Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock's powerful, complex psychological thriller, Psycho (1960) is the "mother" of all modern horror suspense films. The film skillfully manipulates the audience into identifying with the main character, and then with that character's murderer, voyeuristically implicating the audience with the universal, dark evil forces and secrets present in the film. Psycho is so very layered and complex that multiple viewings are necessary to capture all of its subtlety. Symbolic imagery involving birds and reflecting mirrors are ever-present.

When the film was originally aired in theaters in 1960, Hitchcock insisted in a publicity gimmick that no one would be seated after the film had started. Audiences assumed that something horrible would happen in the first few minutes. Violence is present in only two scenes, the first about a third of the way through - the remainder of the horror and suspense is created in the minds of the audience.

The stark black and white film is made more effective by Bernard Herrmann's sparse, but driving, recognizable score, first played under the credits. Saul Bass's film credits are shown with streaking gray horizontal and vertical lines, then violently splitting apart the screens and causing them to disappear, correlated to the split personality of the protagonists.

The film opens with the camera sweeping left to right along the skyline of Phoenix, Arizona. It is "FRIDAY, DECEMBER THE ELEVENTH, TWO FORTY-THREE P.M." The shot pans across many buildings and then enters into one of many windows in a high-rise hotel building. There in the foreground darkness of the room is attractive secretary, Marion (spelled not with an A but an O - signifying emptiness) Crane (Janet Leigh), wearing only a prominent white bra and slip and reclining on the bed. She is there during her lunch hour with her shirtless lover/fiancee Sam Loomis (John Gavin) who stands over her. In the background is a bathroom (the first of three bedrooms with bathrooms in the background).

Sam speaks the first line of dialogue, referring to the uneaten lunch food on the stand. Then, as he kisses her and they embrace on the bed, they discuss their relationship:

Sam: You never did eat your lunch did you?
Marion: I've got to get back to the office. These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid.
Sam: Why don't you call your boss and tell him you're taking the rest of the afternoon off? It's Friday anyway and hot.
Marion: What do I do with my free afternoon? Walk you to the airport?
Sam: Well, you could laze around here a while longer.
Marion (foreshadowing a future hotel visit): Checking out time is 3 pm. Hotels of this sort are interested in you when you come in, but when your time is up. Oh Sam, I hate having to be with you in a place like this.
Sam: Married couples deliberately spend an occasional night in a cheap hotel.
Marion: I know marriage could do a lot of things.

It's a hot Friday afternoon and they are obviously in the midst of a secretive affair. She loves Sam but they can only furtively see each other during his business trips. Sam has flown in from California to see Marion, and "steal lunch hours." As she rises to dress, they discuss the difficulties of their relationship. Sam suggests seeing her the next week, and even having "lunch in public." Marion is frustrated by their secret love trysts and wants marriage and respectability, meeting in her home with her "mother" presiding over them:

Marion: Oh we can see each other. We can even have dinner, but respectably. In my house, with my mother's picture on the mantle, and my sister helping me broil a big steak for three.
Sam: And after the steak? Will you send sister to the movies, turn momma's picture to the wall?
Marion: Sam!
Sam: Alright. Marion, whenever it's possible I want to see you and under any circumstances, even respectability.
Marion: You make respectability sound disrespectful.

Sam is also frustrated because he is financially burdened by his dead father's debts and the alimony he must pay to his ex-wife:

Sam: I'm tired of sweating for people who aren't there. I sweat to pay off my father's debts and he's in his grave. (Sam has walked in front of a fan with spinning blades.) I sweat to pay my ex-wife's alimony and she's living on the other side of the world somewhere.
Marion: I pay too. They also pay who meet in hotel rooms.
Sam: A couple years and my debts will be paid off. If she remarries, the alimony stops.
Marion: I haven't even been married once yet.
Sam: Yeah, but when you do, you'll swing.
Marion: Oh Sam, let's get married1 (They kiss and embrace.)
Sam: Yeah. And live with me in a storeroom behind a hardware store in Fairvale? We'll have lots of laughs. I'll tell you what. When I send my ex-wife her alimony, you can lick the stamps.
Marion: I'll lick the stamps.
Sam: Marion, you want to cut this off, go out and find yourself somebody available?
Marion: I'm thinking of it.
Sam: How could you even think a thing like that?

Unhappy, Marion rushes back to her storefront real estate office, anxious about being late. [Director Hitchcock, wearing a ten-gallon hat, makes his cameo appearance on the Phoenix sidewalk facing away from the window of the realty office.] She is relieved that her boss Mr. George Lowery (Vaughn Taylor) is not back from lunch. She listens to her co-worker Caroline (Patricia Hitchcock) talk about her interfering, nagging mother, who had suggested that her doctor prescribe tranquilizers for her wedding day to protect her, angering her groom Teddy. Caroline offers Marion a tranquilizer rather than an aspirin for her headache.

Mr. Lowery arrives shortly with an important, wealthy millionaire - a cowboy-hatted customer named Mr. Tom Cassidy (Frank Albertson), who is sweating from the heat, complaining that the weather is "hot as fresh milk," and suggesting that Lowery should "air-condition...up" his employees. Mr. Cassidy has just proudly bought a house for his 18 year old daughter's wedding present. He also boasts that his daughter never had an unhappy day in her life. Flirting with Marion, he sits on her desk, and sensing that Marion is unhappy, tells her:

You know what I do about unhappiness? I buy it off. Are you unhappy?

Marion answers that she isn't inordinately unhappy. Then, the vulgar client takes out the $40,000 in cash for the house purchase, boastfully waves it around in front of his audience, and throws it on Marion's desk, domineeringly explaining: "Now, that's, that's not buying happiness. That's just buying off unhappiness. I never carry more than I can afford to lose." The money is Cassidy's daughter's wedding dowry - an awkward, discomfiting sight for Marion who has just left her impecunious fiancee whom she is unable to marry for lack of money.

Lowery is worried about so much cash out in the open: "A cash transaction of this size is most irregular," but Cassidy replies: "So what. It's my private money." Lowery suggests putting the large amount of cash in a safe deposit box over the weekend.

