Psycho #MichaelLee

Director- Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay- Joseph Stefano

This has to be one of my favorites movies of all time next to "The Shining". This movie has everything from suspense to shocking scenes. It's not scary to the common viewer nowadays but it's very interesting. It has just enough suspense to where you're sitting on the edge of your seat and just plot twists that you still wouldn't be able to wrap your head around.

This movie starts off with a man and woman getting dressed after having some "fun". They are talking of going away and having big plans together but the man isn't so sure because he is broke and is going through a really rough divorce. The woman ends up leaving in a hurry to go to work but when she goes to work, she's in for the surprise of her life. A very cocky man walks in to buy his daughter a house for her wedding present. He comes to pay the house in cash. I really don't know anyone who carries that much cash on him and even if I had that money, I would still never do that. This guy is going to getting a little surprise for being cocky. The real estate agent sends his secretary to go cash it. The funny thing is, she doesn't go cash it. She bolts and tries to go to California with 40,000 dollars in hand. That was a lot of money back then. To me, a 17 year kid, that's still a lot of money today.

When she steals this money, she doesn't leave town right away. She's thinking of the consequences of her action and thinking what could happen if she doesn't do her job. As she is playing all the scenarios possible in her head, she just decides to leave town. As she is leaving town her boss sees her in her car on the way out of town. She is not the best bank robber or the sneakiest robber alive. She is probably going to get herself caught. That's what get's me thinking, does that scene with the boss show that she is going to get caught in the future? Or maybe she disappear without a trace and that's the last time her boss ever sees her again.

As she drives down the road we notice the story playing out in her head. The voices get deep into her head filling her every thought. I then notice that maybe the voices in the background isn't the story playing out. It honestly could just be her hallucinating of what could happen. By her facial expression we can tell she has gone mad. Is she a trustworthy person? Can we trust the way she is portraying the outcomes?  She sleeps in her car which wasn't a very good idea on her part. A cop walks up the window and knocks, she jolts up and tries to start the car and drive away. The cop tells her to shut her engine off and give him her license and registration. By now, the cop is very suspicious of this woman since she slept in the car. The cop tells her there's motels just up the road. The woman isn't helping her case at all. She is acting suspicious and then she drives off while the officer still has her license.

She ends up stopping in the nearest town to sell her car and get a brand new one. She's in a rush and usually when someone wants to buy a car they want to wheel and deal for a better price. She agrees to pay a sum of 700 dollars with the trade of her own car. The car dealer is very suspicious at this point because she doesn't just agree to pay the sum he wanted with no argument but she also paid in cash. While all this was happening there was cop across the street watching her every move. I believe she could've at least just kept driving until she knew that the cop couldn't catch up. Everything she does is so sloppy and I wouldn't trust her to break me out of jail or pull a heist for me.

She ends up taking the advice of the cop who was suspicious of her actions and finds a hotel. The hotel is very secluded. It's far from the highway and very empty. It's called Bates Hotel. This hotel looks like something straight out of a horror movie which I guess "Psycho" would be considered a horror movie when it first came out. She meets the person who runs the place, Norman Bates. At first, he seems like a nice person. It's funny how the hotel has 12 rooms and it also has 12 vacancies as well. He put her into the first room. Before she starts settling into her room Norman invites her up for dinner for that night. She kindly accepts his offer. After Norman leaves, she takes the money out of her purse and wraps in newspaper and puts in on the cabinet. She hears arguing from the house, you can hear an old elderly lady scream from the top of her lungs that she doesn't want anyone up into the house. As she is walking out of her room, Norman meets her and knows that he was in a bit of trouble.

They eat dinner in the back of the office. This scene really does kill me. It amazing and it's where you really get to appreciate the outstanding acting from Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh. They go back and forth at each other with sort of criticism like for example Marion said, "a man should have a hobby." Norman took that as a sarcastic comment and it was blows at each back and forth. But the most important thing that was said was, "we all go a little mad sometimes." That quote right their carries weight throughout the whole movie and carries weight throughout reality. When Norman says that, you can see Marion face start to to sadden. She's realizes that she went a little mad. She dashes out of the room and heads into her room and something weird happens. Norman removes the painting off the wall and starts spying on her through the wall and then after he is done, he puts it back up. I question wether this movie is a comedy or a horror.

