Psycho - one of Hitchcock's best films

For a film routinely rated as one of the scariest of all time, it's strange how few actual scares there are in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. There's the shower scene - a 45- second, 70-shot slasharama that freaked out a generation. There's the scene where private investigator Arbogast (Martin Balsam) gets surprised on the staircase, not to mention the big reveal in the basement with its double whammy of extreme taxidermy and transvestism.
For the most part, though, Hitchcock's classic isn't about scares at all. It's more about dread: a lurking, pervasive terror that steps even its most innocuous moments in pure fear. It's there in Janet Leigh's eyes as she makes off whith $40,000 of stolen bills, and in Anthony Perkins anxious nail biting as he waits for her car to sink into the swamp. It's there in the sunlight, in the shades of the traffic cop who becomes Marion's implacable stalker.
Movie murder wasn't invented in 1960, but it was definitely perfected and Psycho is the best exemple.
        
      Cast:

• Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates
• Vera Miles as Lila Crane
• John Gavin as Sam Loomis
• Janet Leigh as Marion Crane
• Martin Balsam as Detective Milton Arbogast
• John McIntire as Sheriff Al Chambers
• Simon Oakland as Dr. Fred Richman
• Frank Albertson as Tom Cassidy
• Pat Hitchcock as Caroline