Psycho (1960)

In Alfred Hitchcock's complex, ground-breaking psychological horror thriller - it is still considered the "mother" of all modern horror suspense and "slasher" films. The low-budget ($800,000), brilliantly-edited, stark black and white film came after Hitchcock's earlier glossy Technicolor hits Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959). The film's screenplay by Joseph Stefano was adapted from the 1959 novel of the same name by author Robert Bloch.

It was Hitchcock's first real horror film and considered extremely frightening for many audiences, yet it also had all of the elements of a very dark, black comedy. Overt violence was present for a total of about two minutes in only two shocking, grisly murder scenes: the first was the celebrated 'slasher' shower murder, and the second was the stabbing of Phoenix detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) at the top of a flight of stairs, causing him to topple backwards. The remainder of the horror and suspense was solely created in the mind of the audience, although the tale did include other taboo topics at the time including transvestism, implied incest, and hints of necrophilia.

Hitchcock defied all film conventions by having the lead female protagonist murdered in the first third of the film (in the shocking, brilliantly-edited shower murder scene accompanied by screeching violins). The film's four Academy Award nominations failed to win Oscars: Best Supporting Actress (Janet Leigh with her sole career nomination), Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock with the last of his five losing nominations), Best B/W Cinematography, and Best B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration. Bernard Herrmann's famous, frightening and memorable score with shrieking, harpie-like piercing violins was un-nominated.

The nightmarish, disturbing film's themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human vulnerabilities and victimization, the deadly effects of money, Oedipal murder, and dark past histories were realistically revealed. Its themes were highlighted through repeated uses of motifs, such as stuffed birds, eyes, hands, and reflecting mirrors or glasses. Hitchcock cleverly and skillfully manipulated and guided the audience into identifying with the main character - luckless victim Marion (a Phoenix real-estate secretary), and then with that character's murderer - a disturbed and timid taxidermist named Norman (a brilliant typecasting performance by Anthony Perkins). Hitchcock's techniques voyeuristically implicated the audience with the universal, dark evil forces and secrets presented in the film.

• the title credits of the bleak, monochromatic film (with an accompanying driving and frantic score) consisted of abstract, gray horizontal and vertical lines that streaked and criss-crossed back and forth, violently splitting apart the screens and causing them to disappear; the patterns later referred to the schizophrenic personality of the major male protagonist
• the opening shots came from an aerial-view camera over the skyline of 1960s Phoenix, before the camera slowly descended (in a series of dissolves) and voyeuristically entered into the half-opened window of a cheap and drab room in a hotel-motel (not the first motel in the film!); it was a hot Friday afternoon, December 11th, at 2:43 pm
• the camera intruded into a furtive, lunchtime love-making scene between a post-coital, semi-nude couple; the female was 30-ish real estate office secretary Marion Crane (Oscar-nominated Janet Leigh) - wearing a white bra and half-slip - and reclining back on a double bed; she was with her shirtless lover/fiancee Sam Loomis (John Gavin), who had flown into town during a business trip; an uneaten lunch signified that she had lost her hunger for any further secretive meetings, due to their 'cheap' and lurid relationship, multiple unresolved issues and mutual poverty; Marion gave Sam an ultimatum - no more private trysts; her real desire was for a respectable and public marriage to him
• working in a small-town (Fairvale, California) as a hardware store proprietor, Sam explained how he was experiencing serious financial difficulties (both his dead father's debts and alimony payments to his ex-wife); Marion responded that she feared that she would forever be a fallen woman and spinster, already stuck in the same job for 10 years; unfulfilled by him, Marion refused to take the afternoon off with him, and rushed back to her storefront real estate office

Phoenix Area Real Estate Office
Real Estate Secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh)	Mr. Lowery (Vaughn Taylor)	Rich Client Mr. Tom Cassidy (Frank Albertson)

