65 years old this year, Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho is arguably the most famous horror film ever made. Its legacy stretches across the genre and beyond – Scream’s Billy Loomis (and daughter Sam) is named after Psycho’s own Sam Loomis; Norman Bates’ name has become synonymous with men who like their mother just a little too much, and the shower scene has parodied by everyone from The Simpsons to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And for good reason, as the film still holds up well over half a century later.
The twists may be well known – if you don’t know that Janet Leigh is going to be at the bottom of a swamp by the midway point, then that’s on you – but they’re still incredibly effective. The audience can be forgiven for forgetting what film they’re watching until Marien arrives at the Bates motel, as everything up to then has pointed to the film being a standard crime drama. Even after her death, Anthony Perkins is so convincing as Norman that the viewer begins to really believe that there is a Mother, even when they know that there isn’t.
It’s not just the twists that set Psycho apart: everything from the score to the setting to the kills set up all the conventions we’ve come to expect from the slasher genre. As Norman Bates says: “we all go a little mad sometimes,” and it seems like the film has been inspiring that madness for decades since. When the film was released, Marion’s brutal death in the shower was the most graphic scene ever shown in cinemas, despite never actually showing any violence. The implication was enough, and the mere image of her blood pooling down the drain was enough to inspire filmmakers to chase that bloodlust for years to come. While this has been done successfully and not so successfully (look to Monster: Ed Gein for a painfully edgy recreation, reliant on gore and nudity to elicit the same reaction the original got with neither), there’s no denying this film’s impact.
Even Psycho’s marketing was innovative. Though the Blair Witch Project is often credited as using cinema’s first widespread marketing gimmick, I would argue that Psycho was pulling them off 30 years earlier. If you’ve never watched the trailer for Psycho, do so now. There are no scenes from the film – just six minutes of Alfred Hitchcock prowling the set, alluding to the horrific things that happen there but refusing to ever actually show you them. Getting into the cinema after watching the trailer wasn’t any guarantee either — Hitchcock specifically refused to allow admission to screenings after the film had started in an attempt to preserve its twist. Depending on how you feel about modern cinema etiquette, you might wish that this ban could be reinstated. Psycho left a lasting impression on the genre, one that is still as strong 65 years later as it was in 1960. Without it, we likely would never have gotten the slasher genre at all, and horror fans everywhere owe Hitchcock a debt of gratitude for the film that started it all.
Photo by Maxime Roedel on Unsplash