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, shy unassuming young man called Norman. Norman appears to be dominated by his mother throughout the entire movie. We do not see his mother, however until the end. All we see are shadows of a body in a rocking chair, and her voice, which we eventually find is Bates doing an impression of her, and pretending her rotted corpde is still alive.
Rarely since the 1960's horror/thriller movie Psycho, has any movie had such an impact on the modern movie scene. Norman Bates, is an impressionable, friendly young man with an overbearing and psychotic mother. He surely is the last person we would expect to see as a cold blooded killer. The movie deals with many difficult issues of the time, for example transvestism and murder. It has had such an impact, that it even gets a mention in "The Simpsons" with parallels being seen between Norman and his mother, and Principal Skinner with his overbearing mother.
- The film only cost $800,000 to make yet has earned more than $40 million. Hitchcock used the crew from his TV series to save time and money.
- In 1962 Hitchcock exchanged the rights to the film and his TV-series for a huge block of MCA's stock (he became their third largest stockholder).
- Hitchcock bought the rights to the novel anonymously from Bloch for just $9,000. He then bought up as many copies of the novel as he could to keep the ending a secret.
- The painting that Norman removes in order to watch Marion undressing is a classical painting depicting a rape.
- For a shot right at the water stream, the crew had to block off the inner holes on the shower head so that the water sprayed past the camera lens.
- The shower scene has over 90 splices in it, and did not involve Anthony Perkins at all. Perkins was in New York preparing for a play.
- During the shooting of the shower scene, Hitchcock arranged for the water to suddenly go ice-cold when the attack started.
- Hitchcock originally envisioned the shower sequence as completely silent, but Bernard Herrmann went ahead and scored it anyway and Hitchcock immediately changed his mind.
- The blood in the shower scene is actually chocolate sauce.
- The close-up of Marion's dead body and the pullback scene is a still frame. Hitchcock's wife saw the original version and told her husband ``You can see her breathing'', so he changed it.
- Hitchcock tested the ``fear factor'' of mother's corpse by placing it in Leigh's dressing room and listening to how loud she screamed when she discovered it.
- The last shot of Norman Bates' face has a still frame of a human skull inserted in it : is that of "Mother"
- There is a rumor that the this film was not passed for release because it was claimed that Janet Leigh's nipple was visible during the shower scene. Hitchcock didn't edit it out, but merely sent it back, (correctly, it seems) assuming that they either wouldn't bother to watch it, or miss it the second time.
- After the film's release Hitchcock received an angry letter from the father of a girl who refused to have a bath after seeing Diabolique (1954) and now refused to shower after seeing Psycho. Hitchcock sent a note back simply saying ``Send her to the dry cleaners''.
A classic, cannot be beaten for suspense. manages to terrify the viewer with the minimum amount of gore
Final Verdict- 10/10
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