Psycho (1960)

 ●  English ● 1 hr 18 mins

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Phoenix office-worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother. Will Marion succeed in skipping town with the money? How will her stay at The Bates Motel turn out for her? How will Norman deal with years of his mother's domination and oppression?
See Storyline (May Contain Spoilers)

Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles

Crew: Alfred Hitchcock (Director), John L Russell (Director of Photography), Bernard Herrmann (Music Director)

Rating: U (India)

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Release Dates: 08 Sep 1960 (India)

Tagline: The Essential Alfred Hitchcock

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Did you know? This marks as Hitchcock's first horror movie. Read More
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as Norman Bates
as Marion Crane
as Lila Crane
as Tom Cassidy
as California Charlie
as Sam Loomis
as Sheriff Al Chambers
as Mrs. Chambers
as Det. Milton Arbogast
as Highway Patrol Officer
as Caroline
as Dr. Fred Richman
as George Lowery

Direction

Director

Production

Producer
Production Company

Distribution

Distributor

Writers

Screenplay Writer
Novelist

Camera and Electrical

Director of Photography

Music

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Editorial

Film Type:
Feature
Language:
English
Colour Info:
Black & White
Sound Mix:
Mono
Camera:
Mitchell NC/BNC
Frame Rate:
24 fps
Aspect Ratio:
2.35:1, 1.37:1
Stereoscopy:
No
Taglines:
The Essential Alfred Hitchcock
Movie Connection(s):
Reference: Mammo (Hindi)
Spoofs: Top Cat Begins (English)
Spoofed in: Himmatwala (Hindi)
Referenced in: Insidious: Chapter 2 (English)
Goofs:
Revealing Mistakes
In the scene where Norman has pushed Marion's car into the swamp you can hear that the sound of the bubbles creates echoes. The scene was probably shot in a studio.

Revealing Mistakes
In the scene where Norman is walking through the ground floor of the house shortly before the shower scene, he grabs hold of the giant, wooden stair banisters, which wobble unnaturally.

Continuity
In the shower scene, when Norman is stabbing Marion, his right arm gets completely wet but when he walks away, it's dry.

Continuity
In the scene where Norman comes to clean the evidence of Marion Crane's death, there is blood on the floor. In the immediate capture, there is seen less blood in the same spot. Norman couldn't have mopped the blood away that quickly.

Revealing Mistakes
In the shower scene, when Marion is seen in front of the shower curtain, there are two different water jets, visible by different angles towards each other, revealing that besides the shower head, an additional source of water was used.

Revealing Mistakes
In the scene where Lila approaches Mother in the fruit cellar, we see Mrs. Bates seated in a four-legged chair. After Ms. Miles touches the corpse, it slowly spins around as if it's sitting on a swiveling chair. The effect was achieved by a prop man lying on his back rotating a camera head with wheels underneath Mother.

Revealing Mistakes
In the scene where Janet Leigh is in the car dealer bathroom getting the cash, as the envelope is being returned to her purse the top couple bills fold back revealing a $1 bill, not another $100 as the stack is expected to contain.

Continuity
In the scene where Norman is making his way from the house to the hotel office to greet Marion, it is pouring rain outside. However, in the next shot when he's in the hotel office his suit is completely dry.

Continuity
In the scene where the police officer backs in behind Marion's car on shoulder of the highway, no tire tracks from his vehicle are visible in the soft dirt.
Trivia:
Psycho (1960) was selected for preservation by The Library of Congress at The National Film Registry in1992.

In the murder scene in the shower, we can spot two split-second frames of the knife touching the body.

Paramount provided Hitchcock a very small budget to work with, because of their distaste with the source material. They also deferred most of the net profits to Hitchcock, thinking the film would fail. When it became a sleeper hit, Hitchcock made a fortune.

The score, composed by Bernard Herrmann, he played entirely by stringed instruments.

This marks as Hitchcock's first horror movie.

This movie was filmed in just 30 days.

This film marks as the first American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen.