1960 – Psycho

It’s an American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with a screenplay by Joseph Stefano based on a novel by Robert Bloch. It stars Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, a woman on the run who stops by the Bates Motel. It’s considered one of the most influential horror movies of all time. I rented it on Apple TV for 3.99 Eur.

The 60s! We’ve arrived at a new decade where in the beginning there will be huge movie productions: sandal epics like Ben-Hur or big production musicals, but then a slump will hit by the end of the decade, be it because of the decline of the studio system, because of the rise of TV at home or because of a general disillusionment of the Boomer generation. No matter, the 70s will give us gritty, realistic cinema, so I am quite ready for the ride from glamour to rawness.

Heh, we’ve arrived at yet another one of my big gaps in my filmography, one of the most famous horror movies ever and considered a true masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock. I did try to see it once, when I was like 12 or so and found it boring, because it wasn’t about somebody being stabbed at all, it was about this boring secretary – did I get the right movie? Watchingw it live on some movie channel in 1991, I couldn’t just stop and check and quickly switched to something else. Now, in 2026, I have been thoroughly spoiled, on both the famous scene (the one I was looking for) and the resolution. I did still want to see it, though, and make up my own mind whether it was good.

Look, horror isn’t my favorite genre. I was fascinated by the forbidden fruit of it, staying up late to watch the Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th movies and other horror movies when I was way too young. Just recently, I was recalling a particularly gruesome scene from Puppetmaster with the Leech Woman – I was not supposed to watch this so young. Needless to say, more than 35 years later, it still is in my mind, yeech. But by the time most people enjoy horror movies, I was way grown out of it. I still enjoyed Scream in high school (mostly for the hot actors), but just laughed at people being scared by The Blair Witch Project. It seems horror is having a small renaissance currently with Obsession and Backrooms conquering the box office way over other fare like the Star Wars Mandalorian movie, so let’s go with the vibe of horror 2026 and complete my filmography in the process – Psycho it is.

What can one say about such a famous movie that hasn’t been said before? Well, it is a bit dated on the horror front. There is maybe one sequence where I would’ve been on the edge of my seat, had I not been spoiled. So, even though it created a lot of the horror tropes, those forbidden horror movies from the 80s have desensitized me so much that some suspense from a 1960 movie sequence elicits only a small raised eyebrow from me. Psycho supposedly is based on Ed Gein, the butcher of Plainfield, a local hermit who stole bodies from graveyards and kept bones and other body parts as keepsakes in addition to murdering two women. So I think just 3 years after the discovery of his disturbing home, it would’ve been more horrific in people’s minds, especially before other notorious serial killers from the 1970s.

What really stands out, however, are the technical details. Already in Vertigo, the fall from the tower was dizzying, but here I felt even more disoriented by a fall from the stairs. The music score is classic, yet hits perfectly. The shadow play on Norman Bates’ face is just perfect – makes one totally uncomfortable; I really like that he went back to black and white for this one as it emphasized the feeling of confinement very well. And Anthony Perkins really puts on a great performance, the whole transformation from “oh, that poor boy, he really seems quite nice” to “oh my god, psycho…” is masterfully executed. Happy to have really seen it and not just parts of it. It was an enjoyable time, albeit not going to be on my top movies of the year – I was just too spoiled for it.