• she arrived back before her boss Mr. Lowery (Vaughn Taylor) had returned; an important meeting was set up with a wealthy (and inebriated) millionaire - a cowboy-hatted customer and "oil lease man" named Mr. Tom Cassidy (Frank Albertson); Cassidy had just purchased a house on Harris Street for his "sweet little girl" - a wedding present for his 18 year old, soon-to-be-married "respectable" daughter ("baby"); the vulgar client pulled out $40,000 in illicitly-obtained cold, hard cash for the house purchase; Lowery instructed Marion to put the large amount of cash in a bank's safe deposit box over the weekend; Marion wrapped up the money and stuck it in her purse; she was granted permission to go straight home after the bank deposit because of her headache
• tempted by the money, Marion brought the money home to her small one bedroom apartment instead of directly to the bank; wearing only a black bra and slip, she eyed the money lying wrapped in an envelope on her bed; unable to control her impulses (and still worried about her marital prospects), she had packed her suitcase to ready herself for a trip and stuffed the money back in her purse; a tracking shot linked her packed suitcase to the envelope stuffed with money
• while driving out of Phoenix toward Fairvale, California in her black car, Marion stared straight ahead and trance-like while imagining that she was on her way to elope with Sam with the large sum of cash with which to finance her elopement and marriage to him; there were tense shots of Marion's face as she fled town in her car (after embezzling $40,000 from her real estate office); at a stoplight where she was paused, her boss Mr. Lowery crossed the intersection in front of her and gave her a puzzled look as he glanced back at her, remembering that she should be at home sick; as she drove out of Phoenix, it turned to dusk and nighttime; she repeatedly looked into her rear-view mirror - symbolically checking out her own inner thoughts; headlights from approaching cars spotlighted her face - and her crime
• the next morning after sleeping by the side of the road, a California state trooper Highway Patrolman (Mort Mills), with frightening and reflective dark glasses, stared at Marion through her car window, and interrogated her on the side of the road; because she was acting nervous and tense, the suspicious cop asked to check her driver's license and registration, and then let her go, but followed her for a short while
• shortly later in Bakersfield, Marion pulled into a used car lot (without noticing the patrolman watching her across the street, until later), and spoke to the affable, fast-talking used car salesman California Charlie (John Anderson), and hurriedly proposed trading her Arizona-plated car for a different one - a light-colored '57 Ford, including an additional $700 dollars; she entered the ladies room to count out 7 $100 dollar bills and paid the difference before nervously driving off, as both the salesman and the patrolman watched her in amazement
• after driving all day Saturday, that evening, an exhausted Marion was tormented by menacing, inner monologues from off-screen voices - her disintegrating mental state and self-destructive conscience (and physical weariness) caused her to look inward and punish herself - as she imagined and forecast events leading up to her capture within a few days; headlights from other cars illuminated her face - making it appear that she was being interrogated
• through Marion's rainy windshield that caused blurred vision, she drove off the main road, and spotted a sign for a secluded, dilapidated, remote off-road Bates Motel with a vacancy; behind the slightly seedy, out-of-the-way cheap motel, she noticed a haunted-looking, Gothic-styled house on the hillside; in a lighted second story window, she saw the silhouetted figure of an old woman pass in front of the window; she honked her horn a few times to signal her presence
• the nervous, thin, and shy proprietor-manager of the hotel ran down the hill from the house and greeted her; he noted that it was a "dirty night" and that that the motel was completely empty: "We have twelve vacancies. Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies. They moved away the highway"; Marion awkwardly registered in the guest book under a false identity as Marie Sam-uels [a reference to her unfulfilled wish to marry Sam] from Los Angeles; the manager equivocated, but then selected the key to Room 1, the unit closest to the office; she learned that she was only about 15 miles from Fairvale, Sam's town; eager-to-please, the manager led her to the motel room, and showed her around; he stammered when he pointed out the mattress and the brightly-lit bathroom

Marion Signing Guest Register	Alias Name: Marie Samuels
Norman Reaching For Cabin 1 Room Key	Norman Showing Off Room # 1 to Marion

• after introducing himself as Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), he invited her to his back office parlor to eat dinner with him; while he returned to his house to get sandwiches and milk, Marion took the cash from her handbag and wrapped it in her Los Angeles Tribune newspaper (that she had purchased from a vending machine at the car dealership), and put the paper on her bed's nightstand; from her opened window facing the house, Marion listened as "mother's boy" Norman engaged in an argument with his shrill-voiced, jealous, domineering mother (voice of "Mother" by Virginia Gregg) over his "cheap erotic" dinner invitation to the young woman; Norman apparently defied his disagreeable mother when he returned to the motel with sandwiches and a pitcher of milk; he proposed that they eat in the motel's dark parlor behind the front office
• as Marion nibbled on a sandwich ("You eat like a bird"), they engaged in conversation amidst Norman's stuffed birds, as he described how he was an amateur avian taxidermist - a "strange," "uncommon" and "cheap" hobby "to pass the time"; he dutifully confided that he didn't have friends other than his mother - "Well, a boy's best friend is his mother"; he sensed that she might be running away from something, when he also admitted that he was traumatized: "You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and, and claw, but only at the air, only at each other. And for all of it, we never budge an inch"; Marion suggested that he might want to free himself and break away from his harsh mother and the traps set for him

