A Horror Classic

Rating: 10/10 (27 February 2012)

Psycho is a suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh. The screenplay by Joseph Stefano is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The novel was loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein,who lived just 40 miles from Bloch.
In the 60's,Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel, Psycho announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that score what followed would hardly disappoint.
The film depicts the encounter between a secretary, Marion Crane,hiding at a secluded motel after embezzling money from her employer, and the motel's disturbed owner and manager, Norman Bates, and the aftermath of their encounter.Marion is unhappy in her job at a Phoenix, Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with hardware store manager Sam Loomis. One afternoon, she is given $40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave Phoenix for good and start a new life with her purloined nest egg. 36 hours later, paranoia and exhaustion have started to set in, and Marion decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel, where nervous but personable innkeeper Norman Bates cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother.
There's hardly a film fan alive who doesn't know what happens next, but while the shower scene is justifiably the film's most famous sequence, there are dozens of memorable bits throughout this film.Obviously,it remains a horror classic as it was filmed with tact, grace, and art as well as blends a brutal manipulation of audience identification and an incredibly dense, allusive visual style to create the most morally unsettling film ever made.