I wouldn't hurt a fly**possible spoiler**

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2002)

I hate to jump on the band wagon, but this film is one of the best horror's of all time. Tomes and tomes have been written on this film, so I hope what I have to say is relevant.
You know the story; bomb shell, Janet Leigh, steals $40,000 no more than ten minutes after a steamy love scene and heads to Fairvale and to her boyfriend and what she believes will be happiness ever after. Enter Bates Motel and the boyish Norman who is a charming yet pathetic soul, dominated by his powerful mother. After Janet decides that stealing the money is wrong and makes a decision to return it, she hops into a sin-cleansing shower and suddenly gets stabbed a hundred times by a knife that never even touches her body. We're forced to transfer our feelings to Norman who has to protect mother, even though she has committed a great crime, no harm must come to her, and we start rooting for him. Senile old mother picked the wrong girl to kill off, not only did she provide the world of horror with the endlessly plagiarised shower scene, she also caused people to come to the motel where her trail ends (remember, she stole 40 grand).
**SPOILER** We have no reason to believe that it isn't Mother doing the killing, the mother scenes are so well designed that we don't have a reason to believe that Norman actually killed her ten years ago and became her murderous alter-ego, dressing up in her clothes and killing pretty women in the shower.
The source novel for the film was written by Robert Bloch which in turn was based on the case of Ed Gein, who made headlines in the '50's when he confessed to robbing graves, having sex with corpses, dressing up in human skins and doing generally unusual things, he too, had a mother fixation. The Bernard Hermann score is a brilliant tension mounter and is used in all the right places to leave the audience gasping. A truly memorable film.