Easily the greatest Slasher film ever

Rating: 10/10 (21 October 2006)

I'll start off by naming a few slasher films worth mentioning. Silence of the Lambs, A Nightmare on Elm Srt., Friday the 13th, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Need I name more? All of these, stressing ALL of them, are great genre defining motion pictures. BUT, they are not THE genre defining slasher motion picture. That title goes only to Psycho. Nobody else would have dared to have a Serial Killer in drag killing off a naked woman showering before this point.
However, influence alone does not make a movie good. Look at the other aspects of the movie. So many of today's horror films focus around so much gore and violence that there's such an uneven mix of gore, emotion, acting, properly introducing characters, etc. Everything in Psycho is just right. Alfred Hitchcock's works are just so great at only using so much of certain things. Everything is well balanced. You meet the characters, you feel sympathetic for the characters. You get to love them before the violence starts. That's what makes this film so good.