Mother ! Oh God, Mother ! Blood ! Blood !!

Rating: 8/10 (22 October 2008)

In a moment of madness, Marion Crane steals forty thousand dollars from the office she works in and drives to see her lover in the neighbouring state. En route, she stops off at a lonely motel where she meets the curious proprietor, Norman Bates, and decides to try and undo her folly. An altogether different and more grisly fate awaits her however
There are three things about Psycho which I think make it so extraordinarily brilliant. One is Hitchcock's direction, which is faultless; this is one of the few films where I can't think of any way it could be made better. Another is the sheer daring of the movie, both in terms of its subject-matter (an Oedipal, matricidal, necrophiliac, psychotic transvestite as a main protagonist was pretty strong for 1960) and its amazing structure, in which the heroine is murdered after forty-five minutes, something no other film has done (though some are close contenders, e.g. L.A. Confidential). Most of all however, I love the way it redefined my favourite genre of horror films. Prior to Psycho, every horror movie had a physical monster, whether it was Dracula, King Kong, The Fly, whatever. Psycho has a monster - its true face is revealed just after Lila Crane finds Mrs Bates, screams in horror and turns around - and it's a man. The monster isn't some alien creature, it is a person. It is us. A thousand fine movies have then built upon that - Repulsion, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Taxi Driver, Halloween, A Nightmare On Elm Street, The Silence Of The Lambs - but they were all born out of Psycho. Great directors like Dario Argento and Brian DePalma have essentially spent their careers remaking it (see the latter's Dressed To Kill and Raising Cain particularly). Hitchcock never thought of it as a horror movie, but it is in the truest sense; it's horrifying, the example par excellence of masterful audience manipulation through suspense into a state of delirious anxiety. On paper it is a crime thriller, from an excellent pulp novel by Robert Bloch, and it can be taken that way, but it has so much Gothic spookiness I find it impossible to do so; the nightmarish old Bates house, the grisly fruit cellar, the murky swamp, Norman's eerie stuffed birds in the parlour, the final superimposed subliminal image of Mother's skull on Norman's face. Is his mind simply broken, or is she a vengeful spirit which possesses him ? One of my favourite ideas in the story is how Marion actually gets off the highway when driving through the night. Technically, it's just a device to advance the plot. Logically, she gets lost in the storm. Personally, I think it's some sinister spell that leads her to her doom at the Bates Motel, like a bewitched innocent in a fairy-tale. Both Perkins and Leigh are stunning in this movie; he for his incredible mannerisms and hawkish stare, and she for her stunning intensity and world-weary introspection. Their supper scene together in the back-office is one of my favourite dialogue scenes of all time as these two lost souls briefly connect, baring their souls despite speaking in riddles; "We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you ?". The role was something of a curse for Perkins, who never really got to play a mainstream part later, but he created an unforgettable character who is at the very top of cinema's long list of social outcasts. His final scene sitting in the cell is one of the most profound and frightening pieces of acting I have ever had the privilege to watch. Equally stunning is Bernard Herrmann's riotous all-string score, with its famous screeching violins and rhythmic cellos. As with the best movies, the music is really the dramatic anchor of the film, hugely inflating all the suspense and terror - when the famous shower sequence batters us into submission, it is the assault on our ears just as much as our eyes which floors us. For those of you who think the Oscars reward quality film-making, this is a good example of a stunning movie which won no Academy Awards, losing out to such cinematic greats as The Apartment, Butterfield 8 and Sons And Lovers. Arguably the greatest of Hitchcock's masterpieces (though I prefer The Birds) and undoubtedly the most influential; it was followed years later by three direct sequels (the first of which is very good) and a pointless shot-for-shot colour remake. Hitch appears in his standard walk-on as the man in the cowboy hat outside Marion's office.