Alfred Hitchcock's Pre-"Psycho" Psycho

Rating: 4/10 (23 May 2015)

Vertigo has got to be one of the most absurd and disturbing movies about men and their "modern-day" mental illnesses that I have ever seen. It's true.
The mental illness that I'm talking about here is, of course - Men's totally twisted and fanatical obsession about having complete and absolute control over women.
You know, I'd say that when it comes to one of Hitchcock's most psychotic "movie-psychos" of all-time - Scottie Ferguson here in Vertigo makes Norman Bates from Psycho look, by comparison, as if he were "normal", yes, NORMAL. I mean, Scottie was one really whacked-out maniac, that's for sure!
Personally, I think that director Alfred Hitchcock went way too far out on a shaky limb with this one. And, being way out there, he ended up losing his balance and, literally, getting "vertigo", himself. This film is nothing but a bird's eye view of a supremely grotesque freak show with Scottie (representing the average American psycho, I mean, the average American male) as the main monster of attraction.
At a running time of 130 minutes, Vertigo really only begins to pick up steam in the last 30 minutes. The first 100 minutes of it is just endlessly drawn out 'build-up', extremely drab, most of it.