For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Night 30 prompt is Cause of Death. We watched the movie Psycho on Netflix.

Storyline

Phoenix office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks, and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday, Marion is trusted to bank forty thousand dollars by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam’s California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into the Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.

‘Psycho’ stands as Hitchcock’s masterpiece, showcasing his directorial genius through expertly crafted suspense and atmospheric tension. Anthony Perkins delivers a career-defining, hypnotic performance as Norman Bates, supported by Janet Leigh’s memorable work. The iconic shower scene remains one of cinema’s most brilliant moments. Praised for its black-and-white cinematography, psychological horror approach, and Bernard Herrmann’s score, the film maintains remarkable rewatchability. Its enduring legacy as a revolutionary thriller that transformed the horror genre remains undisputed decades later.

Our thoughts on Psycho

Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, was a masterpiece for its time and among the best. Its strengths include: excellent acting, a terrifying story about a deranged man with dissociative identity disorder, and cinematic and sound effects that perfectly complement the atmosphere. The film was good by today’s standards, but judging it by today’s standards would be unfair. However, I won’t do that. It’s a pleasant, lighthearted film well worth watching from this great director. A good film, rating 7/10.

7 out of 10 stars

Trivia

Director Sir Alfred Hitchcock was so pleased with the score written by Bernard Herrmann that he doubled the composer’s salary to $34,501 ($386,858 in 2026). Hitchcock later said, “Thirty-three percent of the effect of Psycho was due to the music.” Ironically, he was originally adamant that there should be no music in the shower scene but he was persuaded by his wife to give it a try. The screeching violins and dire strings (which would inspire the music for Jaws (1975)) ending up selling the scene and driving theatrical audiences beyond anything they had ever experienced.

When Lila approaches Mother in the fruit cellar, Mrs. Bates is seated in a four-legged chair. After Lila touches the corpse, it slowly spins around as if it’s sitting on a swiveling chair. The effect was achieved by a prop man lying on his back rotating a camera head with wheels underneath Mother.