Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson coined the term “gearshift movie” in reference to these types of features, a term describing a film that starts with one plot and later segues to another one entirely. Psycho starts out with a woman on the lam: Marion Crane, just having stolen $40,000 to pay off her lovers’ debts, then shifts to a murder mystery when she is abruptly killed. Stefano’s script made the horrifying discovery of Norman Bates’ life (the tragic tale of a young man who has been murdering people in his decaying roadside motel, urged on by the demented ravings of his dead, decaying mother) come to life akin to the kind of sensational article seen sprawled across the cover of a National Enquirer bored housewives in Encino would flip their curlers about. At the top of that list is the slick, prestigious direction by the “dry wit Brit,” but there’s no discounting the shrieking chorus of violin strings courtesy of Bernard Hermann, the heavyweight thespianism of Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam, and Anthony Perkins, and the shocking script by Joseph Stefano, who shifted Robert Bloch’s yellowed airport paperback into a tabloid piece of cinema exploitation. The level of talent that Universal Studios managed to corral for the 1960 feature is nothing short of perfect, speaking volumes about the film’s continued respect even 60 years after its release.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is long considered one of the horror genre’s grandest achievements, so much that in 1992, it was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress.
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