Directing: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriting: Joseph Stefano
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, John Gavin, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam
Review:
“The greatest, most influential Hitchcock horror/thriller ever made” FS is “an unsettling, fascinating descent into the dark side.” TV Psycho is “considered by many to be the greatest horror film ever made” VD “and the progenitor of the modern Hollywood horror film.” FS “Bernard Herrmann’s slashing violin score has become aural shorthand for terror.” TV
“Hitchcock’s decision to shoot the movie in black and white was driven purely by cost. Seeing that many bad, cheap ‘B’ movies shot in black and white were performing well at the box office, he gambled that a good, inexpensive black and white movie could do well and he was right.” MSN
The story is based on a novel by Robert Bloch. After embezzling $40,000, real estate office secretary Marion Crane (Leigh) is on the run from the law. She stops at the Bates Motel, run by amateur taxidermist Norman (Perkins). “The psychotic, disturbed ‘mother’s boy’ is dominated by his jealous ‘mother,’ rumored to be in the Gothic house on the hillside behind the dilapidated, remote motel.” FS
“Poor Anthony Perkins was so disturbing in his role he never really escaped” LM the role “just as anyone who’s seen the movie won’t ever completely shake those behind-the-shower-curtain tingles. Janet Leigh’s watery demise” LM in “the most celebrated shower sequence ever made” FS “has been deconstructed by film scholars and stolen by other directors too many times to count yet remains a remarkable piece of work.” LM
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