A film that will stay in you LONG after you've seen it

Rating: 9/10 (13 December 2005)

What more can be said about Alfred Hitchcock's most popularly received(perhaps not his best,quality-wise)film?
Perhaps this: some forty-five years after it was released,it's still referenced and easily accessible movie in regards to movies creating visceral dread and natural shock. Even though Hitch wanted to make this as spare and nuanced a movie as he possibly could(note that this was a B&W film in 1960,when most movies had gone to color and various forms of "Sens-a-round" type cinema gimmicks of the period to capture."shock" and "thrill" moviegoers),the amount of care put into matching Bernard Hermann's tense score with the seemingly common-place events leading towards the horrors being hidden in the Bates Motel.
Lastly,the show is a veritable maze of curiosity,where the film begins as a tracking of the moral quandaries of one MArion Crane(Janet Leigh,beautiful and haunting as a VERY weak and corruptible character here),who,working a dead-end job and having an affair with a married man,decides to abscond with $40,000 of an investor's money. Her run from,well,everything,leads her to the seedy BAtes motel and one Norman Bates(Anthony Perkins,whose long career boiled down to this role). The rest is pretty well-known by anyone familiar with this movie.
This is a must-see for ANY film-lover. And in all likelihood,this movie will stay with the viewer,images AND sounds,long after one has viewed it.