by Allan Fish
(USA 1960 109m) DVD1/2
A boy’s best friend is his mother
p Alfred Hitchcock d Alfred Hitchcock (and Saul Bass) w Joseph Stefano novel Robert Bloch ph John L.Russell ed George Tomasini m Bernard Herrmann art Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy tit Saul Bass
Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates), Vera Miles (Lila Crane), John Gavin (Sam Loomis), Janet Leigh (Marion Crane), Simon Oakland (Dr Richmond), Martin Balsam (Milton Arbogast), John McIntire (Sheriff Al Chambers), Patricia Hitchcock (Caroline), Lurene Tuttle (Mrs Chambers), Frank Albertson (Tom Cassidy),
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is a stand alone in his filmography. It’s not the cruellest or most cynical film he ever made, which would probably be either his often repulsive Frenzy or his earlier British film Sabotage (blowing a small boy up on a bus, it doesn’t get much more cynical than that!) but Psycho is Hitch’s last masterpiece, an unsettling last hurrah. Unsettling in that it is deliberately shot cheaply (as befits it being shot quickly by a crew from his TV series) and that it killed off its nominal star but a third of the way in. (more…)