Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock
Produced By: Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited)
Written By: Joseph Stefano, Robert Bloch (novel)
Starring: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, John Gavin, Vera Miles
Original Release: 1960
Reviewed By: Aaron Hammonds
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)
Synopsis: The story begins with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a young woman having an affair with Sam Loomis (John Gavin). Marion desperately wants to marry Sam but he refuses to ask her until he is out of debt. Marion impetuously takes advantage of an illicit opportunity and steals $40,000 from her employer on a Friday, thinking she’ll have the whole weekend to flee to Sam’s place and give him the money before it’s noticed missing on Monday. On the way, she stops to spend the night at the Bates Motel, run by quiet, unassuming Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins in the role that would dominate his career). Over a casual dinner, Marion learns that Norman’s mother is apparently mentally ill. Suggesting that Norman should consider putting her in an institution, Norman becomes almost maniacal in his defense of her, foreshadowing revelations to come. That night, Norman’s mother murders Marion in one of the most shocking scenes ever committed to celluloid. The remainder of the film involves a private investigator (Martin Balsam), then Sam and Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles), trying to find out what happened to Marion.
Review/Commentary: The early days of cinematic horror were dominated by gothic tales of vampires, werewolves, mummies, and man-made monsters. In the 1950′s, horror became intertwined with science fiction, audiences getting their thrills from alien invaders and atomic-mutated creatures. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock, by then long recognized as the master of suspense, unleashed upon the world the first modern horror film, Psycho.
Psycho began as a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, loosely inspired by Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. In 1957, authorities in the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin discovered that Gein, a local hermit who lived in a run-down farmhouse outside of town, had spent the past several years robbing local graves for anatomical specimens in an effort to find a way to change himself into a woman. When the graveyards couldn’t supply him with what he needed, he murdered local women; he is known to have killed at least two and is suspected of more. Bloch took the most lurid details of Gein’s story (Gein’s mother fixation, his transsexualism, the murders) and wrote what became one of the biggest bestsellers of the 1950′s.
In late 1959, after completing his masterpiece North by Northwest, Hitchcock was searching for his next project when his production assistant Peggy Robertson brought the novel Psycho to his attention. Hitchcock saw the potential of the story to make a great movie, even though almost no one else did: Paramount refused to finance the film until Hitchcock offered to cut costs by directing for a percentage of the profits in lieu of a salary and using the crew from his television show, producer Herbert Coleman expected it to be a bomb, and even screenwriter Joseph Stefano, author of the screenplay, thought it was a strange project for the man who had made Notorious and To Catch a Thief.
Hitchcock’s zeal to “break the rules” with this film was most evident in the focus of the story; the audience spends the first 45 minutes or so following Marion, thinking she is the focal point of the plot. Then, less than halfway through the film, she’s brutally murdered in one of the most complex scenes ever shot up to that point (the shower scene took seven full days to shoot). Norman, who seemed to be an incidental character, suddenly becomes the center of our attention, cleaning up after Mother and trying desperately to prevent anyone from discovering what she has done.
Probably the most important thing Hitchcock did to contribute to the success of this film is the casting of Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. In Bloch’s novel, Norman is a fat, balding, middle-aged physically repugnant man who spends his day drinking and looking at girlie magazines. Perkins’s Norman is the picture of the boy next door: a clean shaven, good looking, milk-drinking mama’s boy devoted to his obviously domineering mother, even to the point of covering up her murders. Perkins was so perfect in the role that it became a trap; the movie-going public, for the most part, would never see him as anything other than Norman Bates for the rest of his life.
Psycho was a watershed in American film. It took horror from the Gothic European castles of yesteryear and put it right in our back yard. It showed that our own neighborhoods could be just as terrifying as the forests of Transylvania, and that a Victorian house on a hill was just as foreboding as a medieval watchtower. If for some reason you haven’t seen Psycho, it’s required viewing…
Check out Aaron Hammonds’ blog Aaron’s Movie Madness where he reviews his favorite movies.
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