Psycho

“No! I will not hide in the fruit cellar! You think I’m fruity. huh?” I’ve seen Rear Window and The 39 Steps and even if the latter isn’t my favorite movie ever, the former is one of the best I’ve ever seen, and it made me a gigantic fan of what this director is clearly very capable of. Psycho is his most well-known work and a pop culture phenomenon so I can’t leave the month of October without finally checking it off the list. I want to be spooked. Psycho is so intentional. That was the prevailing sentiment after watching. I had written most of a paragraph during the film that I ended up deleting because it was wrong on all fronts by the time Norman had completed his transformation. Every little detail is accounted for in the culmination of the story, and that’s rather hard to do. I guess in essence Psycho wouldn’t be hard to do that for, but there’s a difference between doing it at a high and an average level. Psycho is very much on the high side of that scale. As a story it’s not one of those impossibilities, it’s one of those things that’s unbelievable, and it sure is unbelievable even when you’re watching it unfold. As far as weird serial killers go, Norman doesn’t visually or mentally present the trend. He’s a normal looking, if not handsome, guy and when not pushed into conflict with the revealed double major he has going on, he’s personable enough. It keeps you in the dark completely until a single moment. When the peephole in the parlor is revealed, you’re no longer guessing. It’s not nearly his most egregious action, but it tells you what you need to know. It’s perfectly placed to see the shower, and it’s not a coincidence that Marion has ended up in the motel room she’s in. Right that second, the mystery of who Bates is comes to an end, and the mystery of what length he’s willing to go to begins. Norman is one of the most sensational characters I can remember. It’s simple, it’s effective, and the end that has shocked so many is masterful. I’m not going to break any new ground talking about Psycho, but it is a real special story. Yeah, Hitchcock is pretty good at what he does. Psycho doesn’t inject you with the same adrenaline fueled suspense drug that Rear Window does, but that’s because it doesn’t need to. This is a horror film in the truest and most primitive sense, not a thriller. In theory a really good horror movie doesn’t need a big budget and Psycho is an argument defining example of that. A movie of this stature being made for $800,000, a lot of it being Hitchcock’s, and yet producing some of the most iconic sets and scenes of all time says a ton about the people involved. Psycho is like a lesson in every variable being perfect when put on the screen. The black and white, the cinematography and the haunting face shots, the script, all damn perfect. I don’t need to go on and on about Hitchcock and his production team, it’s all been said and it’s all correct. Now I can say what I’ve been waiting this entire movie to say, it’s a fucking crime that Anthony Perkins not only wasn’t nominated for Best Actor for this movie, it’s a crime that he didn’t WIN that motherfucker. This is one of the best performances I’ve seen in my entire life. It’s insane to me that he wasn’t recognized for the job he did at the time. Janet Leigh, absolute baddie by the way whose game I was unfamiliar with, was very good in her supporting role too. I have so much good stuff to say about what Psycho is outside of the gripping story, and I’ll continue to praise it at all times. So much inspiration fuel. I started off thinking I would be giving Psycho the highest 4 star rating I could, then thought that I was being dumb and it was clearly a 4 and a half star movie, and now as it’s sat with me and I’ve had time to think about it I’m really thinking it’s closer to a 5 star movie. Other than a slow start, I think this movie is up there with some of the best. I want to get a nice 4k copy now. Also, needing to subtract 700 something dollars with long subtraction is funny.