The loud-mouthed Cassidy embarrasses Lowery by revealing the presence of something else hidden away - a bottle in the desk in Lowery's office. He persuades Lowery to take him into the inner office for a drink. Lowery instructs Marion to take the money to the bank: "I don't even want it in the office over the weekend. Put it in the safe deposit box in the bank."

Caroline is jealous of Cassidy's flirting with her colleague: "He was flirting with you. I guess he must have noticed my wedding ring." Both women touch and handle the naughty, filthy money, and then Marion puts it into an envelope, wrapping it up and then sticking it in her purse. She is granted permission to go straight home after the bank deposit because of her headache. Although she expects to be "in bed" all weekend, Cassidy thinks she needs an escape: "What you need is a weekend in Las Vegas, the playground of the world!" As she leaves, Marion refuses tranquilizers a second time from her co-worker: "You can't buy off unhappiness with pills."

In a moment of weakness and impulse, Marion brings the money home to her small bedroom instead of going to the bank. (Behind her in this second bedroom is another bathroom, this one with the shower head particularly noticeable. Also, more mirrors and windows and pictures looking down from the wall - one of her as a baby, another of her deceased parents.) Again in partial undress wearing only a black bra and slip, Marion repeatedly eyes the money in a bulging envelope on the bed (where she told Lowery and Cassidy she would spend the weekend). She nervously finishes packing a suitcase - the camera zooms in on the envelope more than once. She sits down on the bed, stares at the money, and tries to stop herself from doing something she knows is wrong - but she can't stop her obsessive-compulsive behavior. Her suitcase is so full that she stuffs the envelope in her purse and then leaves.

While driving out of Phoenix toward Fairvale, California, on her way to elope with Sam with the large sum of cash with which to finance her elopement and marriage, she imagines a conversation with a startled Sam surprised to see her in Fairvale, his startled voice speaking in her head:

Marion, what in the world, what are you doing up here? Of course I'm glad to see you. I always am. What is it Marion?

Their conversation is not completed. While waiting at a stoplight, her boss passes by in the cross-walk in front of her. He at first smiles, and then stops and furrows his brow, surprised and startled to see her in her car when she was supposed to be home sick. Bernard Herrmann's jarring music begins to play, slashing at her.

Unnerved but still drifting along irrationally, Marion drives her dark-toned car toward Fairvale from Phoenix and it turns to nighttime. She blinks her tired eyes. The next morning, Saturday, she wakes up from her lying position in the front seat of her car, where she has pulled her car over to the side of the road beneath some bare hills. She is startled by rapping knuckles on her window and horrified to see a California Highway Patrolman (Mort Mills) with frightening dark glasses staring at her through the car window.

She tries to act calm as he suggests that she would be safer in a motel [ha!], but he can sense that she is nervous:

Patrolman: You slept here all night?...There are plenty of motels in this area. You should have...I mean just to be safe.
Marion: I didn't intend to sleep all night. I just pulled over. Have I broken any laws?
Patrolman: No ma'am.
Marion: Then I'm free to go.
Patrolman: Is anything wrong?
Marion: Of course not. Am I acting as if something is wrong?
Patrolman: Frankly, yes.
Marion: Please, I'd like to go.
Patrolman: Well, is there?
Marion: Is there what? I've told you there's nothing wrong, except that I'm in a hurry and you're taking up my time.

Because she is short with him, he asks to check her driver's license. From a low camera angle facing back from the passenger's seat, she turns her back to him and digs into her purse as the patrolman is leaning on the window behind her. Marion removes the envelope from her purse and hides it between her body and the automobile seat, and then finds her documents. He checks the license and registration (her Arizona license plate number is ANL 709 - signifying anal-obsessive behavior?) and lets her drive away, but follows her from behind for awhile, still suspicious, while the jarring music plays. [Through subjective camera movements, audience identification with her predicament results in resentment and impatience with everything which makes it difficult for her flight to succeed.]

In Bakersfield, she turns into a "CASH FOR CARS" used car lot. While waiting for the salesman, she purchases a Los Angeles Times newspaper from a coin-operated machine and quickly scans the paper. (She doesn't notice the same patrolman drive up and watch her from across the street.) The car salesman California Charlie (John Anderson) greets her ominously:

California Charlie: I'm in no mood for trouble.
Marion (blurting back): What?
California Charlie: There's an old saying. The first customer of the day is always the most trouble.

Hurriedly, realizing she must exchange her car for one which will not be identifiable, she asks: "Can I trade my car in and take another?" While a mechanic pulls her car in to inspect it before selling her a different car, she catches sight of the patrolman. Marion quickly decides on her car purchase, a light-colored '57 Ford, causing the astonished salesman to wonder:

You mean you don't want the usual day and a half to think it over? Ha! You are in a hurry aren't ya? Is somebody chasin' ya?...Well, it's the first time the customer ever high-pressured the salesman!

Marion agrees to his first offer, her trade-in (and proof of ownership) plus $700. Before paying, she enters the restroom to unwrap and handle the stolen money and to take the title out of her purse. (Her image is schizophrenically reflected in the lavatory's mirror.) She counts out seven $100 dollar bills and returns to California Charlie, who is terribly suspicious of her behavior. After they have made the deal and she rushes to her new car, the patrolman has pulled his vehicle into the car lot. The mechanic calls out: "Hey!" giving her quite a fright - but it is only because she has forgotten her luggage. It is loaded into the back seat of her car before she drives off, leaving the dumbfounded men to watch her go.

As she drives all day Saturday and the dark night approaches, she is tormented even more by menacing, inner monologues:

- California Charlie: Hey officer, that was the first time I ever saw the customer high-pressure the salesman. Somebody chasin' her?
- Patrolman: I'd better have a look at those papers Charlie.
- California Charlie: Did she look like a wrong one to you?
- Patrolman: Acted like one.
- California Charlie: The only funny thing. She paid me $700 in cash.

