Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is a secretary who is unhappy with the way her life is going. One day she is given some money to deposit to the bank. It's $ 40.000, a lot of money in those days. She figures what if she takes the money and run and start over again? So she does. After a while she stops the car and sleeps but a patrol officer wakes her up; lets her go but follows her. She gets nervous and gets a new car. After having trouble driving in stormy weather she decides to spend the night at the motel that she comes across. It is a place that is run by a young man named Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who seems to be living with his domineering mother. She joins him for some sandwiches and milk. Norman is a jumpy, strange man whose hobby is taxidermy. When Marion goes back to his room she hears Norman and her mother arguing. It sounds like Norman's mother doesn't care for young women being around the place. She goes to shower to relax after a stressful day but things are about to take a horrific turn.
What I love about this movie is how well the story is told and how suddenly things change and you as the viewer are left dangling in the air going
"What? Where are we going now?"
It's almost like halfway through a card game, say Baccarat someone comes along, picks up all the cards, shuffles them, deals them again and forces you to play Poker now, without even missing a beat.
This is the classic of all classics. It's probably the most famous masterpiece of horror and suspense master Alfred Hitchcock. He had a detailed plan for this movie. He shot it in black and white which gave it the B-movie kind of feel but it was way better in quality in many ways: the story, actors, camera work. Hitchcock wanted the audience to experience this movie the right way: his way. At the theaters during the openings, the start time of the movie had to be exactly on the schedule and no one would be allowed in afterwards. There had to be extreme secrecy. Because the movie had a twist, a revealing ending that could easily diminished the impact on the audiences had it have been let out of the bag before they saw it.
Anthony Perkins is sensational in the role of Norman Bates; he has that spooky look in this part; you don't know if you should feel sorry for him or you should be frightened by him. Janet Leigh is also very good and played her role so believable that apparently even she herself had problems after watching the character Marion on the screen.
Many years later some sequels were made. "Psycho 2" was okay I suppose, but did any of them come even close to this one? No. I could live with the sequels though; because after all they all featured Anthony Perkins the original "Psycho" himself however bad they could be. But when the re-make came out I couldn't believe it. I want to be fair there are a few remakes of old classics that are quite decent but a movie like "Psycho" is an entity you don't mess with. I respect every effort good or bad but I just couldn't watch it after a few minutes into it and I left it at that.
My memory of this film is:
Obviously I didn't get to watch it at a movie theater; I'm not that old. But I was so intrigued by anything that was done by Alfred Hitchcock. I had seen "Birds" (1963) and "Trouble with Harry" (1955) and some episodes of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" on TV. Also there were short comic story series in a children's magazine that I had subscribed to.
When I watched for the very first time on TV with my parents beside me. I think I was 11 or 12. It was a school night too. My sister wasn't keen on it; she is 3 years younger than I am so I don't know if my parents would've allowed it anyway. For some reason no one thought I could be scared or badly affected by it; it wasn't bad parenthood, it was just that they knew I could handle it; at least my father did and he knew I was crazy about Hitchcock after seeing "Birds". My mother was bored and before too long she went to sleep. I wasn't scared per se, but I'd be lying if I said the scene where the detective is investigating in the house and the final scene didn't startle me. It did stay in my mind for a long time too. Do I even have to mention the infamous shower scene and the eerie violin noises? Genius!
G.R.Senn
