Psycho

Psycho is a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The film follows the same base as Hitchcock's other thrillers, there is a McGuffin the $40,000 that the films main character Marion steals, this is what the audience initially thinks the film is about, meaning the murder comes as a massive shock, this makes the audience apprehensive for the rest of the film and is part of why psycho is so brilliant.

The character of Norman Bates went against the cliche of regular murderers by having him being charming this is a disguise as Norman is an odd fellow and this can be seen from when he chats with marion in the parlour of the motel where he has placed all of the birds he has taxidermied.

Throughout the film we hear stories of Norman's mother and he talks about her fondly however we never actually see her apart from when there is a murder but then we only see dark outline of what we assume is the mother in a dress, when it gets to later on in the film however we discover that Norman's mother has actually been dead for some time, we then see that Norman actually dug up his deceased mother shortly after her burial and taxidermied her and moves her around the house as though she were still alive, at the end of the film we see that Norman actually has extreme schizophrenia in which he actually believes he is his own mother and she tells the police about her "sons" murder.

The film uses an enigma as we never see who the murderer is though we can make out at some points a long dress and long hair leading us to believe it is a woman, we also hear about normans mother a lot so it is only natural that we would draw the conclusion that the mother is the murderer, this however is spun on its head when we find out that normans mother has been dead for some time and that she was buried, however when a the protagonists sister goes to inspect the house we discover that norman dug up his mother taxidermic her and keeps her in the house, moving her around and dressing her up , this also links to his schizophrenia as he believes he is his mother and so dons her clothing and murders people.

The murder scene from psycho this is the first time we see anything bad happen in the film and is one of the first times anything risky has been shown in cinema, however nothing bad actually happens it is all editing, the knife never actually touches Marion and there are no cuts or blood at all, as a matter of fact the "blood" is actually chocolate powder as Hitchcock thought it ran better.