- Caroline: Yes, Mr. Lowery.
- Mr. Lowery: Marion still isn't in?
- Caroline: No, Mr. Lowery, but then she's always a bit late on Monday mornings.
- Mr. Lowery: Buzz me the minute she comes in.

- Mr. Lowery: Call her sister. No one's answering at the house.
- Caroline: I called her sister Mr. Lowery where she works. The Musicmaker's Music Store you know. She doesn't know where Marion is any more than we do.
- Mr. Lowery: You'd better run out to the house. She may be unable to answer the phone.
- Caroline: Her sister's going to do that. She's as worried as we are.

- Mr. Lowery: No, I haven't the faintest idea. As I said, I last saw your sister when she left this office on Friday. She said she didn't feel well and wanted to leave early. I said she could. That was the last I saw - oh, wait a minute. I did see her sometime later driving uh, I think you'd better come over here to my office, quick!

- Mr. Lowery: Caroline, get Mr. Cassidy for me. After all Cassidy, I told you, all that cash! I'm not taking any responsibility. Oh for heaven sake. A girl works for you for 10 years, you trust her. Alright yes, you better come over.

(During the next imagined conversation, she smiles at Cassidy's indignation.)
- Cassidy: Well, I ain't about to kiss off forty thousand dollars. I'll get it back and if any of it's missing, I'll replace it with her fine soft flesh. [Marion's own judgment upon herself is a foreshadowing of what is to come.] I'll track her. Never you doubt it.
Mr. Lowery: Now hold on Cassidy. I-I still can't believe. It must be some kind of a mystery. I-I can't...
- Cassidy: You check with the bank? NO! They never laid eyes on her? NO! You still trustin'. Hot creeper. She sat there while I dumped it out. Hardly even looked at it. Planned it. And even flirtin' with me.

Rain drops begin to splash on the windshield, as oncoming headlights blind Marion's tired eyes (she has been traveling for almost 30 hours with nothing to eat and an uncomfortable night's sleep in her car). The rainstorm becomes more violent, and the windshield wipers slash back and forth across her window, accentuated by the soundtrack. Although the rain has a cleansing effect and her inner monologues cease, her vision is obscured and she becomes lost off the main road. The side road she has turned onto is dark - suddenly up ahead, a neon Bates Motel (vacancy) sign appears. She pulls in to the out-of-the-way, deserted roadside motel, a modest but seedy looking place.

As the rain is beating down, she pulls up in front of the motel office and gets out of her car. The office is lighted but unattended. Then, from the motel porch, she peers around the corner of the motel, looking up at the gloomy, gothic-style Victorian house behind the motel on a hill. It looks like a giant skull with lighted windows/eyes. In a lighted second story window, she sees an old woman pass in front of the window. She honks her horn a few times to signal her presence.

The nervous, thin, shy, peculiar but likeable caretaker, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) breathlessly bounds down the hill, smiling and greeting her with the words:

Gee, I'm sorry I didn't hear you in all this rain. Go ahead in please. Dirty night.

According to the proprietor: "We have twelve vacancies, twelve cabins, twelve vacancies. They moved away the highway." He is delighted to see a visitor because nobody ever stops at the motel unless they accidentally get off the "main road." As Marion registers in the guest book as Marie Samuels (a reference to her unfulfilled wish to marry Sam) from Los Angeles, the motel keeper banters on with a significant statement: "There's no sense dwelling on our losses. We just keep on lighting the lights and following the formalities."

The attendant hesitates when he reaches for the room key, finally selecting the key to Cabin 1, next to the office, "closer in case you want anything." She learns she is only 15 miles from Fairvale, Sam's town. He takes her bags from the back seat and leads her to her room. He comments on the room's smell: "Boy, it's stuffy in here." In a charming, friendly, eager-to-please way, he meticulously shows Marion where everything is, but stammers as he turns on the bright bathroom lights and points her to "over there" (she must provide the word bathroom for him as if it was a forbidden, dirty word).

When she learns his name, her image is reflected in the room's mirror, clutching her purse with the stolen bundle of money. He shyly invites her to dinner in his house, "just sandwiches and milk...I don't set a fancy table, but the kitchen's awful homey." She agrees and he tells her to wait in her room while he goes to get his "trusty umbrella."

While he is gone, Marion takes out her money and looks for a better place to conceal the money, opening up three drawers. She finally decides to wrap it up in her Los Angeles newspaper and place it in plain view on the bed nightstand (the word 'OKAY' is ironically visible in the headline). Through the open window facing the old house, Marion hears voices, an argument that Norman is having with his shrill-voiced mother (voice of "Mother" by Virginia Gregg) over his "cheap erotic" invitation:

Mother: No! I tell you No! I won't have you bringing strange young girls in for supper by candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap erotic fashion of young men with cheap erotic minds.
Norman: Mother, please!
Mother: And then what after supper? Music? Whispers?
Norman: Mother, she's just a stranger. She's hungry and it's raining out.
Mother: 'Mother, she's just a stranger.' As if men don't desire strangers. Ah, I refuse to speak of disgusting things because they disgust me. Do you understand boy? Go on, go tell her. She'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with my food. Or my son. Or do I have to tell her, because you don't have the guts? Huh, boy? Do you have the guts boy?
Norman: Shut up! Shut up!

She waits at her door, and moments later sees Norman carrying a tray of sandwiches and a pitcher of milk down the hill and onto the porch. "I caused you some trouble," she says. As they stand together on the porch, the camera photographs them as if they were the sides of the same coin. Norman tells Marion that his mother is extremely disagreeable:

Norman: No. Mother, my mother, uh, what is the phrase? - she isn't qu-quite herself today.
Marion: You shouldn't have bothered. I really don't have that much of an appetite.
Norman: Oh, I'm sorry. I wish you could apologize for other people.
Marion: Don't worry about it.

Since he has fixed dinner, Marion invites him into her room to eat. Norman steps forward and backward one step, stiffens uncomfortably, and then proposes that it would be "nicer and warmer" in the office. Then because it is "too officious" in the office, he suggests the parlor behind the office.

