Psycho (1960)

VERDICT:
9/10 Mama’s Boys

Might just be my favorite Hitchcock movie right behind North by Northwest.

Psycho is about a woman that jacks $40,000 from her boss at the bank she works at and gets the hell out of dodge so that she can run away with her lover and get married. One the way to meet her hubby, she books a room at The Bates Motel for the night, has dinner with the hotel’s weirdo owner/resident taxidermist – one Mr. Norman Bates -she smiles politely while he yaks about his mom all night, then she decides to take a shower…

You probably know what happens next, but just in case you’re one of the few who’s never even heard of Psycho, I’m gonna play it safe and let you see it for yourself.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen this, but it’s also one of those movies that’s pretty hard to forget. Can’t think of too many horror movies from 1960 that don’t feel dated fifty years later and still manage to scare the wits out of people without the use of special effects or stupid teens having sex in an abandon cabin in the woods. Well, maybe not that second part, but definitely that first part.

The reason the story works so well here is because it plays into the human psyche. It’s not about your worst nightmares coming to life, nor does is it just trying to scare you by grossing you out which seems to be an all-too-common misunderstanding with many a horror director nowadays (listen up, Eli Roth), it’s scary because it’s about how that otherwise normal-looking guy sitting to next to you on the bus may very well have the potential to chop your damn head off. Screw hockey masks and machetes, screw claw gloves and bad dreams, the idea that any one of us, the countless number of people we all walk by every single day, might be a psycho waiting to snap, now that’s some scary shit.

But the story isn’t the only thing thing that makes Psycho scary. I truly appreciate horror movies that don’t just blare loud crashes and bangs over the audio whenever something jumps on screen just to get a cheap scare out of the audience, and even though there aren’t many scenes here that’ll make your heart skip a beat like so, holy hell does this movie have one effective horror score. Even though it only really boils down to some guy scratching away on the highest note of his violin over and over and over, there aren’t a whole lot of sounds that scream “AAAAHHHHHH!” like this simple little ditty. Jaws is the only other movie I can think of that uses the same kind of technique, but even then you’re already pretty much aware that the Orca is soundly effed by the time the music rolls around.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates is also another big reason this movie will creep you right out. I don’t know how this guy got any acting gigs after this that weren’t for movies called Psycho 2. Again, doing my best not to spoil anything, but the point is that he’s a damn good.

And come on, it’s Alfred Hitchcock we’re talking about, the legend himself. Film buffs can go to freakin’ town on this movie analyzing all the brilliant little subtleties that speak volumes about things most people watching this movie could give a two shits about and all the groundbreaking directing techniques he used that had never been done before (and he was responsible for a lot of them), but luckily for the casual moviegoer, Hitchcock is also famous for being one of cinema’s best storytellers and he tells one crazy riff here.

Don’t write this off because it’s in black-and-white, doesn’t matter if it was made before you were born or that you don’t know who any of the actors are, Psycho is one of the all-time great thrillers and one of the all-time great horror movies. I was totally shocked at how much this movie freaked me out the first time I saw it and I’m pretty confident in saying that you’ll end up having a similar reaction.

So give it up for Psycho, folks. What better time to revisit this sinister mofo than now.

Oh, and don’t see the ’90s remake. I’ve only caught bits and pieces, but it doesn’t take much to recognize unnecessary movies when you see one.