Norman Bates: an unassuming hotelier who wouldn't hurt a fly

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2006)

This was the fifth and final film of Alfred Hitchcocks impressive directorial career to earn him an Academy Award nomination for best director. His other nominated films as a director were Rear window, spellbound, Life Boat and Rebecca. He never won the Oscar. This time around he lost out to Billy Wilder for The Apartment. What he accomplished from this innovative low budget film probably should have won him the Oscar. This is a low budget film for Hitchcock that in toady;s dollars would have cost about $5 million to make. The film was adapted from the 1959 lackluster novel by Robert Bloch by screenwriter Joseph Stefano. Cinematographer Jack Russell got an Academy Award nomination for photographing this film but no major film offers because of his work, He had did Orson Welles' Macbethe early in his career and was mostly involved in television and a few B movies before and after Psycho. He does a great job here along with film editor George Tomasini who edited Stalag 17, Vertigo, North By Northwest, The Birds and Cape Fear among his many fine films. A memorable music score from Bernard Herrman who did such films as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much. This is the story of a woman who steals $40,000 dollars and has plans to run away with her married lover but sees her plans and the life she lived evaporate so on the run she stops at a rundown motel off the beaten path that sits in the shadow of an old decapitated wooden turn-of-the-century mansion where the motel keeper lives with his aged mother. It's a classic horror setting and filmed in black and white. Janet Leigh in an Academy award nominated performance as Best Supporting Actress is the woman on the run and Anthony Perkins is the motel keeper who has been hounded by his domineering mother all his life and functions in his lonely existence as a motel keeper of a motel that no one stops at anymore. Also among the cast are Martin Balsam, Vera Miles, John Gavin and John McIntire. This film also received an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction for it's great set. It's a fairly simple story with twists and turns and a little black comedy thrown in. It's a classic and comes across as kind of a bonus prize for followers of Hitchcock like he was saying here's something a little different for you to check out. I would give it a 9.0 out of 10.