Review of Psycho (2007) by Brendan C — 22 Feb 2013

"We all go a little mad sometimes." - Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).

That is a quote that is not just an opinion it is a fact. Everybody has gone mad at some moment. Not to the extent of the people in this film, but they have before. In the book it is actually "We all go a little crazy sometimes.".

Psycho is one of many ingenious masterpieces made by Alfred Hitchcock. It is not my favorite, but it is one of them. It was based off the book by Robert Bloch of the same name, which was released in the year of 1959. The movie was released a year later. It was a really controversial film at the time, and nobody at Paramount Pictures thought it would be a success. Nobody ever saw Hitchcock's genius until after the film came out, and they saw the reaction. This film is the greatest example of how nobody saw what he was doing until he was done. The film became a huge success. When it came out it was one of the scariest films of all time. When you watch it now it isn't scary, but it is still very creepy.

Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) has just stolen a lot of money from her boss. 40,000 dollars to be exact, and she is nervous about it. She stole it so she could afford to get married to her boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin). Paranoia about being caught, and exhaustion from running lead her to stay at the Bates Motel. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is the owner of the small motel, but he never gets any business because a new highway has opened and nobody can see his place, because it is on a back road.

Norman (Anthony Perkins) is a very shy and awkward man, because of his mother. His mother is verbally abusive to him, which has really affected him, because he must take care of her. He is a sweet man, but strange. His mother won't let him be with a woman, drink, or smoke. She has really damaged him. When Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) comes over to stay at the hotel he is attracted to her, which scares him because his mother won't let him be with a woman. Norman "wouldn't harm a fly," but his mother would. If you know the ending you will know why I used quotations in that last sentence.

Mother is the "Psycho.".

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She kills Marion in the shower. That scene made woman scared to take showers for years, and the music in the scene is famous, and it gets used a lot. Though it is kind of a cheesy music theme it is definitely effective. However when you watch the scene now you can tell that she isn't actually stabbing, and at one point you see the knife go right in front of Marion's stomach, but it didn't stab her. You have to look for it, but when you see it you realize how much better effects are today. It is still a creepy scene, the way you see some crazy old lady walking in.

The ending makes everything at the beginning much more creepy. Remember don't read this part of the review if you haven't seen the film yet. I just am writing it in a review, because I feel like it would be a great part of the film to review. Norman Bates had been keeping his mothers corpse preserved, and she has decomposed to a skeleton. He just dresses up as his mother and kills people. When he is Norman Bates he has no recollection of him killing people himself. He hears his mother's corpse speaking to him. He is a schizophrenic, and a psychopath. Norman is a sweet and awkward man, but Mother is a killer, and a verbally abusive person. Her voice is freaky as it gets. Hitchcock got one voice over to record himself speaking that well over and over again, before putting in the voice.

It was different from his other films, and that is why Paramount didn't like the fact that he was making it. They thought that the whole idea of a transvestite serial killer was really weird, and that it would be a bad movie for him to do. But that is why he did it. Hitchcock did his best when he was aloud to do what he wanted.

----------End of Spoiler Alerts----------.

Alfred Hitchcock never did anything that had as big of an effect as this film did. He did the Birds 3 years later, but that wasn't as huge as this either. When this film came out Hitchcock had a 20-page manual that he sent out to theatres with instructions about how he wanted the film to be screened. He didn't want anybody to be allowed into the theatre once the film started. He thought that the film would be much more suspenseful if you saw it from the very beginning. That was a fact. Hitchcock treated this film as his biggest picture, and it was. I just finished reading "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho," and I know a lot about the making of it. It was really controversial, and it took a lot of guts for him to make it at the time. My favorite directors are the ones that make the controversial things, because those are harder films to make, and they take courage to make them. Alfred Hitchcock is probably the greatest director of all time, and I can't wait to watch all of the other classics he has done that I haven't seen yet. I love Alfred Hitchcock, and I love this movie. It is one of the greatest movies of all time, and at the time it had never been done before. 18 years later it was done a 2nd time with John Carpenters Halloween, but it hasn't been done since. I want to see if any one in my generation can come along and do something like this, and make it great. I feel like this is the type of classic that gets done again every generation, and hasn't been done yet with my generation, but it will. An incredibly inspiring movie.