Psycho (1960)

Psycho movie storyline. Phoenix officeworker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam’s California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.

Alfred Hitchcock’s powerful, complex psychological thriller, Psycho (1960) is the “mother” of all modern horror suspense films – it single-handedly ushered in an era of inferior screen ‘slashers’ with blood-letting and graphic, shocking killings (e.g., Homicidal (1961), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), Motel Hell (1980), and DePalma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) – with another transvestite killer and shower scene). While this was Hitchcock’s first real horror film, he was mistakenly labeled as a horror film director ever since.

The nightmarish, disturbing film’s themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human vulnerabilities and victimization, the deadly effects of money, Oedipal murder, and dark past histories are realistically revealed. Its themes were revealed through repeated uses of motifs, such as birds, eyes, hands, and mirrors.

The low-budget ($800,000), brilliantly-edited, stark black and white film came after Hitchcock’s earlier glossy Technicolor hits Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959), and would have been more suited for as an extended episode for his own b/w TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In fact, the film crew was from the TV show, including cinematographer John L. Russell.

The master of suspense skillfully manipulates and guides the audience into identifying with the main character, luckless victim Marion (a Phoenix real-estate secretary), and then with that character’s murderer – a crazy and timid taxidermist named Norman (a brilliant typecasting performance by Anthony Perkins). Hitchcock’s techniques voyeuristically implicate the audience with the universal, dark evil forces and secrets present in the film.

Psycho also broke all film conventions by displaying its leading female protagonist having a lunchtime affair in her sexy white undergarments in the first scene; also by photographing a toilet bowl – and flush – in a bathroom (a first in an American film), and killing off its major ‘star’ Janet Leigh a third of the way into the film (in a shocking, brilliantly-edited shower murder scene accompanied by screeching violins). The 90-odd shot shower scene was meticulously storyboarded by Saul Bass, but directed by Hitchcock himself.

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire, Simon Oakland, Frank Albertson, Patricia Hitchcock, Vaughn Taylor, Lurene Tuttle, John Anderson
Screenplay by: Joseph Stefano
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: John L. Russell
Film Editing by: George Tomasini
Costume Design by: Rita Riggs
Set Decoration by: George Milo
Art Direction by: Robert Clatworthy, Joseph Hurley
Music by: Bernard Herrmann
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: September 8, 1960