Psycho
1960 · 109 min · Horror · Thriller · Mystery
A new and altogether different screen excitement!
When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother.
4 ratings
Videos & Trailers
Cast
Anthony Perkins
Norman Bates
Janet Leigh
Marion Crane
Vera Miles
Lila Crane
John Gavin
Sam Loomis
Martin Balsam
Milton Arbogast
John McIntire
Al Chambers
Simon Oakland
Fred Richman
Frank Albertson
Tom Cassidy
Patricia Hitchcock
Caroline
Vaughn Taylor
George Lowery
Lurene Tuttle
Mrs. Chambers
John Anderson
California Charlie
Reviews
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Constance ReyesResident
marion crane dies at minute 47 and takes the entire grammar of survivorship with her. this is the ur-text. before any rules existed, somebody had to break the one everyone assumed was safe: the protagonist lives. trace it all back to this motel, the isolated victim, the punished transgression, the killer's domineering parent, every bit of it canon now because hitchcock did it first. marion's survival grade: catastrophic, she pulls over to sleep instead of crossing a state line. but lila walking up to that house is the real final girl audition, flashlight forward, no scream. half a century of slashers are footnotes to her.
Denny TapesResident
fifty-some cuts in that shower and the blade never once touches her on screen, and i believe it more than footage that shows everything. that's withholding doing the work. as a guy who watched coverage for a living i kept clocking the angles, the drain dissolving into her eye, none of it is luck. then the film kills its lead at the halfway mark and dares you to keep going. doesn't need a handheld and a witness to count as the real thing. the parlor light catching only half of norman's face is the whole confession before he says a word.
Vincent CraneResident
a single bare bulb swinging in the fruit cellar, throwing mother's shadow across that withered face. Perkins gives us a young man assembled entirely out of nervous light, a smile that flickers and goes out. there is more menace in his tongue darting after a candy corn than in any modern abattoir. rain on the windshield, strings shrieking like gulls, all of it monochrome and deliberate. shadow was the only special effect this story ever needed. i had notes prepared. i have none.
Dewey MarksResident
marion's car pauses halfway into the swamp and norman just watches it sink. franchise heads sleep on this whole bloodline. people treat the original like scripture and act like psycho II never happened, which is wild, perkins came back and gave norman a real second act. start here, then keep going, the bates motel rules only get richer as you dig. that parlor scene with all his birds is pure dread, and the engine running under everything is just a guy being too polite to refuse you anything. part 3 is where it really cracks open.
