Henry's Top 100: #08 - Psycho

My favorite Hitchcock movie...



There will be spoilers in this little write up. But really, if you haven't seen Psycho, what the heck is wrong with you?

It's kind of weird to have Psycho be a "childhood favorite", it seems almost like it would be an oxymoron, yet Psycho has fascinated and entertained me since I was nine years old. Psycho, when you consider when it came out, how it was made, and how dazzling some of the scenes were, is really one of the coolest movies ever made.

First: Consider that when it came out...there had literally NEVER been an American film like it. Ever. A brutal, serial killer movie, with a major star shown in just her bra who dies in the first half of the film in a naked shower scene, that climaxes with a budding young male star wearing a dress screaming "I'm Norma Bates" (it's there...listen for it), and ends with a single shot - narrated by an old woman who has taken over the mind of the killer - with a bleak final shot of our heroine's car being slowly dragged out of the mud. It's insane that this movie got made in 1960. Nuts.

And then there is how it was made...Hitchcock used his TV show's crew and style to make the film. Stripped down, bare...the film, when you really look at it, does not look any better than your average Alfred Hitchcock Presents or Twilight Zone episode. Or the amazing shower sequence...much more has been written about the style and direction of that scene than I could dare begin to go into...but it's an obvious triumph. Or how about killing the biggest star in the movie in the first 50 minutes? Nuts.

But the nuts and awesomeness of this movie comes through in individual scenes. The scene with Marion at her job at the bank, the scene showing her imagining everyone's voice while driving, the dinner scene with Norman, the shower scene, the killing of the P.I., the "tour" through the Bates' house, the scene with Norman's mother, the scene with the psychologist, the final scene...it's just an amazingly written, directed, and acted film.

And creepy as all hell. I still can't see a figure at a window without being a little freaked out.

Best Scene: ...The Shower scene...