One of the most iconic movie scenes in history is right here in this movie. It's in the shower scene where Marion decides right after she has her conversation with Norman, she'll do. She takes her clothes off and steps in the shower. She starts cleaning her self off, you can see a shadow in the curtain of a lady wielding a kitchen knife. The lady rips the shower curtain open and stabs Marion and kills her. Now what I don't understand about this scene is that she turns around and does like a full spin while she is getting stabbed. Like why, do you wanna get stabbed in the back in then stabbed in the stomach again. It just doesn't make sense. But, that's what does make the scene even more iconic till this day. The mother was apparently the one who murdered the notorious Marion. Norman is going to have to be the one who has to pick up the pieces. Instead calling the police on his mother he decides pick up the body, clothes, and anything else that remained and get rid of it. He stuff Marion's body in the trunk of the car and drives it into a big mud puddle where it could sink to the bottom where no one could find it.

Lila, Marion's sister, is worried sick because of her sister running off stealing a whopping 40,000 dollars. She came to question Sam, the guy she has a sort of secret relationship complicated relationship with. We all know Marion was headed Sam's way with that 40,000 dollars. A private investigator also stops to asks questions about where was the last time they say her and did they know where she was. The common answer was they didn't where she was and they had no idea she was capable of something of this magnitude.

This private investigator will stop at nothing till he solves this case. He stops at many places till he lands straight at Bates Motel. He walks up to the door and there's Norman. Of course, Norman says that he has 12 vacancies available to room in. The private investigator is only there to talk business though. When the investigator asked to see the book where everyone signs in, he tries to shy away from the subject and talk about something else. The investigator ends up convincing him on seeing the book and there's here name written right in ink when Norman said specifically he hasn't seen her at all. He has been lying to us. At this point Norman is very nervous and doesn't know what to say say. You could say he is caught and has to tell the truth. But for the most part, he sticks to his story.
This investigator also notices that this Norman has a mother. He defiantly pushes Norman to get him to talk to his mother too. Norma isn't having it though. He left to a payphone to talk about what happen about what he found out at the Bates Motel. He is eager to continue his search and decides to head back.

The investigator tries to head into the home of the Bates Motel. He wants to talk to the Mother so he can get more information about Marion. What he is going to find out is very different than he thought. He walks up the stairs of the home and immediately gets stabbed by the elderly women. His body flops back like a rag doll and well, he is dead. Without hearing from the investigator for a while, Lila and sam are worried that he might've found something. They want to head there too. I think that's a bad idea but it's a free country, right? They find out from the deputy sheriff that the mother of Norman Bates is actually dead. Now I know what you are thinking, who could be the old lady then. Just wait, trust me it's a good ending. Sam and Lila head into the Bates house too so that can find the "mother". Lila ends up in the basement where he sees the so called mother but her back is towards her. As Lila treads carefully. She grabbed the mother by the shoulder and turned her around and there she was, a Skeleton. What? Yea, I know. She was a skeleton. As she screams for her life, someone comes behind her with a knife and grabs her. Sam comes quickly and saves her. The mother was really Norman Bates in a dress.

Now here's the really tough part of the blog. Where I have to find an overall conclusion. Well this movie is very unique and had many plot twist so please bare with me. I think this film taught us a few things. When Norman Bates said, "We all go a little crazy sometimes". I feel that relates to all of us. As American people we work and nothing but stress is on our shoulders. Sometimes we lose it and we just have to come back to reality and realize that we need to really think things through before we go ahead and do them like Marion did with stealing that 40,000 dollars. Another lesson could be, don't be a cocky jerk. Maybe the guy in the beginning had it coming when the money from him got stolen. He did say he never carried more than he could lose. Overall this movie is one of my favorites and has gone done in history. It has one of the most iconic scenes and one of the most iconic plot twist of all time. The movie is true to it's name and i've never enjoyed watching a movie so much in my life.