Reely Bernie Faves: Psycho (1960)

Film School 101. Alfred Hitchcock’s pièce de résistance. The Bates Motel. The shower scene. The shrieking strings in Bernard Herrmann’s score. The Hershey’s chocolate syrup used for the blood. Norman Bates as the most terrifying mama’s boy.

Psycho is the black-and-white classic we turn to for horror movie reference without realizing it’s the groundbreaker for everything horror utilized today. Brooding tension with sporadic jump scares, oddball characters you wouldn’t trust if your life depended on it, and an isolated location where no one can hear you scream are now exhausted concepts. Did you see Barbarian (2022)? It’s technically plagiarism on a screen, and Norman has every right to sue.

I first saw Psycho in my Media Analysis class in high school. It appeared again in my Film Analysis class in college and again in Music in Film and Television. For me, it’s difficult deciphering what sense is stimulated first—the stark contrasts of black and white on the screen, or the piercing music.

Back then, the swapping of narratives (Janet Leigh as Marion Crane to Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates) had never been done before. The calculated thriller to horror fusion bent the rules and left the audience leaving the theatre in shuttered dread rather than a satisfying resolution. Alfred Hitchcock called it his best movie, and there’s proof that he controlled every element involved from the sound design, distribution, and the inclusion of the toilet in the bathroom/shower scene (unheard of back then!).

For me, making that connection between Hitchcock’s obsessive control and Norman Bates’s mania is the most intriguing. I believe Psycho was Hitchcock’s opportunity to release his inner madman upon us one carefully framed shot a time until the wheels come off, and we get Norman in a wig with a knife. Where Rear Window may be a reflection of his voyeuristic self, Psycho is Hitchcock exploited in guilty pleasure.

Ahead of its time, timeless, and horror encapsulated—Psycho is a trailblazer in artistic envisioning and my favorite Hitchcock flick. What’s yours?

Reely Bernie Faves:

1. Amadeus (1984)

2. Magnolia (1999)

3. Poltergeist (1982)

4. Pulp Fiction (1994)

5. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

6. The Godfather Part II (1974)

7. Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)

8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

9. Goodfellas (1990)

10. Nosferatu (1922)

11. Pollock (2000)

12. Kicking and Screaming (1995)

13. Jaws (1975)

14. Fargo (1996)

15. Citizen Kane (1941)

16. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

17. The Endless Summer (1966)

18. Back to the Future (1985)

19. Angel Heart (1987)

20. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

21. The Goonies (1985)

22. Trainspotting (1996)

23. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

24. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

25. Bambi (1942)

26. The Paradise Lost Trilogy (1996-2011)

27. Psycho (1960)

28. Parenthood (1989)

29. Swingers (1996)

30. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

31. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

32. Smoke (1995)

33. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

34. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

35. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

36. City of God (2002)

37. 1917 (2019)

38. Black Swan (2010)

39. School of Rock (2003)

40. Mulholland Drive (2001)

41. Groundhog Day (1993)

42. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

43. The Greatest Showman (2017)

44. National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

45. The Florida Project (2017)

46. Cinema Paradiso (1988)

47. So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

48. Shadowlands (1993)

49. Steve Jobs (2015)

50. ¡Three Amigos! (1986)