The Motel's Back Parlor Scene

• Norman described how he was raised by his widowed mother after the age of five, but then when his mother's lover died under unusual circumstances, she was bankrupted and also went insane; he told how he was forced into the role of nurse-maiding his deranged and invalid [mentally - "ill" ?] mother after his step-father's death ("She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?"); all the whiile during the conversation, Marion was comparing her own trapped condition to Norman's entrapment without escape, his treatment by his mother and his unhealthy, troubled devotion to her
• Marion thanked Norman and admitted to him that she had regained her sanity and rationality, and would now extricate herself from her own self-imposed "private trap back there" due to lack of money and a frustrating romance; she had obviously made the decision to drive back in the morning to Phoenix to turn herself in and the stolen money "before it's too late"; however, she made an error in telling him that her last name was now "Crane" (not Samuels); after she returned to her cabin, he smirked as he looked at her fake name and address (Los Angeles) in the motel register
• in the back parlor, Norman removed a nude painting from the wall to uncover a peephole, so he (and the audience) could voyeuristically observe Marion undress down to her black brassiere and slip in front of her open bathroom door; a gigantic closeup of his eye appeared, as she stripped naked and covered herself with a robe

"Peeping Tom" Voyeurism of Norman on Marion in Motel Room

• twitching, nervous, and possibly aroused, Norman bounded up the steps to his hillside home, where he paused at the carved staircase, placed his hand on the banister post - and then with his hands in his pockets, retreated to the kitchen; meanwhile, Marion seemed to reconsider returning the money by making some calculations on a notepad about how to repay the money, but then ripped up the scratch book paper and flushed it down the toilet
• she shut the bathroom door, removed her robe from her naked back, draped the robe over the toilet, stepped naked into the bathtub (the camera displayed her bare legs), pulled across the translucent shower curtain and prepared to take a shower before retiring - a final soul-cleansing act
• in the film's shocking, carefully-edited, dialogue-less shower murder scene, a blurry female figure (a gray-haired woman with an old-fashioned dress) wielding a knife high in the air entered Marion's bathroom as she showered; the scene was at first a purifying act that shockingly turned violent with the violin-screeching soundtrack of Bernard Herrmann's score timed to the repeated stabbings, the ting-ting-ting sound as the shower curtain rings pulled off the rod as she slid down the wet wall, and the image of bloodied water spiraling counter-clockwise down the drain that dissolved into a close-up of dead Marion's stationary open eye

The Memorable Shower Slashing

The Drain and Marion's Eye

• after the murder, the camera panned from Marion's face past the toilet and into the bedroom for a zoom close-up of Marion's folded-up newspaper on the nightstand; then the camera tracked over to the open window, where Norman's screams were heard coming from the Gothic house on the hill behind the Bates Motel: "Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood!"; and then, at the bathroom door after viewing the curtain-less shower and the dead body, he turned away and cupped his hand to his mouth, revulsed and nauseated by the horrific scene and possibly stifling a scream
• after turning out the lights and retrieving a mop and pail from the office, Norman laboriously cleaned-up the murder scene, and placed Marion's corpse on the shower curtain; he showed off his 'dirty' hands to the camera on this "dirty night; he backed up her car to the motel room, and deposited Marion's corpse (wrapped up in the shower curtain) into her car's trunk; he removed all remnants of Marion's possessions, including her folded newspaper concealing the money - the last thing found in the room, and drove the car to the nearby swamp; he stood by nervously and nibbled at candy as the car slowly gurgled lower and lower as it descended into the muck