The parlor is decorated with his stuffed birds with their wings spread (an owl, crow and a hawk) and paintings of classical rapes. As he sits straight up and leaning forward as in a toilet-like position while she nibbles, he looks on, fondles a stuffed bird, and talks about his hobby - taxidermy. Their conversation leads to speaking about how human beings become imprisoned and "trapped" in a narrow existence in the course of their lives:

Norman: You, you eat like a bird.
Marion (looking around): You'd know of course.
Norman (stuttering): No, not really. Anyway, I hear the expression, 'eats like a bird' it, it's really a fals-fals-false-falsity because birds really eat a tremendous lot. But I don't really know anything about birds. My hobby is stuffing things. You know, taxidermy. And I guess I'd rather just stuff birds because I hate the look of beasts when they're stuffed. You know, foxes and chimps. Some people even stuff dogs and cats but boy, I can't do that. I think only birds look well stuffed because, well because they're kinda passive to begin with.
Marion: Strange hobby. Curious.
Norman: Uncommon too.
Marion: Oh, I imagine so.
Norman: And itsa, it's not as expensive as you'd think. It's cheaper than, you know, needles, and thread, sawdust. The chemicals are the only thing that, that cost anything.
Marion: A man should have a hobby.
Norman: Well, it's, it's more than a hobby. A hobby's supposed to pass the time, not fill it.
Marion: Is your time so empty?
Norman: No, uh. Well, I run the office and uh, tend the cabins and grounds and, and do a little uh errands for my mother. The ones she allows I might be capable of doing.
Marion: And do you go out with friends?
Norman: Well, a boy's best friend is his mother. You've never had an empty moment in your entire life, have you?
Marion: Only my share.
Norman: Where are you going? I didn't mean to pry.
Marion: I'm looking for a private island.
Norman: What are you running away from?
Marion (frowning): Why do you ask that?
Norman (changing the subject): People never run away from anything. The rain didn't last long did it? You know what I think. I think that we are all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and, and claw, but only at the air, only at each other. And for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion: Sometimes we deliberately step into those traps.
Norman: I was born in mine. I don't mind it any more.
Marion: Oh, but you should. You should mind it.
Norman: Oh I do. (Laughs) But I say I don't.

Marion can't believe that he is treated so harshly by his mother. She is slowly made aware of how Norman's predicament with his invalid mother is far worse than her own situation. Although he sympathetically tells the story of his mother and her hard life, Marion is incredulous regarding his devotion, but compassionate:

Marion: You know, if anyone ever talked to me the way I heard the way she spoke to you...
Norman: Sometimes, when she talks to me like that, I feel I ought to go up there and curse her and leave her forever. Or at least defy her. But I know I can't. She's ill.
Marion: She sounded strong.
Norman: No, I mean ill. She had to raise me all by herself after my father died. I was only five and it must have been quite a strain for her. She didn't have to go to work or anything like that. He left her a little money. Anyway, a few years ago, Mother met this man, and he talked her into building this motel. He could have talked her into anything. And when he died too, it was just too great a shock for her. And the way he died. (Smiling broadly) I guess it's nothing to talk about while you're eating. Anyway, it was just too great a loss for her. She had nothing left.
Marion: Except you.
Norman: A son is a poor substitute for a lover.
Marion: Why don't you go away?
Norman: To a private island like you?
Marion: No, not like me.
Norman: I couldn't do that. Who'd look after her? She'd be alone up there. The fire would go out. It'd be cold and damp like a grave. If you love someone, you don't do that to them - even if you hate them. Understand, I don't hate her. I hate what she's become. I hate the illness.
Marion: Wouldn't it be better if you put her (pause) someplace ...
Norman (leaning forward with a mad look on his face, both angry and defensive): You mean an institution? A madhouse? People always call a madhouse 'someplace' don't they? Put her in 'someplace.'
Marion: I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound uncaring.
Norman: What do you know about caring? Have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? The laughing and the tears! And the cruel eyes studying you. My mother there? But she's harmless. She's as harmless as one of those stuffed birds.
Marion: I am sorry. I only felt it seems she's hurting you. I meant well.
Norman: People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues and shake their heads and suggest oh-so-very-delicately. (He leans back) Of course, I've suggested it myself, but I hate to even think about it. She needs me. It's not as if she were a maniac, a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you? (Smiling and relaxing)
Marion: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.

[Marion's admission that she has sunk to neurotic depths parallels Norman's own psychotic trap.] After their discussion and dinner, Marion realizes how horrible life can be when one is trapped in a situation without escape. By stealing her boss's money, she has placed herself in such a trap. Benefitting from Norman's example and trapped, self-sacrificing condition, he has provided a way of salvation for Marion. She is resolved to extricate herself from her own self-imposed trap due to lack of money and a frustrating romance, and return to Phoenix to turn herself in:

I have a long drive tomorrow, all the way back to Phoenix...I stepped into a private trap back there and I'd like to go back and try to pull myself out of it before it's too late for me to.

Marion forgets that she has signed the register with a fake name and fake home address, and now tells Norman her name is Crane. Norman watches her return to her cabin, and then takes another look at the register, smirking at the false name. [Norman Bates' hobby, "baiting ," snaring and trapping birds for stuffing - such as the "crane' woman from Phoenix - another legendary bird - has again found a suitable match.]

Walking back into the shadowy dark parlor, Norman listens at the wall and then removes a painting [a replica of Susanna and the Elders] from a hook, revealing a peephole chipped out of the wall. He leans down to peer at Marion through the hole, seeing her undress down to her black bra and slip and put on a robe, a closeup of his large profiled eye filling the screen (a subjective camera placement implicates the audience in his peeping voyeurism). Norman nervously replaces the picture, glances up to the house, and then resolvedly walks out. At the door to the office, he again looks furtively up toward the house and then begins to climb the steps into the house. Inside the house, he pauses at the carved staircase, and then with his hands in his pockets, retreats to the kitchen and sits hunched over the table.

