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Movie Review: Psycho (1960) September 23, 2009
Note: This is #38 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.
For those of you who don't yet know, the plot of Psycho starts with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary who steals $40,000 from her employer so that she can elope with her boyfriend. Now you know! On her way to her new life a storm forces Marion to pull over for the night at a remote motel supposedly run by creepy dude Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and his decrepit and homicidal mother. Things start to go badly as Norman tries to cover up his mother's shower related crimes and put the inevitable investigators off the trail. Psycho is the last of the Alfred Hitchcock film on my list, and I found it to be one of the better ones. This despite the fact that I already knew the big twist about Norman Bates that gets revealed at the very end and the fact that I knew all about the iconic and shocking shower stabby stabby scene. It's really Hershey's chocolate syrup going down the drain!
But while the film's intended effects were surely dulled by such familiarity, it didn't detract from the fact that it was a genuinely creepy and suspenseful flick --basically an early example of the slasher genre. Perkins is genuinely creepy as Norman Bates and I appreciate Hitchcock's decision to film in black and white despite the established popularity of color films because the stark lighting adds to the overall effect of many scenes. And I'm not sure what's up with those birds, but there sure were a lot of them hanging around in the background of almost every scene.
So even though I enjoyed some of Hitchock's other movies more than Psycho, this is one of those that I'd recommend to anyone not too squeamish to sit through it if for no other reason that to directly experience something very well done that has permeated popular culture. Sometimes it's best just to see something at its source.
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Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Movies, Psycho
