Are there still any vacancies at the Bates Motel?

Rating: 9/10 (31 October 2004)

(Some Spoilers) Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror thriller about murder and madness at the deadly and infamous Bates Motel managed by the weird but seemingly harmless son of the motel owner Mrs. Bates Norman, Anthony Perkins.
The film "Psycho" starts out inside a darkened hotel room on a broiling Friday afternoon in December in the city of Phoenix Arizona. Marion Crane and Sam Loomis, Janet Leigh and John Gavin, have just finished off an afternoon quickie as they both get dressed to get back to their individual jobs after their lunch break. Depressed at having to meet and make love in the secrecy of a hotel room instead of at home like a married couple is getting both Marion and Sam very upset but they don't have the money to get married as well as raise a family. With Marion having a job as a secretary and Sam as a warehouse manager and also being very deeply in debt.
Marion later that afternoon is called into the office of her boss George Lowery, Vaughn Taylor, and given some $40,000.00 in cash from a client of his Tom Cassidy, Frank Albertson,to put away at the local bank for the weekend. It's then that something clicks in Marion's mind where she decides to steal the money and use it to skip town and later marry Sam.
Trading in her old car for a new one at a car dealership with $700.00 of the stolen cash Marion drives out west to California and as night falls it starts to rain very heavily and with the visibility next to zero she goes off the main highway on to a small country road that leads to the Bates Motel. Getting a room from Norman Bates at the motel Norman starts to become friendly and falls for the pretty sweet as well as obviously distressed Marion. This makes Norman's old and infirm mother Mrs.Bates very angry with him for not paying any attention towards her. Mrs. Bates also develops a very vicious and violent hatred towards Marion for what she thinks is her stealing Norman away from her.
Later in her motel room Marion has seconds thoughts about her taking the $40,000.00 and plans to return it the next day to her employer back in Phoenix after having a good nights sleep at the motel but the bitter and vengeful Mrs. Bates has other ideas. Horrific film that has you at the edge of your seat and by the end falling off it. With the murderous Mrs. Bates on a knife wielding rampage attacking and slashing Marion as she's taking a shower leaving her to bleed to death on the floor of the bathtub.
The shower scene is one of the most terrifying horror sequences ever put on film. The scene slowly builds itself up as the crazed Mrs. Bates enters Marion's room and creeps up to her in the shower. Quickly pulling the shower curtains apart Mrs. Bates lays into Marion with a large kitchen knife that had people in movie houses back them, 1960, choke on their popcorn and candy bars. Alfred Hitchcock set the scene up in a deliberately slow and deadly pace but when it exploded it left those watching, like poor Marion, in a state of first shock and then sheer terror.
Even more effective, but not as popular with the movie going public, is when Mrs. Bates confronts private detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam), who was hired to find Marion,at the top of the stairs in the Bates house. All at once when you, and Det. Arbogast, never expected it Mrs. Bates lashes her knife into Det. Arbogast face cutting it open. As Det. Arbogast falls to the bottom of the staircase Mrs. Bates pounces on him, like a cat, and savagely finishes him off. This all happened so fast that you, like Arbogast, didn't even have enough time to anticipate it which made it that much more effective.
It later turns out that the insane Mrs. Bates had already murdered a number of people, before she murdered both Marion and Det. Arbogast, over the years and had them and their cars sunk in a nearby lake with the help of her willing son Norman to hide the evidence.
The shock to end all shocks comes near the end of the movie when Marion's sister Lila, Vera Miles, goes down to the basement of the Bates house and finds out just who and what Mrs. Bates really is and who was the real person behind the bloody and brutal murders at the Bates Motel.