In her motel room, Marion begins to reconsider her larcenous crime, planning to repent, redeem herself and return the money. She sits at the room's desk with her First Security Bank of Phoenix bank book and a scratch book of paper. She figures out a way to repay the $700 she spent on her car. Then she tears out the piece of paper, rips it up into pieces, and to hide all evidence flushes them down the toilet, watching them circle around the bowl. She closes the lid on the toilet bowl and then prepares to take a shower before retiring, a final cleansing act.

In the next scene, the classic, brutal shower murder scene, the major star of the film -Marion - is shockingly stabbed to death after the first 47 minutes of the film's start. It is the most famous murder scene ever filmed, taking a full week to complete, using fast-cut editing of 78 pieces of film in a 45-second impressionistic montage sequence. The audience's imagination believes the illusion of complete nudity and that Marion is stabbed fourteen times - actually she never really appears nude (although the audience is teased) and at no time does the knife ever touch or penetrate her body. It is an unexplainable, unpremeditated murder.

The scene begins peacefully enough. She closes the white-tiled bathroom's door, removes her robe, steps naked into the bathtub, pulls the curtain across, opens up a bar of soap, and turns on the overhead shower water. There in the vulnerable privacy of her bathroom, she begins to bathe, visibly enjoying the feel of the cleansing water on her skin, relieved as the water washes away her guilt. Large closeups of the shower head reveal the water pouring down on her.

The bathroom door opens and a shadowy, grey figure enters the bathroom, whips aside the shower curtain, wields a knife high in the air and repeatedly stabs her, shattering her sense of security and salvation. The piercing, shrieking, and screaming of the violin strings of Bernard Herrmann's shrill music play a large part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene. [The sound track resembles the shrieking sounds of a carnivorous bird 'scratching and clawing' at its prey.] Marion resists and screams - the killing is kinetically viewed from many angles and views. She is standing in water mixed with blood. She falls against the bathtub tiles, her hand 'clawing and grasping' the shower wall after the murderer (resembling a grey-haired woman) quickly turns and leaves.

In a closeup, Marion holds her hand out, grabs the shower curtain and pulls it down from its hooks as she collapses over the edge of the bathtub, her face pressed to the bathroom floor. She lies bleeding on the floor, with the shower nozzle still spraying her body with water. The camera slowly tracks the blood and water which flows and swirls together counter-clockwise down into the deep blackness of the bathtub drain. The drain dissolves into a memorable closeup of Marion's dead-still right eye with one tear drop (or drop of water). The camera pulls back up from the lifeless, staring eye, spiraling in an opposite clockwise direction. [The association of the eye and the bottomless darkness of the drain is deliberate.]

On the soundtrack gushing shower water is still heard. The camera pans from Marion's face past the toilet and into the bedroom for a zoom close-up of Marion's newspaper on the nightstand, also holding an empty ashtray and erect lampstand with a circular base. The camera continues to pan over to the open window where the house is visible. From the house, Norman's voice is heard crying:

Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood!

Norman runs down the hill to the scene of the crime in cabin one, accompanied by the shrill music once again. At the bathroom door after viewing the dead body, he turns away and cups his hand to his mouth, revulsed and nauseated by the horrific scene - 'knocking off a bird' [literally] picture from the wall. He regains his composure, closes the open window, sits shaking in a chair, and then closes the cabin's door - camera angles often include the newspaper. He turns out the light, leaves the room, and then shuts off the lights in the motel office.

Dutifully, he appears carrying a mop and pail to clean-up following the murder. [The audience identifies with the devoted, dutiful son who is once again cleaning up the mess and covering up for his misguided, insane mother's behavior.] He enters the bathroom, turns off the water, and then spreads out the shower curtain on the floor of the bedroom. He drags Marion's limp corpse to the curtain, and then washes his hands in the sink, blood and water again swirling down the drain. He rinses the sink clean of blood and then with the mop, obsessively swabs and wipes up every trace of the bloody murder in the bathroom, after which he dries everything with a towel. He drops his towel and mop into the empty bucket.

Norman tiptoe-edges around her body as he goes outside to back Marion's car trunk closer to the room's door. Then, he wraps her up in the plastic curtain [rolling her up like the money in the newspaper], carries her over the porch, and places the corpse in the trunk of her car, along with all her belongings. The last lingering trace of Marion - the rolled-up newspaper - is the last thing found in the room. Without looking inside, he non-chalantly tosses it into the car trunk and slams it shut. He drives off - a camera closeup of the car's rear end reveals its license plate - NFB 418 [signifying 'Norman F Bates'] and drives to a nearby swampy quicksand.

He gets out and pushes the car into the dark thick waters to submerge the evidence, watching nervously as it slowly gurgles lower and lower into the muck. Norman, looking remarkably like a scared bird darts his head around and nibbles, fearful that it won't sink entirely. Then he smiles when it finally is swallowed up by the blackness, relieved that the evidence is covered up. [Audience identification shares Norman's relief.] The scene fades to black.

A week later on Saturday, on his own hardware store letterhead, Sam handwrites a letter to Marion:

Dearest right-as-always Marion:
I'm sitting in this tiny back room which isn't big enough for both of us, and suddenly it looks big enough for both of us. So what if we're poor and cramped and miserable, at least we'll be happy.
If you haven't come to your senses, and still...

The camera pans from Sam seated in the cramped back room at the desk out into the hardware store, where scythes, rakes and other tools hang overhead. A clerk is assisting a customer in purchasing an effective brand of insecticide called SPOT, one that is "guaranteed to exterminate every insect in the world." But the can's ingredients are missing one vital piece of information: "...they do not tell you whether or not it's painless. And I say, insect or man, death should always be painless."

A blonde woman enters the store's front door, asking for Sam and introducing herself as "Marion's sister" Lila (Vera Miles). She is strikingly similar in appearance to her sister. She is concerned that Marion has disappeared and hasn't been heard of for a week: "She left home on Friday. I was in Tucson over the weekend. And I haven't heard from her since, not even a phone call." She suspects that Sam has something to do with Marion's strange disappearance.

