Psycho
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: Joseph Stefano, Alma Reville
Based on: Robert Bloch‘s novel
Cast: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Patricia Hitchcock

Plot:
Marion (Janet Leigh) works at a small company. When she gets her hands on a lot of money in cash for a business transaction, she decides on a whim to steal it and sets off to get her boyfriend Sam (John Gavin) and start a new life. On her way there, she stops at Bates Motel, though. There the young and a little weird owner Norman (Anthony Perkins), who lives alone with his psychotic mother, gives her a room. But when Marion takes a shower in said room, things end deadly for her.

[I should have seen Psycho ages ago, but better late than never, right?]
Psycho is brilliant. Tense and wonderfully acted and (contrary to many other movie classics who are wrongly called great) really delivers everything its reputation promises.

Everybody pretty much knows Psycho’s big reveal. I did, too. I would have loved to get the shock – because I’m pretty certain that it would have been a shock for me if I hadn’t already known – of the twist. But it didn’t matter that much. A good plot twist also works when you know what’s going to happen and that’s really the case here.

I really did like Marion and I thought that Janet Leigh was pretty good in the role, but the heart and soul of this film is Norman Bates and Anthony Perkins amazing performance. He was everything the role needed him to be, plus incredibly hot to boot.

It was actually the first Hitchcock film I saw and his reputation is just as well-deserved as the film’s. He manages to create so much tension with such little things (though he’s impressively helped by the famous soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann) and he is in utter control of the film the entire time.

It’s an unconvential film and though many movies that came after it tried to aspire to it (or just blatantly rip it off), this unconventionalitly still shines in the very best of ways.

Summarising: Simply great.