The Best Film Ever Made

This review will spoil all but the ending.

The original Psycho from 1960 tells the story of a girl named Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) who wishes to marry her boyfriend Sam (John Gavin), yet she has no money. She then decides to steal $40,000 dollars from her employers real estate client and run off with it to California. After a hassle with the police and a car exchange, she finally decides to stay at a motel outside of Fairvale to rest and avoid a storm. She stops and intends to only sleep until the crack of dawn, but we all know that wasn't going to happen.

Psycho is simply the greatest film ever made. The Godfather, Citizen Cane, The Wizard of Oz, and Goodfellas can all step aside... this is a film that everyone needs to see.

Psycho is a suspense film released in 1960 that was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who has directed films such as Rear Window, Dial M For Murder, Vertigo and many others, but Psycho remains as his crowning achievement. The movie came out in a time where space ships and monsters were considered scary by the mainstream audience in America. If you were going to make a film about a person hurting another person then it all had to be off screen with a detective trying to solve everything. Hitchcock broke that rule.

As we all know, Marion Crane gets murdered in the shower by Mrs. Bates, mother of Norman Bates, after she gets angry at her for having a one on one chat with her son. She's an extremely protective mother, and any influence from any other girl would simply be terrible enough for murder.

The film, though old, doesn't feel cheesy by any stretch of the imagination. Watch any film from the 50s or 60s (or 40s or 30s of course) and you'll find the special effects to be dated at points. The main reason Psycho doesn't suffer: it doesn't use any special effects. All gore is off screen in this movie, and the film doesn't show a single stabbing at any point in the movie, even though there are two murders involving multiple stabbings. Alfred Hitchcock knew that using quick cuts instead of gore would be more effective, and he was right. The shower scene is without a doubt the most influential thing in movie history, since it was the first movie to use quick cuts like the film did. Without Psycho, it's very possible we wouldn't have the action movies we do today.

The people who haven't seen this movie are reading this and wondering one simple thing: Isn't this a horror movie? Yes, it is. Psycho is one of those movies (along with Seven and Jaws) that commonly gets considered a "psychological-thriller" because calling a film a "horror" film suddenly cast a shadow on it among critics... we know better don't we?

As a matter of fact, Psycho is a terrifying film. The movie is shocking in just about every way. The murders in this film happen at the exact times you'd least expect them, even after all the imitations of this film throughout the years. The storyline takes many turns, and just when you think you know what's about to happen, the ending hits you. The climax in this film is simply jaw-dropping and filled with nail-biting tension. The only thing this film is missing horror-wise is a gore scene, but the film doesn't need it. Why complain?

When watching a mainstream movie, we all look for the same thing: entertainment, excitement, great acting... We all know. Psycho has all these... and more.

The film is also amazing on different sub-levels of the film. Alfred Hitchcock was extremely careful with how each shot would look and be placed. The final shot in the film alone has 3 different shots of film built on top of each other (one of the shots may not be noticed on first time viewings). When freeze framed, it's clearly obvious what Hitchcock wanted, even if it's not all obvious when watching it. The movie also has an amazing theme of sexual frustration and guilt.

The cast in the movie is almost flawless. All but maybe two performances in this movie are extremelymemorable, and the two that aren't don't hurt the film. The most memorable performance in the film is obviously Anthony Perkins's performance as Norman Bates, who comes off as a confused son. By the end of the film, you'll find that he becomes the person you most feel for, even though he's covering up all of the murders caused by Mother. At the end of the movie you'll realize how different his acting was. Best performance in movie history right here folks.

All people should view Psycho, mainly for its influence on the horror genre. Without it, I doubt we would have had the rebel decade of the 70s, the mainstream decade of the 80s, the revival of the 90s, and the modern world we're living in today polluted in horror films (not that that's a bad thing!) Without it, we may have never had an on-screen murder done to shock the viewer in any detail. 

People should also view it because it's a flawless movie.