While they discuss Marion, a private detective and investigator Milton Arb- O - gast (Martin Balsam) has been watching them from outside the store's door. He enters the store and suggests that they all talk about Marion. His interest in the case is that he has been hired to search for and recover the missing: "$40,000...your girlfriend stole $40,000." Lila explains to Sam what Arbogast is referring to: "She was supposed to bank it on Friday for her boss and she didn't, and no one has seen her since." Arbogast is sure that the money makes Marion very conspicuous: "Someone has seen her. Someone always sees a girl with $40,000." Lila reassures Sam that: "they don't want to prosecute. They just want the money back." Arbogast maintains that Marion is closeby to her boyfriend: "I think she's here Miss Crane. Where there's a boyfriend...she's not back there with the nuts and bolts but she's here in this town somewhere. I'll find her."

Arbogast questions a series of hotel, motel and boarding house managers throughout the day, and eventually pulls up to the Bates Motel, a place Arbogast believes is "hiding from the world." Norman is on the porch, nibbling on candy from a bag. He announces the familiar: "twelve cabins, twelve vacancies." Although the motel hasn't had visitors, Norman explains how it's "linen day...I hate the smell of dampness, don't you? It's such a, I don't know, creepy smell."

The detective explains he is looking for a "missing person" after being invited into the motel office: "I've been trying to trace a girl who's been missing for oh, about a week now from Phoenix. It's a private matter. The family wants to forgive her. She's not in any trouble." The fast-talking, slick and smug Arbogast shows Norman her picture [suggesting Norman's ultimate fate]: "Would you mind looking at the picture before committing yourself?" Norman replies: "Commit myself? You sure talk like a policeman."

Because Norman appears to be inconsistent and halting in his replies, Arbogast asks to see the register, even if Marion used an alias. (Norman chews nervously on candy, almost bird-like. From a low camera angle, his adam's apple moves up and down his giraffe-like throat while awkwardly stretching to look at the register.) Arbogast proves that Marion stayed at the motel by matching her signature to the "Marie Samuels" signature in the book - after Norman denied that he had any recent guests.

In this famous interrogation scene, the dialogue is overlapped to make Arbogast's questioning even more intimidating. Norman becomes defensive when he realizes he is trapped, starting to stutter more profusely. Then, he finally remembers Marion as a guest, explaining her late arrival and early departure - and the sandwich in the parlor:

Arbogast: Do you want to check the picture again?
Norman: Look, I-I wasn't lying to you mister.
Arbogast: Oh, I know that, I know you wouldn't lie.
Norman: It's tough keeping track of the time around here...Oh yeah. Well, it, it was raining, and um, her hair was all wet. I'll tell ya, it's not really a very good picture of her either...Well, um, she arrived rather late one night and she went straight to sleep and uh, left early the next morning...Oh, very early...the, um, the, the, the, next morning. Sunday...
Arbogast: I see. Did anyone meet her here?...Did she arrive with anyone?...Did she make any phone calls or...locally? Did you spend the night with her?...Well then, how would you know that she didn't make any phone calls?...
Norman: Uh, well she was very tired, and uh, see, now I'm starting to, uh, remember it. I'm making a mental picture of it in my mind...she was, she was sitting back there, no, no, she was standing back there with a sandwich in her hand and she said, uh, she had to go to sleep early, because she had a long dr-drive, uh, ahead of her...yes, back in my parlor there, uh, she was very hungry, and I made her a sandwich. And then she said, uh that she was tired and she, uh, um, had to go right to bed.

Norman tries to excuse himself by claiming to have work to do, but Arbogast believes Norman is hiding something: "...if it doesn't gel, it isn't aspic, and this ain't geling. It's not coming together, something's missing." Norman suggests that Arbogast follow and join him to change beds - Arbogast observes Norman stop, pause, and then bypass the first cabin room. Looking up at the Victorian house on the hill behind the motel, Arbogast becomes even more curious, thinking that Marion might be using Norman to hide her:

Arbogast: Is anyone at home?
Norman: No.
Arbogast: Who is...somebody sitting up in the window.
Norman: No, no, no there isn't.
Arbogast: Well sure, go ahead, take a look.
Norman (stumbling terribly on the words): Oh, oh, that, that must be my mother. She's, she's uh, an inv-invalid. Uh, it's practically like living alone.
Arbogast: Oh, I see. Well, now if this, uh girl, Marion Crane were here, you wouldn't be hiding her, would ya?
Norman: No.
Arbogast: Not even if she paid you well?
Norman: No, ha, ha.
Arbogast: Let's just say for the uh, just for the sake of argument that she wanted you to uh, gallantly protect her. You'd know that you were being used. You wouldn't be made a fool of, would ya?
Norman (angrily): But, I'm, I'm not a fool. And I'm not capable of being fooled. Not even by a woman.
Arbogast: Well, this is not a slur on your manhood. I'm sorry...
Norman: Let's put it this way. She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother.
Arbogast: Oh then your mother met her. Could I, could I talk to your mother?
Norman: No, as I told you, she's, she's confined.
Arbogast: Yes, well, just for a few minutes, that's all. There might be some hint that you missed out on. You know, sick old women are usually pretty sharp...

Norman dismisses Arbogast, insisting abruptly that he leave. As Norman watches Arbogast drive off, Norman's face is cut in half by light and darkness. Arbogast drives to a nearby telephone booth by the road and closes himself in the caged-like booth. He makes a long phone call to Sam Loomis and asks to speak to Lila. He explains what he found at the old Bates Motel (Marion was a guest there the previous Saturday night and probably stayed in cabin number one, and that the young manager knows more than he is telling.) He summarizes his feelings: "I'll just have to pick up the pieces from here. Well I'll tell ya, I don't feel entirely satisfied," and then how he plans to return to the motel right away to try to talk to the manager's mother. Arbogast expects to report back to them in about an hour.

Back at the motel, Norman leaves the office and walks down the long L-shaped porch walkway in front of the rooms - the motel is dominated by the house on the hill. He disappears into the shadows as Arbogast's car drives up. First, he calls out "Bates?" [baits?] and then snoops in the empty motel office and the parlor, noticing the birds adorning the walls and an empty safe. He leaves the office and ascends the hill to the old, dark house.

