The best, bar none

Rating: 10/10 (17 June 2004)

If you're reading this, chances are you've seen the film - so there is little point describing the plot. Okay. Why do I keep revisiting this film, and why do I hold it to such a high regard? Two words - acting and directing. If this is the first 'real' horror movie, or the first slasher film, it is the best because it doesn't fall into the traps associated with later (and cheesier) horror films. For one, all of the characters are 'real' and intelligent. Sure, Norman Bates is weird, and Marion Crane is scared of him, but she's also sympathetic to his plight. It isn't like he's waving around butcher knives and she says, "Hmm, well, I think I'll go take a shower now!" The conversation in Norman's parlour ends on a pleasant note (after having navigated through some very dark material) and she leaves to go prepare for bed - she couldn't have suspected what was about to happen or the audience would have suspected it too - the killing wouldn't have been a shock at all. Another thing about these 'real' characters. Arbogast starts out hard-boiled, but his conversatin with Norman in the motel office seems so real to the point where I suspect that the dialogue was ad-libbed. But of course Hitchcock wouldn't have allowed that. But the dialogue doesn't sound scripted at all. It's all in the delivery - very effective, we get to see that Arbogast is very good at his job - not an amateur at all. When Sam and Lila go to the motel to do their own investigation, there is inspired dialogue that you wouldn't hear in a conventional horror film. For one thing, when they enter the bathroom, the scene of the earlier carnage, Sam matter-of-factly remarks "there's no shower curtain". It's just a coment, and neither character dwells on this miniscule of details - how could they have guessed that it was used to wrap Marion's body with before she was dumped in her car trunk? As well, when Sam decides to occupy Norman while Lila searches the house, he says "If you find anything, anything at all, don't stop to tell me". See? Again, this wouldn't have occurred in a regular movie. The characters are intelligent and think out their actions before they act on them. And while Lila is put in the position of choosing to either run out the back door of Norman's house or down the flight of stairs and into the basement, she chooses the stairs (famous horror movie mistake) not because she is stupid, but because she is curious and wants nothing else but to find out what happened to her sister. It's one thing to have a main character massacred halfway through the film, but it's a much different movie that show's the intricate clean up of the crime scene - the mopping up of the blood, the wiping of the floor, walls and bathtub, the careful disposal of the body, etc, etc. While the murder last for less than 30 seconds, the clean up goes on for 10 minutes, and makes the scene far, FAR more disturbing. Watching dutiful Norman clean up his 'Mother's' mess, looking at the blood on his hands, smiling happily as the car sinks below the surface of his backyard swamp...well, it reaches a level of 'disturbing' that most movies hope to achieve but never reach. And the last line: "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...." Enough said.