When you think about it, Psycho shouldn’t still be so brilliant today. Talk about a film that’s been ransacked! Alfred Hitchcock’s shocker of 1960, adapted from the novel by Robert Bloch, has been borrowed from, stolen from, referenced, parodied, flogged, analyzed and spoiled again and again over the decades. It should be quaint and harmless by now, but NOPE. Several generations later, this is still an imposing mother of a movie. It’s kinetic and absorbing. The filmmaking is bold and gorgeous, its scares and suspense executed with supreme clarity. This is a master playing the notes with a perfect sense of space, air, weight and breath—and the rip-off artists can’t steal that. They can take the ideas, but topping Hitchcock’s eye for light, shadow, cutting, scene blocking and use of reflections in mirrors and glass is a whole other story.
Psycho deals in death, but as a film, it’s still very much alive. Every time you see a creepy, virginal Momma’s Boy character in a horror film, you can’t help but compare him to Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. Every time the music score in a slasher movie turns on the big, stabby violins, it all goes back to Bernard Herrmann here. Every sudden shocking death in a movie still competes with Janet Leigh’s famous demise in a motel shower via multiple knife stabs and an amazing kaleidescope of fifty quick shots.
Time can be hard on horror films. The stunned and screaming audiences of yesterday become the chuckling audiences of today. That’s just how it is. Fear is fragile and shocks get rusty. How well the machine works beyond that is what matters most. Psycho still churns, sparks and buzzes all night.