Spooky.pictures

Reviews

Editor's note: If you have not seen Psycho, go in as blind as you can.

Keith Uhlich, Time Out:

Where would we be without Psycho? Fifty years on and [Alfred Hitchcock]’s delicious cod-Freudian nightmare about a platinum-blonde embezzler (Janet Leigh) who neglected to consult a guide before selecting her motel still has much to answer for. 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.

Bill Weber, Slant:

[A] landmark in film history.

Richard Brody, New Yorker:

Psycho remains a demanding and disturbing movie; it conveys the thrill felt by a murderer as well as his torment, and it shows the proximity of sex—and of restrictive sexual morality—to violence.

[…]

There’s no redemptive ending, no love story that conquers all, no promise that such ills won’t be repeated.

Andrew Sarris, Village Voice:

Psycho should be seen at least three times by any discerning film-goer, the first time for the sheer terror of the experience, and on this occasion I fully agree with Hitchcock that only a congenital spoilsport would reveal the plot; the second time for the macabre comedy inherent in the conception of the film; and the third for all the hidden meanings and symbols lurking beneath the surface.

Peter John Dyer, Sight and Sound (1960):

An aura of nightmare embraces the whole cast. An innocent-seeming old lady in a hardware store is heard asking for painless insecticide; hayforks form a menacing, serpentine crown round the head of the dead girl’s sister.

[…]

Of course, it is a very minor work.