Taking a sledgehammer to everything Americans consider safe and
sacred (mothers, cars, showers), Psycho is a viciously black comedy
with a queasy, subversive awareness of moral and sexual angst.
Perkins' Bates has more than just his mother's skeleton in the closet,
while Leigh - in a performance of great precision and subtlety - shows us
how normality can be undermined by the workings of the very conscience
that is there to protect it. Apart from anything else, a miracle of
brutally sharp, surprising storytelling which has you in its grip from
the first frame.
