Psycho

Though it suffers from an overlong running time and an increasingly uneven structure, Psycho nevertheless lives up to its reputation as one of the most entertaining and suspenseful horror films of all time – with Anthony Perkins’ spellbinding performance heightened by timeless set pieces, Bernard Herrmann’s justifiably legendary score, and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock’s consistently captivating directorial choices. The movie follows Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane as she steals a chunk of money from her boss and attempts to make her way out of town, with her decision to spend a night at the infamous Bates motel, run by Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates, proving rather disastrous (to say the least). Hitchcock, working from a script by Joseph Stefano, offers up an opening half hour that boasts the qualities of a lurid melodrama and hardly even hints at the horror to follow, yet, despite the filmmaker’s reliance on a decidedly deliberate pace, there’s certainly something quite compelling about the central character’s ongoing exploits – with the engaging vibe heightened by Leigh’s strong performance and the masterful visuals. It’s fairly clear, however, that the movie does suffer from a midsection that occasionally feels just a little too uneventful, as Hitchcock offers up several sequences that come off as aggressively prolonged or entirely unnecessary (eg Bates’ efforts at cleaning up a dead body, which seem to unfold in real time, perfectly exemplifies the former). The appearance of Martin Balsam’s private investigator, Milton Arbogast, effectively infuses the proceedings with a burst of energy, and there’s little doubt that the film is subsequently propelled to its final, shocking revelation. And although the now legendary (and thoroughly needless) coda ensures that the whole thing ends with a whimper rather than a bang, Psycho‘s negative attributes are handily outweighed by its positives and it’s certainly not difficult to see why the movie still endures more than 50 years after its original release.

***1/2 out of ****