• about a week later, "Marion's sister" Lila (Vera Miles) entered Sam's hardware store in Fairvale, California, asking about Marion's strange disappearance and silence over the past week; Sam had recently had a change of heart and wanted to marry Marion immediately; a private detective and investigator also entered the store: Milton Arb- O - gast (Martin Balsam), hired by Marion's employer Mr. Lowery; he had been commissioned to search for and recover the missing funds, but claimed Lowery wouldn't press charges if the funds were returned; he inferred that "boyfriend" Sam may have conspired with Marion to rob her employer, and might be hiding out closeby
• during his investigation, private detective Milton Arbogast canvassed many motels in the area, and pulled up to the Bates Motel; he and Norman engaged in a tense conversation at the front desk when he arrived to investigate Marion's strange disappearance; Norman appeared uncomfortable as he answered questions; Arbogast asked to see the register to discover if Marion Crane used an alias (Norman chewed nervously on candy, almost bird-like; from a low camera angle, his adam's apple moved up and down his giraffe-like throat while awkwardly stretching to look at the register); Arbogast proved that Marion stayed at the motel by matching her signature to the "Marie Samuels" signature in the book - after Norman denied that he had any recent guests; Norman finally changed his story for the detective - he remembered Marion as an overnight guest at the motel (with a late arrival and early departure), and her dinner of a sandwich in the parlor
• they continued their conversation on the motel's front walkway, when the PI became even more suspicious when he glanced up at the Victorian house on the hill behind the motel and spotted a figure sitting in the window - he was told it was Norman's invalid mother; the detective made the provocative implication that the very suspicious Norman had been fooled by Marion, and that she had paid him well to keep her hidden: "Let's just say for the uh, just for the sake of argument that she wanted you to, uh, gallantly protect her. You'd know that you were being used. You wouldn't be made a fool of, would ya?"; Norman bristled at the suggestion: "But, I'm, I'm not a fool. And I'm not capable of being fooled. Not even by a woman... Let's put it this way. She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother"; Arbogast was refused an interview with Norman's mother and was ordered to leave
• Arbogast drove off to a phone booth and called the hardware store to inform Lila that Sam was innocent of Marion's whereabouts by summarizing what he found at the old Bates Motel - Marion was a guest there the previous Saturday night and probably stayed in cabin number one; he said he would return to further question the manager; during a second visit to the motel, Arbogast was snooping around in the motel and then in the old dark house behind the motel; he was shockingly murdered at the top of the Gothic house's staircase when he snuck back there to investigate and speak to Mrs. Bates; a high-angle overhead shot followed his unbalanced fall backwards down the entire length of stairs - and then after hitting the floor, he was relentlessly stabbed with a butcher knife, presumably by Norman's "mother"

Arbogast's Upper Stairway Knifing Murder by "Norman's Mother" and Backwards Fall

• when Sam and Lila didn't hear back from Arbogast, Sam volunteered to visit the motel on his own; as Sam called out for the manager at the motel, Norman heard him from the nearby swamp (while sinking Arbogast and his car?) but didn't respond; Sam was forced to return to the hardware store where he reported his findings: "No Arbogast, no Bates," but he saw a "sick old lady unable to answer the door, or unwilling" in the second floor window
• on that Saturday evening, Sam and Marion's sister Lila visited the home of Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers (John McIntire) and his wife (Lurene Tuttle); after explaining the situation to them, Mr. and Mrs. Chambers were dumbfounded after hearing mention of a "Mrs. Bates"; they revealed that ten years earlier, there was a double murder-suicide - Mrs. Bates had poisoned her unfaithful lover and then took her own life; the Deputy Sheriff then revealed information about her burial in Greenlawn Cemetery: "Norman Bates' mother has been dead and buried in Greenlawn Cemetery for the past ten years....It's the only case of murder and suicide on Fairvale ledgers. Mrs. Bates poisoned this guy she was involved with when she found out he was married. Then took a helping of the same stuff herself. Strychnine. Ugly way to die....You want to tell me you saw Norman Bates' mother?...Well, if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates, who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery?" - [Note: Norman Bates stole his mother's corpse and had a weighted coffin buried]
• meanwhile, back at the Gothic house behind the motel, Norman was seen carrying his mother in his arms from the 2nd floor to a new location - the fruit cellar; the cackling old lady protested vehemently with a macabre joke: ("No! I will not hide in the fruit cellar! Ah ha! You think I'm fruity, huh?")
• the next day, Sunday, after Lila and Sam heard from the Sheriff that there seemed to be nothing suspicious at the Bates Motel, he suggested that they file a "missing person" report later in the day; Lila and Sam decided to return to the motel on their own and snoop around, by registering as husband and wife; they were assigned to Cabin 10, and then began searching Cabin 1 and found two clues - a missing shower curtain and a scrap of paper in the toilet with a notation of $40,000 dollars; they planned to split up and have Sam divert Norman's attention and keep him distracted and occupied within the office while Lila was sneaking up to explore the Gothic house; suspenseful parallel editing cut back and forth between the motel office and Lila's entrance into the house

