“We all go a little mad sometimes” says Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates, one of cinema’s greatest screen villains. Janet Leigh is the office worker on the run with the company’s takings and finding refuge at the Bates Motel.
The iconic shower scene occurring just 47 minutes into the film could have led to a succession of anti-climaxes, instead the tension ratches up in a series of classic sequences. ‘Psycho’ birthed a number of subgenres including the slasher movie. It also introduced fixed start times for movies as Hitchcock did not allow anyone to be admitted after the start of the film.