Review: Psycho

The movie Psycho is one of the best that we have watched so far in our Film Studies class. If you have never seen it I suggest you do. It is not one of thoes scare you to death films, the thing that does make it scary is suspence and the music.

Rating Scale
1-terrible
2-tolerable
3-its ok
4-great
5-i would watch this again

I would rate this movie a 4 on my scale, just because I tought it was good and it was the origional scary movie.

Background
This movie was based on the book Psycho, which was based on a serial killer from Plainsfield, Wisconsin. This man was a grave robber who would make trophies and keepsakes out of peoples bones and skin. When he was arrested they searched his home and what they found would scar you for life. The police found bowls made from human skulls, a window shade made from human lips, lamp shades made from human skin, picked organs, and skulls on his bed posts. After his arrest he was proclaimed mentally unstable and spent the rest of his life in a mental institue. After his death his grave stone was vandalized many time, and people took chippings from it as souvenirs, and in 2000 the whole grave stone was stolen. It then turned up in 2001 in Seattle, it now is displayed in a museum in Waushara County, Wisconsin.

Summary of Psycho
It starts out with a woman, Marion Crane, and a man, Sam Loomis, in a hotel room during her lunch break. She wants to marry this man but he has debts and alamony from his first marrage. She gets angry and goes back to work where her boss is selling this billionare a house. This man flirts with her and starts waving aroud 40,000 dollars. All this time she is complaining of a headach and tells her boss that she wants to go home. He says that is alright but first she has to put this 40,000 dollars in a lockbox at the bank. Then it cuts to her in her appartment packing clothes with the money sitting on her bed. She then steals the money and leaves the town to go to her boyfriends and give him the money to pay off his debts. When it gets late she pulls over to take a nap, but she sleeps through the night. The next morning this police officer wakes her up and askes her if anything is wrong. She says no and leaves, but the police officer follows her to the next town where she trades in her car for a new one. She then leaves this town and starts her journey again. It starts to storm and she viers off the main highway and ends up at the Bates Hotel. She rents a room for the night and when the inn keeper, Norman Bates, goes back up to his house she starts to take a shower. Then Bates' mother comes down and murders her, Norman then has to get rid of the body so he packs up all her things in her car and proceeds to dump her in a swamp neer his house. Marions sister, Lila, then files a missing persons report and a private detective then starts searching for her. He falls upon at the Bates Hotel and wants to question the mother so he breaks into the house where he is murdered and dumped into the same swam as Marion. Lila and Sam then go to the Bates Hotel and start their own investigation. Lila then find out that Bates' mother is actuall dead and hidden in the cellar. As she makes this discovery Norman then rushes in dressed in a dress and a wig to look like his mother ready to kill Lila. Sam comes in just in time to wrestle the knife out of Normans hand. Bates is then question not as Norman but as his mother and he tells the police everything that has happened.

Director:
Alfred Hitchcock

Lead Actors:
Anthony Perkins - Norman Bates
Janet Leigh - Marion Crane

Supporting Actors:
John Gavin - Sam Loomis
Vera Miles - Lila Crane
The actors and actresses in this movie were great because they made everything interesting and some what real to the audience.


The Genre of this movie is Thriller.

Great Quotes:
"Only carry as much cash as you can afford to lose." -Tom Cassidy
"Mothe isn't quite herself today" - Norman Bates
"A hobby should pass the time, not fill it." - Norman Bates

Again I say if you have not yet seen this movie you should. It is an origional that most thrillers today have based some of scenes off of. Although it is in black and white it is still a great movie.

Source: Wikipedia and imbd