Ethan Marcotte now blogs at Unstoppable Robot Ninja.

Weblog entry:

Psycho
Norman Bates:
You know what I think? I think that we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion Crane:
Sometimes we deliberately step into those traps.
NB:
I was born into mine. I don’t mind it anymore.
MC:
Oh, but you should. You should mind it.
NB:
Oh, I do. [laughs] But I say I don’t.
 
Movie poster for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

Watching the camera spiral away from Janet Leigh’s eye, cross-cut with the water spiralling down the drain of the Bates Motel bathroom shower — honestly, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night. From Saul Bass‘ incredible, almost simplistic opening credits, to Bernard Herrmann’s Grand Guignol-y, violins-on-mescaline score, Psycho should be everyone’s first choice for a dark Friday night’s movie screening.

More than a masterfully shot, suspenseful-as-fuck horror film, Psycho is one of the last great character studies from the scarier side of American cinema. Hitchcock almost seems enamored of Anthony Perkins‘ Norman Bates, letting the camera linger on Norman’s avian, over-delicate ticks and mannerisms. The six or seven minutes after the movie’s infamous shower scene are entirely silent, watching Norman fastidiously scour Marion Crane’s hotel room — righting his mother’s wrongs with a little disinfectant and a lot of love; after all, as he says in the motel’s parlor, a boy’s best friend is his mother.

While the ending’s come to be seen as the Rosebud of horror movie finales, it’s far from the most effective scene in the movie. It’s the subtler touches in the film: watching Perkins pop candy into his mouth on the poorly lit motel stoop, or as he cranes his head over the motel’s guest book like a great, predatory bird. Psycho is great precisely because of its ability to terrify through suggestion — it’s not what’s onscreen, but what you know is about to be.

Plus, it’s worth mentioning that Martin Balsam is the consummate badass’ consummate badass.

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