The grand daddy of them all

Rating: 9/10 (27 December 1999)

I love horror films. I have reviewed all the Fridays, all the Jaws', most of the Halloweens and a few of the Nightmares. Halloween and Jaws are, to me, the two best horror films ever made. And even though I don't think Psycho is on par with some of the best horror films ever to grace our screens, you have to give credit where credit is due. Psycho is a pioneer for horror films and it is because of Psycho that we have films like Halloween and Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and directors like Hooper and Carpenter and Craven. I was born 12 years after Psycho was made and I really didn't get into film until at least another 10 years after that, but I can tell you that Psycho must have shocked and revolutionized film. Could you imagine a film maker so bold as to tell theater owners that they are not to permit anyone into the theater after it starts? Can you imagine a film so bold as to kill the main character half way through the film? Can you imagine a film so bold as to kill someone so graphically in the shower? Sure you can imagine all that. It's 1999. This film is almost 40 years old. But imagine what it did to audiences in 1960. It must have shocked the hell out of everyone back then. Psycho is a film like no other.
There have been films that have done it better than Psycho but none of them can say they were the first. Psycho is a great film and it is enjoyable, unlike other older films like Citizen Kane that are only listed as great because they were the first to do something but has nothing redeemable about it. Psycho is a creepy film and it gave birth to a genre and I am thankful for it because my favourite horror film has Psycho to thank for it's inspiration. Halloween uses the camera the same way Psycho did and Carpenter is a carbon copy of Hitchcock for this one film. The two films even share a common name and character, Sam Loomis.
There really isn't anything else that I want to say about the film, there are more than 100 reviews in here and many of them are by people that know a hell a lot more about the film than I do, but I just wanted to say how thankful I am that a movie like Psycho came along and paved the way for future films like The Evil Dead and Last House On The Left and such. This may be the first twisted horror film of it's kind and that is worth mentioning.
If you want to know how horror has revolutionized and evolved to the way it is today, you can look no further than Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant masterpiece, PSYCHO.