He quietly enters the front door and then stands for a moment in the foyer before beginning the climb up the long staircase to the second floor. The camera follows his footsteps from behind and then shifts to a tracking shot toward the camera from above as he ascends. At the top of the stairs, a crack of light appears on the floor through the slowly opening door of a room. As he reaches the landing, the camera shifts to an overhead shot and the screeching music plays.

In one of the most horrific murder scenes in film history, Arbogast is frighteningly attacked at the top of the stairs by a knife-wielding "woman," slashed to death across the forehead. Blood spurts as he stumbles, loses his balance and falls backwards down the entire flight of stairs. The woman pursues him to the floor - the knife goes up into the air for another series of blows.

Lila and Sam wait patiently but apprehensively in the hardware store, realizing that it has been three hours since Arbogast called. Lila admits that patience doesn't run in her family. Sam insists on going to the motel by himself, where he calls out for Arbogast. Norman, standing by the swamp [after sinking Arbogast and his car?] hears Sam's calls, but doesn't respond. Sam returns to the hardware store, telling Lila: "No Arbogast, no Bates," but he did see a "sick old lady" in the second floor window, but she was unable to answer the door.

They decide to talk to the town's Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers (John McIntire) and his wife (Lurene Tuttle) at their home, finding them in their nightrobes. They explain that Lila's sister was traced to the Bates Motel by private detective Arbogast. Lila believes "there's something wrong out there" because Arbogast has inexplicably disappeared. The sheriff is also suspicious, but questions the integrity of the detective, thinking he might himself have found the missing money and disappeared: "Well, I think there's something wrong too Miss, but not the same thing. I think what's wrong is your private detective."

The sheriff believes that Norman didn't answer Sam's cries deliberately: "This fellow lives like a hermit. You must remember that bad business out there about 10 years ago." Lila persuades the sheriff to call Norman on the phone. Norman answers and explains that Arbogast was there but left. There is a particularly stunning set of remarks made by Sheriff Chambers and his wife when it is thought that Arbogast went back to question Norman's living "mother":

Sheriff: Norman Bates' mother has been dead and buried in Green Lawn Cemetery for the past ten years.
Mrs. Chambers: I helped Norman pick out the dress she was buried in - periwinkle blue.
Sheriff: Tainted local history Sam. It's the only case of murder and suicide on Fairvale ledgers. Mrs. Bates poisoned this guy she was involved with when she found out he was married. Then took a helping of the same stuff herself. Strychnine. Ugly way to die.
Mrs. Chambers: Norman found them dead together. (Whispering) In bed.
Sam: You mean the old woman I saw sittin' in that window out there wasn't Bates' mother?
Sheriff: Now wait a minute Sam. Are you sure you saw an old woman?
Sam: Yes! In the house behind the motel. I called and pounded but she just ignored me.
Sheriff: You want to tell me you saw Norman Bates' mother?
Lila: But it had to be, because Arbogast said so too. And the young man wouldn't let him see her because she was too ill.
Sheriff: Well, if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates, who's that woman buried out in Green Lawn Cemetery?

With a determined look on his face, Norman leaves the motel office and goes up to the house and stairs (walking effeminately) to the second floor bedroom, telling his "mother" that it is time to move her to a new location - the fruit cellar, but she protests vehemently with a macabre joke:

No, I will not hide in the fruit cellar! Ha! You think I'm fruity huh? I'm staying right here.This is my room and no one will grab me out of it, least of all my big bold son.

Norman explains the necessity of the move: "They'll come now mother. He came after the girl and now someone will come after him. Mother please, it's just for a few days. Just for a few days so they won't find you." The camera pans up to above the bedroom door and then to a disorienting, spiraling overhead shot as Norman emerges with his mother in his arms and carries her down the staircase to the "dark dank fruit cellar."

Following a church service, the sheriff tells Lila and Sam that he found "nothing" at the Bates Motel. Norman is alone there without any mother: "You must have seen an illusion Sam...No woman was there and I don't believe in ghosts, so." The sheriff suggests that they file a "missing person" report later that afternoon in his office - to "make it nicer," his wife suggests they do their reporting at their house around dinner time.

Instead, Lila and Sam decide to return to the motel, refusing to believe that Arbogast ran out on them. To "fool" Norman, they plan to register as guests - husband and wife, and then "search every inch of the place, inside and out." Arriving at the motel, Sam insists on signing the register and getting a receipt because his trip is: "90 percent business." Without luggage, they pay in advance and show themselves to cabin number ten at the end. (Lila is anxious to search cabin number one where Arbogast told her Marion stayed.)

Lila and Sam both search for clues at the motel, beginning in cabin one. There, they find two major clues. Sam notices that the shower curtain is missing and Lila finds a scrap of paper stuck to the toilet bowl, showing a notation - a figure added to or subtracted from $40,000. Lila is convinced that the "old woman, whoever she is, she told Arbogast something. I want her to tell us the same thing." They plan to split up and have Sam divert Norman's attention while Lila sneaks up to the house. The camera subjectively tracks her progress up the hill and as she enters the hallway of "Mother's House."

In the final scary sequence cutting back and forth between the motel office and Lila's search in the house, Sam aggressively banters away with a much quieter Norman, telling him: "You're alone here...It would drive me crazy." Lila enters Mrs. Bates' Victorian, baroque, stuffy, old-fashioned bedroom. She notes the ornate fixtures including an antique dry sink, a cold fireplace, a nude goddess statuette, a wardrobe with women's clothes neatly hung, and a sculpture of two crossed hands. She gasps, seeing herself in multiple reflections in opposing mirrors. She touches the deep curved imprint of a reclining figure in the bed.

In the office, Sam doubts Norman's contentedness:

Sam: I'm not saying you shouldn't be contented here. I'm just doubting that you are. I think if you saw a chance to get out from under, you'd unload this place.
Norman: This place? This place happens to be my only world. I grew up in the house up there. I had a very happy childhood. My mother and I were more than happy.

