Psycho (1960)
#9 on my Top 100 List
"A boy's best friend is his mother." If someone ever tells you this in the stuffed-bird filled parlor of his creepy backwoods motel, RUN. No good can come of it! I could fill term papers with stuff about this movie (actually, I have), but I'll try to keep it short for here. The things that Hitchcock did in this film were unprecedented - you don't kill off your heroine half-way through the movie! - and the way that he did them is still unmatched. The shower scene alone comprises roughly 70 different shots in a minute and a half. His choice to make the film in black and white heightens the suspense, from Marion Crane's approach in the dark and the rain to the old Bates Motel itself to the dark gray blood swirling calmly down the shower drain. The first half of the film is mostly about Marion's paranoia about her crime, with a low tense score and imagined conversations of those who discover the theft, then after her untimely demise, the focus switches to Norman Bates and his twisted world. The scene where he dutifully cleans up the bathroom and disposes of the body is actually kind of sad and the final monologue with the skull superimposed over the shot (see if you can catch it!) is suitably terrifying. Poor Anthony Perkins had been being groomed to be the studio's newest heartthrob, but after this, he had no chance.
My Netflix rating: 5 stars
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