psycho! hitchcock thrillers strike back!

 Hitchcock said that a good thriller allowed the audience to dip their toe into the pool of fear and psycho is certainly no exception to the rule. This horrifying tale of brutal murder and suspense so sweet is viewed as one of the greatest movies ever made, many believe it was the first of the slasher genre because we have the POV shots out of the killers eyes as they slash their victims we have a mysterious setting the bates motel and the dusty old house on the hill muck like camp crystal lake or elm street, we actually have the slashing motion of the killings, the cliché screams ad it definitely has a body count so this could have been a start of a hole new line of scary thrilling movies and their terrible sequels and even worse remakes. Psycho itself has two sequels which I’ll talk about later and a terrible remake which I will get out of the way with one sentence. Vince Vaughn as Norman bates! Yeah enough said. Let’s talk about the original. The original psycho was made in 1960 and stars Janet Leigh as Hitchcock’s blond target for destruction this time but she excels her self to new levels in this film which far out pass her predecessors such as Eva Marrie Saint and grace Kelly even though she is killed off in the first half of the film leaving boy friend Sam (john Gavin) and sister Lila (Vera miles) to pick up the pieces she still portrays a seemingly ditsy yet overall mysterious character who at first seems to be just an average pretty faced secretary but then "oh no!" this b*!@h is crazy she goes ahead and lives out the dream of the average day person by stealing $40,000 from her boss and just hitting the road but then finds herself living out the nightmare of the average day person by stopping for the night at the bates motel. Well I wont want to spoil the film for you so that enough about the story. Let’s talk about how it was made. Psycho was made. It is slightly unconventional for a thriller it is a lot slower and dramatic and is missing the fast passed action that is the norm this is why many would call it a horror film there certainly isn’t a large body count by anyone’s account but the murders are slow and drawn out it makes it seem like more action is actually happening the most famous scene not only in the movie but in the entire world of cinema is when Janet Leigh is hacked and stabbed to death in the shower. This setting of a young girl on the run in a empty motel room naked and vulnerable in the shower washing her hair with her eyes closed completely unbenkownst to what might happen to her and as the water is gently flowing there is a very eerie build up the in no diagetic sound only the noise of the tap and silence until we hear the screeching of that violin and the shower curtain is ripped back by a siloet looming over us brandishing a carving knife. The score of the movie plays as Janet screams as she is helpless to do anything as her body is mutilated back in the 1960s this sort of brilliant film work making the film so realistic and horrifying must have had people across the globe craping themselves. Not as much praise can be said for the second murder, the one of the privet investigator Arbogast that Marion’s concerned sister Lila has hired. he is slowly walking up the stairs and we see a door at the top of the stair way slowly open as it does are yet to be identified psycho shadow jumps out we hear the violin screech again and its a real shock scene gets people jumping out of there seats. Although this is where it gets real silly are murderer clearly runs and then stabs him in the chest we can see this from a birds eye view from the top of the stairs although when it cuts to a close up of Arbogast he has a huge gash in his face which really wouldn't even be enough to kill him or even make him fall down the stairs in that ridiculous way. Falling down the stairs whilst standing vertically upright with your arms out stretched and a face like you've just had to listen to an entire Amy Whinehouse album
although lets give the guy a break he did just get slashed in the face or stabbed in the chest its not very clear well at least are darkly villain runs down to finish the job or this pretty poor scene may have tarnished the films reputation. Ok lets quickly talk rubbish sequels before I conclude there was a psycho 2 and 3 not bates revenge or pshcyo-er just psycho 2 and psycho 3 although they might as well of given it an old hash horror movie sequel name like that because these films suck harder than a Muslim vampire after fasting for Ramadan. the strap line for psycho 3 is "just when you thought it was safe to go back in the shower" yeah needless to say Hitchcock had nothing to do with these films and didn’t even live to see them get made psycho 2 came out three years after he died, it's most likely that he was fighting it until the day he died but someone must have persuaded someone to commission it because 3 years later we have this terrible movie on or hands I don’t want to ruin the fist one for you if you've not seen it and so the less said about the sequels the better although I think Alfred is probably in a perpetual state of rolling in his grave because of them.  if anyone is thinking of just watching this film for shock value then you will be shocked (no joke intended) to find out that its not just things jumping out at you the foundation of this film is a lot more firm than that, its the first of its kind the first to show innocent normal people being killed off one by one by a mad person its that whole Hitchcock idea of making you terrified every time you next take a shower or see a gathering flock of birds like I said at the beginning Hitchcock wanted people to dip their toe into the pool of fear and that’s exactly what psycho allows. It's not blood and guts and screaming, it’s the screech of the violin, it’s that dark shadowy figure, its the unknown so next time you decide to spend the night alone in a creepy old motel at the side of the road watch your back!