Psycho

Review

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psy'cho (siko) a. & n. (colloq.) Psychotic (person) [abbr.]

I have seen the film Psycho once. Up until a few months ago, I never wanted to see it.

It seemed to me that Psycho was an ancient film (well, it's twenty-three years older than I am!) with its only good feature being a shower scene that, well, everyone now knew about, so there wasn't much point in seeing it. But, one Friday night I decided that, yes, I would watch Psycho. So I watched half an hour of it and then my parents, being parents, came in at ten o'clock and demanded to see the news. And that was that. In my experience, Psycho was a nice little road film about an office worker who steals some money. And it would probably have stayed like that, if I hadn't seen thirty seconds of Psycho III (1986) a few nights later.

The differences between Psycho and its sequels are, you could say, extreme. They are in totally unscary colour. Hitchcock isn't directing. As there was a twenty-three year gap since Psycho came out, there are people in them that probably weren't born then. And how could they possibly match up to the original anyway?

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I wouldn't argue that Psychos II (1983) and IV and especially III don't match up to the original over two hours of film. However, after thirty seconds of seeing Psycho III I was hooked - I went back to Psycho and watched the four films within the space of a month. I even bought Janet Leigh's book on the making of the original film and trawled the net for websites on the movie. I also bored my friends with Psycho trivia at every opportunity. So much so, that they were hoping I would be taking a shower at the Bates Motel sometime soon myself.

So why? Two words: Anthony Perkins.

Or maybe more appropriately: Norman Bates. Despite the fact that Norman existed in Robert Bloch's book Psycho long before Perkins got the role, it is now quite impossible to separate the two. It was the film that made and broke Perkins' career - ever after he would always be associated with Norman. Norman Bates is one of those great, great characters, except that he is different from all of the other 'great' characters we could name from film history. Norman is not a hero or a villain. He is not trying to change the world. He is trying to be himself, which is the hardest task anyone could have given him. [More]

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