On the third floor, Lila enters Norman's little-boy room, a mysterious combination of children's and adult's things. It contains toys, stuffed animals, a slept-in bed, a phonograph record of Beethoven's Er-o-ica [one letter short of erotica] Symphony on a box-like turntable, and a book with no title or author on its cover. When she turns the book [pornographic?] to inspect it, she is standing near a small safe and a globe of the world.

As Lila opens the book, the shot cuts back to the motel office, where Sam continues his questioning of a frightened Norman, standing across from him [they appear remarkably similar - almost reflections of each other]:

You look frightened. Have I been saying something frightening?...I've been talking about your mother. About your motel. How you're gonna do it...Buy a new one in a new town where you won't have to hide your mother...Where will you get the money to do that Bates? Or do you already have it, socked away?...A lot of it, forty thousand dollars. (pursuing Norman into the parlor) I'll bet your mother knows where the money is and what you did to get it. I think she'll tell us.

Realizing that the girl Sam came with might be in the house, Norman struggles with Sam, knocks him out, and races up the hill. As Lila is coming down the stairs, she looks out the front door window and sees Norman approaching. She runs around and hides behind the stairs on the basement steps, and then decides to tiptoe down into the darkness of the cellar [symbolically going deeper into the hidden secrets of the psyche or Psycho-path].

She enters the fruit cellar through a second basement door, and sees a lifeless figure facing away from her in a chair, seated under a glaring bare light fixture. She walks up to the body, calling out "Mrs. Bates," and taps the woman's shoulder. The body slowly swivels in its chair and jerks back and forth. She has penetrated into Norman's secret world and found "mother" - Mrs. Bates - a stuffed, dried-up skeleton with empty eye sockets. As Lila screams, the screeching music plays to match her voice. Her hand hits the suspended light fixture setting it swinging. It adds an unsettling set of dancing shadows of light and dark to the scene, making the mummy's eyes "move."

Suddenly, a grey-haired woman with a knife in hand runs in from behind her. Suddenly, Sam appears behind the old woman and grabs the attacker. In the film's dramatic conclusion, the wig and dress disguises fall off, revealing Norman as his "mother." The cadaver's hysterically laughing face closes the scene.

As a footnote to the entire series of events, the police psychiatrist, Dr. Richmond (Simon Oakland) at the County Court House explains Norman's schizophrenic psychosis:

I got the whole story, but not from Norman. I got it from his mother. Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over, probably for all time.

Lila asks if it is true that he killed her sister. The psychiatrist first answers "Yes...and no" but then confirms that Norman was the murderer of Marion, Arbogast, and possibly other individuals in unsolved missing persons cases. Then, he goes on to explain how Norman had an incestuously possessive and jealous love for his mother, and poisoned both her and her lover after he discovered them in bed together:

Now to understand it the way I understood it, hearing it from the mother, that is, from the mother half of Norman's mind, you have to go back ten years to the time when Norman murdered his mother and her lover. Now, he was already dangerously disturbed, had been ever since his father died. His mother was a clinging, demanding woman. And for years, the two of them lived as if there was no one else in the world. Then, she met a man and it seemed to Norman that she threw him over for this man. Now that pushed him over the line and he killed them both.

Then, to wipe clean and obliterate the unbearable, intolerable crime of matricide from his conscience, he developed a split personality. In this way, he could keep the illusion that she was still alive. To make that illusion a physical reality, he used his taxidermist skills to preserve her body, to stuff her corpse and keep her 'alive.'

Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all - most unbearable for the son who commits it - so he had to erase the crime, at least in his own mind. He stole her corpse. A weighted coffin was buried. He hid the body in the fruit cellar. He even treated it to keep it as well as it would keep, and that still wasn't enough. She was there, but she was a corpse.

In his diseased imagination, he would fantasize that he was his mother - and that she was as jealous of him as he was of her. When attracted to a young woman, Norman would become his mother and become jealously mad. His "mother" side would stab to death the females he was attracted to, committing the horribly violent crimes. However, from Norman's pathologically-crazed point of view, he was committing a symbolic sexual act or rape, his knife a potent phallic symbol.

So he began to think and speak for her, give her half his life, so to speak. At times, he could be both personalities, carry on conversations. At other times, the mother half took over completely. But he was never all Norman, but he was often only mother. And because he was so pathologically jealous of her, he assumed that she was as jealous of him. Therefore, if he felt a strong attraction to any other woman, the mother side of him would go wild. When he met your sister, he was touched by her, aroused by her, he wanted her. That set off the jealous mother, and mother killed the girl. Now after the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep, and like a dutiful son covered up all traces of the crime he was convinced his mother had committed...

He would also act out the "mother" side of the split personality, donning her clothing to keep his illusion of her being alive. Following the disclosure of Norman's crime, Norman's weakened self-identity had been so completely and totally absorbed and possessed by the "mother" side of his split personality that Norman's side no longer existed:

...And when reality came too close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion, he'd dress up, even to a cheap wig he bought. He'd walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice. He tried to be his mother - and, uh, now he is...You see, when the mind houses two personalities, there's always a conflict, a battle. In Norman's case, the battle is over, and the dominant personality has won...These were crimes of passion, not profit.

As Norman sits staring out into space in his box-like jail cell [a "place" with "cruel eyes studying you" - Norman's words to Marion], he is wrapped and insulated from the world, huddled in a blanket. His frail character and self-identity have been fully possessed by his mother. The voice of "Mother" speaks in Norman's head:

It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. I couldn't allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They'll put him away now, as I should have, years ago. He was always bad. And in the end, he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man, as if I could do anything except just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. Well they know I can't even move a finger and I won't.

He/she watches a fly crawl across his/her hand, displaying his/her innocence by sparing its life. [The police and, more directly, the film's audience are 'watching' him/her.] A grinning smile slowly creeps over his face - subliminally superimposed by and dissolving into the grinning skull of his mother's corpse:

I'll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do suspect me. They're probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I'm not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They'll see. They'll see and they'll know and they'll say, 'Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly.'

The film ends with the dredging of the swamp - Marion's car with her body and the $40,000 in the trunk is hauled from the muck by a heavy chain, liberated from its grave.

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