Psycho (1960)

Hopefully everyone has a pretty strong stomach and will be prepared for a couple of horrible shocks whenever you watch Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” released in 1960, which a large number of people are sure to do. Bosley Crowther stated in his review, “For Mr. Hitchcock, an old hand at frightening people, comes at you with a club in this frankly intended bloodcurdler, which opened at the DeMille and Baronet yesterday.”

There is not a large quantity of detail or the lately familiar Hitchcock bent toward significant and colorful scenery in this obviously low-budget movie. With a little amount of complication, it gets off to a black-and-white start with the arrival of a fugitive girl with a stolen bankroll right at a creepy motel.

Well, perhaps it doesn’t get her there too quickly. That’s another little detail about this film. It does seem slowly paced for Hitchcock and given over to a lot of small detail. However, when it does get her to the motel and apparently comfortable for the night, it turns out this isolated sanctuary is, in fact, a haunted house.

The young man who quietly watches over – he is Anthony Perkins and the girl is Janet Leigh – is a funny man, given to smirks and giggles and quick rushes up to barren Victorian mansion on a hill. Crowther mentioned, “There, it appears, he has a mother—a cantakerous old woman—concealed.” That mother, as it soon reveals, is clever at sneaking up with a knife and putting holes into people, spilling a large amount of blood.

Crowther said, “That's the way it is with Mr. Hitchcock's picture—slow buildups to sudden shocks that are old-fashioned melodramatics, however effective and sure, until a couple of people have been gruesomely punctured and the mystery of the haunted house has been revealed. Then it may be a matter of question whether Mr. Hitchcock's points of psychology, the sort highly favored by Krafft-Ebing, are as reliable as his melodramatic stunts.”

Honestly, we feel his explanations are kind of pulling on your leg by a man who has been known to alternate to such methods in his former films.

The consequence in his conclusion falls quite flat for us. However, the acting is nice. Perkins and Leigh perform with energy, and Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Martin Balsam do well enough in supporting roles.

The one thing we would see with disappointment is that, from the stuffed birds that decorate the motel office of Perkins, there are no significant bats.

Everyone who you talk to that has seen Hitchcock movies will tell you that this is one of his scariest. This is before the slasher movies, like “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or “Halloween.” I don’t think I am spoiling anything when I say the famous shower scene where Janet Leigh gets stabbed to death is in this movie. That too so quickly into the movie, which we think she is the main character. However, I will not spoil anything but the ending has a very creepy reveal into Norman Bates, and you could compare it to the Oedipus Complex. Anthony Perkins has a couple of great lines in this movie like, “A boy's best friend is his mother” and “We all go a little mad sometimes.” If you haven’t seen this movie, definitely check it out because it’s a must see for Halloween. It's one of the best Hitchcock films ever made, and one of my favorites of Hitchcock's.

Surprising fact that maybe no one knew, this movie actually had a few sequels. How are they compared to this masterpiece? Find out tomorrow when I continue “Psycho-a-thon.”