Lila Sneaking Up to the House - From Her Perspective, While Sam Distracted Norman

• Sam mercilessly and aggressively challenged Norman to confront him and force him to provide answers, while Lila searched in three areas - the mother's bedroom, the attic, and then the fruit cellar; in the bedroom, Lila found a deep impression in the mattress of a woman's body; in the little boy's room attic, she discovered child's toys and Norman's slept-in single bed
• realizing that he was being set up and diverted, and that Lila had disappeared, Norman struggled with Sam, knocked him out, and raced up the hill to the house; as Norman ran up the stairs into the 2nd floor bedroom, Lila decided to tiptoe down into the darkness of the basement's fruit-cellar where she made a shocking and revealing discovery; as she turned a chair holding an elderly woman - she saw Norman's mummified "Mother" under the swinging light casting ghastly images onto the wall; she shrieked in response; behind her, Norman (in his disguise of an old woman's clothes, signifying his split personality) attacked Lila with a knife, but was grabbed from behind by Sam and rescued; as Sam fought the old woman, Norman was metamorphosized and revealed as his "Mother" when his drag disguises (the wig and dress) were stripped away and ripped off
• in the Chief of Police's office, smug and officious police psychiatrist Dr. Fred Richman (Simon Oakland) reconstructed or 'explained' the mystery of Norman's schizophrenic psychosis - after interviewing and questioning not Norman but 'his mother' - the dominant personality: ("I got the whole story, but not from Norman. I got it from his 'mother'. Norman Bates no longer exists"); in all likelihood, a "disturbed" Norman had an incestuously possessive and jealous love for his mother, so he poisoned both her and her lover after he discovered them in bed together; to wipe clean and obliterate the unbearable, intolerable crime of matricide from his conscience and consciousness, a remorseful Norman developed a split personality; he could be both personalities, but when he was his "Mother" (to keep the illusion alive), he would dress up in her clothes; presently after the latest crime, the "Mother" side had taken over completely
• to make the illusions of his life a physical reality, Norman dug up and stole his mother's body, and used his taxidermist skills to preserve and stuff her corpse, and keep her 'alive'; Dr. Richman explained, in part: "Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all - most unbearable to the son who commits it. So he had to erase the crime, at least in his own mind. He stole her corpse. A weighted coffin was buried. He hid the body in the fruit cellar, even treated it to keep it as well as it would keep. And that still wasn't enough. She was there, but she was a corpse"; from Norman's pathologically-crazed point of view, his "Mother" would often become pathologically jealous of his attraction to women (such as Marion), and the murders (committed by his 'Mother') were symbolic sexual acts of his own feelings of anger and hatred of his mother's dominance
• the next-to-last image was of the schizophrenic and crazed Norman wrapped in a blanket; with his Mother's voice-over, who condemned her son for the crimes while she claimed that she was harmless: (the film's last monologue: "It's sad when a Mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son, but I couldn't allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They'll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and in the end, he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man, as if I could do anything except just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. Oh, they know I can't even move a finger and I won't. I'll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do suspect me. They're probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I'm not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They'll see. They'll see and they'll know, and they'll say, 'Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly.'")
• Norman/"Mother" watched a fly crawl across his/her hand, displaying his/her innocence by sparing the insect's life; a grinning smile slowly crept over Norman's face - subliminally superimposed by and dissolving into the grinning skull of his mother's mummified corpse

"Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly"

Insane Norman Bates - A Grinning Evil Smile

Marion's Dredged Car in Swamp

• the film's final image - a dissolve into the dredging of the swamp - showed that Marion's car with her body and the almost-$40,000 in the trunk was being hauled trunk-first from the muck by a heavy clanking chain on a winch; horizontal black bars partially, and then completely, covered the image