DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam
Release date Out now

Marion Crane (Leigh) steals $40, 000 from her employer and goes on the run. She ends up spending a night at a motel run by the welcoming Norman Bates (Perkins). But Norman’s got a few issues with his mother…

Despite influencing virtually every horror and suspense movie to arrive in its wake, it’s amazing how fresh and innovative Psycho seems today. Only a handful of subsequent films have dared to employ the expectation-busting idea of killing off the heroine halfway through (an idea beloved of Robert Bloch, on whose novel this is based), and slashers rarely feature killers as sympathetic as the mild-mannered Norman Bates.

Psycho’s shower scene - a simple idea rendered unforgettable through razor-sharp editing and Bernard Hermann’s screeching score - has, of course, been both studied and spoofed to death, but it has done nothing to lessen its power. Elsewhere, other sequences are almost as memorable, including P.I. Arbogast’s dizzying tumble down the stairs and an ending that is supremely creepy and blackly funny at the same time (“I hope they are watching… They'll know, and they’ll say, 'Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly”).

The complex characters and psychological depth mean that Psycho is more than just the gimmicky flick it could have been (and that a few critics dismissed it as at the time). In his career-defining role, Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates is one of the greatest and most fascinating screen killers; sexually repressed, disturbed, yet also very personable, even when you know what he's capable of. Marion is also far from a traditional heroine – a troubled thief on the run who doesn’t go through any conventional character arc.

The film spawned three flawed but interesting sequels and a doomed TV pilot entitled Bates Motel.

This DVD is a budget release so extras are sparse. There are a few production notes, filmographies and the original highly enjoyable trailer in which a jovial Hitch wanders around the Bates home almost giving away plot points. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 10/10
Almost 50 years on, this flawless suspense classic refuses to date.