Psycho (1960) on Netflix
R19601h 49mHorrorMysteryThriller
A Phoenix secretary, Marion Crane, takes $40,000 entrusted to her and drives toward her lover in Fairvale. A rainstorm strands her at the Bates Motel, where Norman Bates lives with his mother.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb8.5/10794,348 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
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Plot summary
Marion Crane works as a secretary at a Phoenix real estate office, where she meets Sam Loomis between his business trips and waits for the debts that keep them from marrying. When her employer's client pays for a house in cash, she is told to bank the $40,000 and instead leaves town with it, heading for Fairvale, California. A patrolman watches her at the roadside and again at a used car lot, where she trades her car. Rain and poor visibility on her second night of driving bring her to the Bates Motel, its trade thinned by a new interstate. Norman Bates runs the place and lives in the house above it with his mother. He offers Marion supper and speaks of feeling trapped.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Psycho (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Psycho is based on Robert Bloch's 1959 novel, loosely inspired by the case of convicted Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein. Like Norman Bates, Gein had a deceased, domineering mother and had sealed off a room in the house as a shrine to her, and he dressed in the skins of the women he dug up.
- Hitchcock personally financed Psycho and shot it at Universal-International with his Shamley Productions crew in exchange for Paramount distributing it. Instead of his usual $250,000 director's fee, he took a 60% stake in the film negative. The offer was accepted despite naysaying from producer Herbert Coleman and Shamley executive Joan Harrison.
- Throughout the shoot, Hitchcock created and hid various versions of the "Mother corpse" prop in Janet Leigh's dressing room closet. Leigh took the joke well, wondering whether it was meant to keep her in suspense or to judge which corpse would scare audiences most.
- Irish censor Gerry O'Hara banned Psycho upon his initial viewing in 1960, and the next year a highly edited version missing some 47 feet of film was submitted to him.
- To film Arbogast's murder, a dolly track on pulleys and a chair-like device were built alongside the Bates house stairway and thoroughly tested for weeks, so that the overhead camera angle could hide the film's twist.
- The original Bates Motel and Bates house exteriors, constructed on the same stage as Lon Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera (1925), still stand on the Universal Studios backlot near Hollywood and are a regular attraction on the studio tour.
- Bernard Herrmann scored Psycho for a string orchestra only, against Hitchcock's request for a jazz score, using the reduced music budget and the single-tone color of the all-string sound to reflect the film's black-and-white cinematography.
- Psycho was the first film sold in the US on the basis that no one would be admitted to the theater after the film had started. Hitchcock's "no late admission" policy was unusual for the time.
