Content Warning: Spoilers
Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1960 masterpiece, “Psycho”, single handedly changed horror as a movie genre. Through its musical scores and tight camera work, composer Bernard Herrmann and Cinematographer John L. Russel, perfectly captured Hitchcock’s vision, and went down in history with him. “Psycho” is a story of a woman who steals money from her company, she runs away and finds the Bates Motel. She is met with our main villain Norman Bates, who has a split personality, he is himself and his mother. His mother (actually him just in a wig) goes on a killing spree and in the end is arrested.
Though I watched this movie a few years back, it slipped my mind how suspenseful it was. My first impression of this movie during my rewatch was “wow this movie has all the little horror movie bits”, obviously it does. But at the same it is so unique and holds up, I thought the main character dying in the first hour of the movie was insane, especially for a movie that old. This was the first movie to ever have openly sexual characters while also having so much on screen violence, with no shame at all.
The most iconic scene of the movie, the shower scene, uses tight shots and fast reverse shots, giving the impression of violence and nudity. This accompanied with the iconic shower scene music made this the most influential scene in all of modern horror. Even if you have not seen “Psycho”, you’ve heard it, so many movies have used the sound from the shower scene, it has become so synonymous with horror.
I think this movie holds up so well because of Hitchcock’s determination to make the film fit his vision, he knew he was doing wild things and he stuck with it. This film got the horror genre out of the post WW2 monster and sci fi trend, and made the new trend slasher horror, full of blood, violence and sex.
“Psycho” was one of the first movies to challenge the at the time still standing Hays Code, even from the first scene in the movie, where our main character Marion is only in a bra. Even implications of sexual activity in film was frowned upon and this movie had it very directly in there. Watching this film 60 years after it was released, having two characters be sexual on screen is not shocking, that happens in horror movies all the time, but for its time this was absolutely insane.
If this film had not been made or changed at all I don’t think many of my favorite movies would be made, especially the slasher films like “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “Halloween” (Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh, is the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis, the main character in “Halloween”).
I don’t see anything wrong with this movie. I think it is one of the most solid horror movies, one thing that adds to this is the depth we get with the main villain, Norman Bates. He has so much depth that we see build throughout the film.
To me, the icing on the cake for “Psycho” is the soundtrack, it’s so dramatic and fast, even in the very slow driving scene where Marion thinks the cop is following her (and she’s driving so slow) the fast music makes me feel so nervous for her. Hitchcock and Herrmann were able to capture the nerves that can come from music and perfectly merge them into the tight visuals.
“Psycho” is and will continue to be one of the most influential horror movies in modern history.
