for this beautifully constructed and achieved movie. Joining halfway would be like building a house of cards from the centre. Impossible. Now that it's part of movie consciousness the revelation about the engaging, yet gruesome, Norman matters no more than the known outcome to A Man Escaped: it's the journey that counts. Psycho spawned several belated and inferior sequels, and Gus Van Sant's entirely redundant near frame-by-frame remake. There was also a missed chance for a gay remake, where Marion should have become Mark, justifying the complications of the first section and flight and his fascination for mummy's boy Norman. Verdict As thrilling, frightening and brilliantly constructed now as it was then. |
