Director Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles
Rated MA
Score 6/6

A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer’s client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.

In the past I have talked about my cinematic education and that there are holes in it, as I expect it would be practically everyone. Psycho is another one of those movies. This is also one of those movies that has such a legacy that you have an idea of the plot in your mind even before you have pressed play. I found that I enjoyed Anthony Perkins’ performance as Norman Bates I found him to be equally creepy and sympathetic.
For those of you who might not have known the movie was based on a 1959 novel written by Robert Bloch. There are a lot of things to love about Psycho (I just loved how the opening credits where done), but I really think that most of it boils down to the evolution of filmmaking and that director Alfred Hitchcock has a different style of directing (perhaps you could call it a forgotten style of directing?) compared to all of the directors that I could possible mention and I doubt they would be able to emulate it successfully. You just have to look to the iconic shower scene and how it was shot, though it does have a shock value to it you have to admit that by modern standards is a rather vanilla ‘PG’ kind of scene. Sure, over time much to everybody’s chagrin there are going to be remakes of Psycho, perhaps even a few more shot-for-shot remakes might be released but Hollywood executives are just going to have to remember that at least with Psycho the song is right ‘Nothing compares’.