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Psycho

1960

Alfred Hitchcock

Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, John Gavin, Vera Miles ...

8.4

110,099

Horror. Mystery. Thriller Office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. One Friday Marion is entrusted with $40,000 to take to the bank. Seeing the opportunity to keep the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel Manager Norman Bates oddly seems to be dominated by his mother.

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"What makes 'Psycho' immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"Mr. Hitchcock's picture slow buildups to sudden shocks that are old-fashioned melodramatics, however effective and sure (...) We feel his explanations are a bit of leg-pulling by a man who has been known to resort to such tactics in his former films. The consequence in his denouement falls quite flat"	NEU
United Kingdom	Mark Monahan Telegraph	"In 'Psycho', Alfred Hitchcock not only created a blazing masterpiece and spawned a new cinematic genre – the slasher. He also delivered one of the boldest blows in screen history (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Variety	"An unusual, good entertainment, indelibly Hitchcock."	POS
United Kingdom	CA Lejeune The Guardian	"'Psycho' is not a long film but it feels long. Perhaps because the director dawdles over technical effects; perhaps because it is difficult, if not impossible, to care about any of the characters."	NEG
United States	New York Daily News	"The suspense of his picture builds up slowly but surely to an almost unbearable pitch of excitement."	POS
United Kingdom	David Parkinson Empire	"Timeless classic. Superb performances and the infamous shower scene make this the perfect nightmare (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	J. Hoberman Village Voice	"'Psycho' not only relocated horror from faraway Transylvania to the heart of the American family but was shockingly ironic from beginning to end."	POS
United States	Bill Weber Slant	"Its power is not just that of a showman’s calibrated scare machine, but of a somber fugue on the trapped 20th-century creatures who inhabit its world (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Richard Brody The New Yorker	"'Psycho', in its dark and sordid extravagance, remains utterly contemporary, in its subject as well as in its production"	POS
United Kingdom	Mark Kermode The Guardian	"It was Anthony Perkins's maternally obsessed misfit in 'Psycho' who most perfectly distilled the modern fear of the monster who looks just like you"	POS
United Kingdom	David Jenkins Time Out	"It offers perfect case studies of suspense, paranoia and montage for lazy film-studies tutors (...) 'Psycho': we salute you (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	SFGATE	"He has very shrewdly interwoven crime, sex and suspense, blended the real and the unreal in fascinating proportions and punctuated his film with several quick, grisly and unnerving surprises"	POS
United States	Andrew Sarris Village Voice	"Any discerning film-goer should see it at least three times, the first for the sheer terror of the experience; the second for the macabre comedy inherent in its conception; and the third for all the hidden meanings and symbols"	POS
United States	Jack Harrison The Hollywood Reporter	"This is a first-rate mystery thriller, full of visual shocks and surprises which are heightened by the melodramatic realism of the production"	POS
United States	James Berardinelli ReelViews	"'Psycho' is a brilliant excursion into fear that pushes many of our primal buttons (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS

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