After stealing $40’000 from her boss to help her soon to be divorced
boyfriend, the beautiful Marion Crane runs away from her hometown of Phoenix,
Arizona. After driving all night she gets interrupted by a huge rainstorm which
forces her to pull into the sinister Bates Motel, run by a creepy young man
called Norman Bates. Norman takes quite a liking to Marion and invites her to
dinner with him that night, but after overhearing an uncomfortable exchange
between him and his mother, Marion suggests he admits his mother to a mental
institution to which he doesn’t respond positively and she retreats to her room.
Then she decides to have a shower. Need I say anymore? I think we all know what
happens to Marion in the shower.
So less than an hour in, the woman we all thought to be the
main character has been killed. But by who? And so the mystery thickens, and
not long after this hideous crime is committed and the evidence is plunged into
a lake, Detective Arbogast is hired by Lila, Marion’s sister and Sam, Marion’s
boyfriend to locate Marion and the missing $40’000. His search leads him to the
Bates Motel and after questioning Norman about the whereabouts of Marion he
concedes him to be suspicious. He looks around the motel and spots a woman
standing in the window of the house on the hill behind the motel. He calls Lila
and Sam, tells them what he has seen and ventures up to the house. Not long
after he arrives at Bates residence, he is greeted by a kitchen knife in the
face and a few stabs to the chest, thus ending the life of Detective Arbogast.
Lila and Sam end up phoning the local police when Arbogast
doesn’t call her back, explaining about the woman in the window. The Deputy
seems puzzled as he recalls that Norman’s mother had been dead for 10 years,
and brushes their story off, leaving them no choice but to go to the Motel
together. They pretend to be a married couple and hire out a room from the
dreaded Norman, and soon enough their curiosity gets the better of them and
Lila sneaks into the house. It doesn’t take long for Norman to notice that Lila
has gone, so he rushes up to the house to find her. I shan’t say anymore for
fear of ruining the ending, but let’s just say this; it’s not exactly a happy
one.
Psycho is considered
to be Hitchcock’s masterpiece, earning him a fortune at the box office as the
studio didn’t want to associate themselves too much with what they thought was
going to be a failure. Hitchcock succeeded in creating a suspenseful and highly
successful horror film that terrified audiences, and even Janet Leigh into never
having a shower again. So many elements of the story are kept from the
audience, and the mystery surrounding the Mother character builds oodles of
suspense. By never showing us her face or her body in full we begin to question
why Hitchcock is keeping her from us, leading us to ask questions about her
physical appearance, perhaps she’s severely disfigured? Or maybe she’s not a
‘Mother’ after all? Or worse..?
It’s a clever device and Hitchcock shrouded the production
of his film in mystery, only to enhance the actual mystery within, he made
production staff take an oath not to reveal the ending, and he even had a chair
for ‘Mrs Bates’ so that nothing could be leaked or expected. All this attention
to detail, and willingness to protect his own movie made the ending all the
more terrifying, shocking and downright weird, giving it the ‘masterpiece’ status
that it still has today.
This is what horror movies are made of and fifty-two years
on, it’s obviously quite dated. So my advice, watch it with friends on
Halloween and have a good laugh. Or, watch it on your own at night in the dark
and have nightmares.
Happy Halloween everybody!
Find Psycho in the DVD ZONE shelved at 791.43
