Classic Screening

Psycho (Cert: 15)

Marion, frustrated with her job and her lover, decides to follow a sudden impulse to steal $40,000 and leave town. She stops for the night at the ramshackle Bates Motel and meets the proprietor Norman Bates, a young man with an interest in taxidermy and a difficult relationship with his mother.

Where would we be without ‘Psycho’? Over fifty years on and Hitch’s delicious cod-Freudian nightmare about a platinum-blonde embezzler (Janet Leigh) who neglected to consult a guide before selecting her motel still has much to answer for. It blazed a bloody trail for the much-loved slasher cycle, but it also assured us that a B-movie could be A-grade in quality and innovation. It dared to suggest that your star didn’t need to surface from an ordeal smelling of roses (or, indeed, at all). It combined a knife, a scream, a melon, some chocolate sauce, Bernard Herrmann’s greatest score and more than 70 edits to push the envelope of screen violence. It offers perfect case studies of suspense, paranoia and montage for lazy film-studies tutors. And, of course, it was the first movie to show a toilet flushing, so we might also credit it withspawning the entire gross-out genre. ‘Psycho’: we salute you. - David Jenkins, Time Out London 


Starring: Anthony perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles

Psycho 2
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