Psycho (1960)
Average Rating: 9/10
Reviews Counted: 78
Fresh: 76 | Rotten: 2
Infamous for its shower scene, but immortal for its contribution to the horror genre. Because Psycho was filmed with tact, grace, and art, Hitchcock didn't just create modern horror, he validated it.
Average Rating: 8/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 1
Infamous for its shower scene, but immortal for its contribution to the horror genre. Because Psycho was filmed with tact, grace, and art, Hitchcock didn't just create modern horror, he validated it.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 200,428
Movie Info
In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly a common moment in a major studio film in 1960), Psycho announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that
Jun 16, 1960 Wide
Mar 6, 2001
Paramount Pictures
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Cast
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Anthony Perkins
Norman Bates -
Janet Leigh
Marion Crane -
Vera Miles
Lila Crane -
John Gavin
Sam Loomis -
Martin Balsam
Milton Arbogast detecti... -
John McIntire
Chambers the sheriff -
Simon Oakland
Dr. Richmond -
Frank Albertson
Tom Cassidy millionaire -
Patricia Hitchcock
Caroline -
Vaughan Taylor
George Lowery -
Lurene Tuttle
Mrs. Chambers -
John Anderson
California Charlie -
Mort Mills
Highway Patrolman -
Francis De Sales
Official -
George Eldredge
Chief of Police -
Sam Flint
Official -
Virginia Gregg
Mother -
Frank Killmond
Bob Summerfield -
Ted Knight
Prison Guard -
Jeanette Nolan
Mother -
Marli Renfro
Leigh's Double in Showe... -
Helen Wallace
Woman Customer -
Anne Dore
Perkins' Double in Show... -
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Psycho Trailer & Photos
All Critics (78) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (76) | Rotten (2) | DVD (12)
Hitchcock is the most-daring avant-garde film-maker in America today.
The best that can be said is there are bats in the belfry and a well-preserved corpse in the basement. What else can one do but scream?
It blazed a bloody trail for the much-loved slasher cycle, but it also assured us that a B-movie could be A-grade in quality and innovation.
Director Hitchcock bears down too heavily in this one, and the delicate illusion of reality necessary for a creak-and-shriek movie becomes, instead, a spectacle of stomach-churning horror.
Top CriticAn unusual, good entertainment, indelibly Hitchcock, and on the right kind of boxoffice beam.
Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece blends a brutal manipulation of audience identification and an incredibly dense, allusive visual style to create the most morally unsettling film ever made.
The shower sequence, the shrieking score, Anthony Perkins, that twist ending... Psycho remains a stone-cold classic.
It's not hardly Hitchcock at his most flawless, but not a single film he ever made... is so absolutely flattening as a total experience.
Watching Psycho today we are all, like Marion in the shower, vainly trying to recover lost innocence too late.
It is incumbent on us to inspect the real horrors of our time, but we don't have to traffic with Hitchcock's giggling obscenities.
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho set the standard and post-modern horror has been hobbling to catch up ever since.
Horror masterpiece definitely isn't for young kids.
...lives up to its reputation as one of the most entertaining and suspenseful horror films of all time...
Hitchcock's manipulative classic of "pure cinema" does have a heart that pumps human blood, in its sublime parlor scene between Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh.
Masterful suspense and horror from one of the greats.
It's a darkly amusing, manipulative film that's still compelling in its vision of human desperation.
Always worth another look, especially on the big screen.
Look into Janet Leigh's eye after the shower scene and be amazed how fresh this black-and-white ghoulish chic seems in the saccharine surroundings of modern cinema.
Alfred Hitchcock should be credited with making the first slasher film for the ground-breaking narrative template he created for "Psycho."
I'd wager there aren't any films that have been more analyzed than Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
...one of the great achievements in the horror genre.
Audience Reviews for Psycho
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Norman Bates: A boy's best friend is his mother.
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- Norman Bates: We all go a little mad sometimes.
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- Norman Bates: A boy's best friend is his mother.
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- Norman Bates: I think I must have one of those faces you can't help believing.
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- Norman Bates: People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues, and shake their heads and suggest, oh, so very delicately!
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- Norman Bates: We all go a little mad sometimes.
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Movie: ID: 12879 Title: Psycho Release Date: 1960-06-16 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 4 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Psychose (FR)
- Psicosis (ES)
