Psycho

What makes it such a good thriller?

Psycho has remained high even years after its release in 1960 (especially its famous soundtrack).  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Janet Leigh, Psycho has created a heritage so huge it has spawned three sequels, a remake and a documentary. Anthony Perkins himself has appeared in all of these features and has remained a central heart of psycho phenomenon.

The story begins with office worker Marion Crane (Vera Miles) who is fed up with the way life has treated her. The only she can ever see her penniless boyfriend, Sam (John Gavin) is in their lunch breaks, and due to their lack of income, they won’t be able to afford a bright white wedding. One Friday, Marion is trusted with $40,000 to bank for her manager, but seeing the opportunity to take the money and start new life, Marion leaved town and heads towards Sam’s California store. Tired from the long drive, Marion gets off the main highway and pulls out into the Bates motel to get away from the storm;  this where it all goes wrong and the story starts to begin.

At first from an audiences view the bates motel looks like a normal innocent shack to stay for the night from a long, hard drive, with nothing sinister to look forward, except the creepy, abandoned like house next to the motel, which changes the peaceful scenery. The motel is managed by a quiet, fragile man named ‘Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins) who makes dinner for Miss Crane, although something seems slightly wrong about him. He is heard having arguments with his mother who shouts at him about his hospitality to the girl and runs out of the house looking highly annoyed. When Marion tells Norman that she doesn't feel peculiar to eat and returns to her room to have a shower, something tragic happens.

What we seen next in the screen, of a classic Hitchcock move, the plot of the film is twisted in such way that we as the audience have no idea what will happen next. It’s rather shocking, of course when we witness the main character is killed off.

Marion is killed, by a dark figure, in what has to be the greatest movie scene of all time, and this is why psycho is still all around the best thriller/horror film, in the scene we see, the figure takes position and appears with a sharp knife slashing poor unexpected Miss Crane, fulfilling Hitchcock’s desire to let the blonde girl suffer once again. We, however only see Marion screaming in the shower, the figure thrusting a knife, and a dark substance at the bottom of the bath that is of course Marion’s blood. The camera never shows us the knife making contact with flesh.

Even with a lack of gore, people at the time thought Psycho was extremely graphic as no film had ever gone as far as to show a naked lady getting murdered in a shower. The people of the 60’s had never seen this kind brutal gore on the big screen before, so Hitchcock could be seen a pioneer, being the first film maker who dared to do something different on the film industry back in the day.

As the plot about Marion & Sam turned out to be another McGuffin, so Sam & Lila (Marion’s Sister) launch an investigation into her mysterious sudden death, with Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) sent to investigate the innocent Bates Motel and the creepy house next to the motel. As Mr Arbogast climbs the stairs to the upper floor of the house to investigate, the camera seems to zoom away from the floor and into Arbogast at the same time, also the camera goes into a high angle shot making Arbogast look small and weak, this implies that something gory is about to happen. This is Hitchcock’s clever technique to build tension and highlight Arbogast awaiting doom. Suddenly as Arbogast reaches the top of the stairs, chilling violin strings plays and we see an old lady running out of her room and slashing Arbogast repeatedly until his dead.  As the audience we all have figured out what the poor & weak inspector could not, that the murder is Bate’s mother… but where is Norman to stop his lunatic mother?

When Mr Arbogast never returns from the investigation, Sam and Lila go out to the Bates house themselves to find answers in their own hands. When Lila hears footsteps, Lila goes to hide in the cellar where she finds the preserved corpse of Mrs BATES!?! But we thought the whole time Mrs Bates was alive and ready as we seen her slash those two victims or was there more victims flying into the mouse trap??? However continuing on the scene we see at once Norman appearing from the door with maddened eyes, dressed in his mother’s clothes, ready to kill Lila to prevent her from discovering his psychotic behavior or more. However our hero comes to the rescue and knocks out the psychotic fool.

Norman Bates was the murder the whole time, driven insane after killing his own mother, Bates began to pretend his mother was still with him to comfort him, instead of getting treatment by a psychiatrist, he played dress up as his mother and went on a killing spree and pretended to have full conversations with his ‘mother’ (yeah right) when in reality he was talking to himself. He had taken this so far that he had become a mother. There was now more Mrs Bates in him than Norman Bates! Whenever Norman was in a state of heightened emotion, such as when he met Marion, his mother’s side would take over and something horrific, just like the Green goblin in Spider man, Norman’s mother side would lead to the deaths of many innocent people, not just Marion or Clumsy Arbogast. In the end, Norman was sent to a mental asylum, where he could hurt no more, however, a plan was already forming in his (Mrs Bates) head to take revenge.

To conclude psycho is a great thriller, it creates suspense and questions are mind to think what is possible and makes us grab our seat, when we hear the blood curdling string of the violin. We don’t find out the villain until the end, which makes us question even more (like in Scooby-doo).