PSYCHO

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

1960, 109, R

Screenwriter: Hitchcock and Joseph Stefano, based on the book by Robert Bloch.  Music by Bernard Herrmann.

Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin.

 

If you’re looking for your pants to be scared off (and who isn’t?) this Halloween weekend, the 60th Anniversary of Psycho on the big screen fits the bill. Alfred Hitchcock’s subversive low budget masterpiece hints at all manner of then-unmentionable naughtiness, personified in the repressed motel manager/dutiful son (Anthony Perkins) and a ‘sinful’ secretary on the run from the law (Janet Leigh). While we can’t promise you won’t walk away from Psycho without a trunk full of new phobias (showers, motels, stuffed birds, state police, the Southwest, for starters) we can guarantee that THIS spine-chilling masterpiece of suspense is good practice for what awaits everyone on November 2!

“We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?” – Norman Bates.

“Psycho should be seen at least three times by any discerning film-goer: the first time for the sheer terror of the experience…the second time for the macabre comedy… and the third for all the hidden meanings and symbols lurking beneath the surface.” – Andrew Sarris, in his first Village Voice film review.