Pyscho

Plot summary

The movie opens in Phoenix, Arizona, with discreet lovers Marion Crane (Leigh) and Sam Loomis (Gavin) together in a downtown hotel room. Until Sam's finances improve, the two cannot marry, as he is in debt and must also pay heavy alimony to his ex-wife. Unhappy and desperate to improve their situation, Marion steals $40,000 cash tendered as payment for a real estate deal at the office where she works. Asked to deposit the money at the bank for the weekend, she instead packs and leaves town with the money, which she sees as the ticket to her and Sam's happiness.

Sam lives in a California town where he runs a hardware store. Marion heads there, and her behavior along the way draws the attention of others. In one scene, she trades her car (and pays an additional $700) for another used car while a suspicious police officer watches.

While driving fatigued in the dark, in pouring rain, she sees a seemingly deserted 12-cabin motel. There, Marion encounters Norman Bates (Perkins), the young owner who looks after the motel and his ailing mother in the nearby mansion on a hill. Norman offers to make her a sandwich; while going into the house to prepare the sandwich, Marion hears his mother shouting at him as though his meal with Marion was part of a sordid affair. While talking with Norman, she considers him something of an eccentric, especially when he shows surprising knowledge of the interior of a mental asylum. Unfortunately for Marion, Norman has completely understated his overbearing mother's illness. Ultimately, as Marion showers in her motel room, she is stabbed to death in the now-famous "shower scene" by a shadowy woman's figure while Bernard Herrmann's screeching string score plays.

Norman is horrified when he finds the bloody corpse. To protect his mother, he disposes all evidence of the crime by sinking Marion, her car, and her belongings (including the money, which Bates has not seen) in a swamp behind the Bates' property. Marion's disappearance, with the money, sets a search in motion. A private detective, Milton Arbogast (Balsam), is hired to find and recover the money. He traces Marion to the Bates Motel, questions Norman (who sweats and seems very nervous and edgy) and is similarly slashed to death by Norman's mother after being pushed down a flight of stairs.

Sam and Marion's sister, Lila (Miles), immediately become concerned when Arbogast does not telephone them after reaching the motel and decide to alert the local sheriff. However, when they mention Mrs. Bates, his wife asks: "Oh, Norman took a wife?" Apparently, Mrs. Bates died ten years ago, when she committed suicide with strychnine.

Sam and Lila, tipped by Detective Arbogast before his demise, are also suspicious of Norman and his mother. While investigating they decide to check into the Bates Motel, to search for proof of Marion, where they find a paper with the sum of $40,000 written on it. Theorizing that Norman's mother might know more about Marion, Lila sneaks into the house while Sam confronts Norman at the office. Sam's heated argument with Norman quickly escalates to violence, and Norman knocks Sam unconscious and flees to the house. Meanwhile, Lila slips into the basement to discover the semi-preserved corpse of Norman's mother just as Norman enters to find her. Cross-dressed in his mother's clothing, complete with wig, Norman is wielding the deadly butcher's knife, preparing to kill Lila. Sam regains consciousness, reappearing just in time to wrestle the knife away from Norman and rescue Lila, who watches in disbelief.

At the end of the film, a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Fred Richmond (Oakland), explains to Lila, Sam and the authorities that Bates' mother, though dead, lives on in Norman's psyche. Norman was so dominated by his mother while she lived, and so guilt-ridden for murdering her ten years earlier, that he tried to erase the crime from his mind by bringing his mother back to life. Physically, this was done by stealing her corpse ("A weighted coffin was buried," according to Richmond) and preserving it with his taxidermy skills, thereby inciting a split personality in Norman, creating the persona of his mother. He acts as he believes she would, talks as she would, and even dresses as she would, in an attempt to erase her absence and the guilt. Because Norman was so very jealous of his mother while she lived, his split personality is equally jealous of any woman to whom Norman might be attracted. Norman's psychosis prohibits him from knowing of his mother's crimes or her original demise.

The last scene shows Norman Bates in a cell, his mind now completely dominated by the persona of his mother. She blames Norman for the crimes, and plans on demonstrating to the authorities that she is utterly harmless, thinking to herself, "They’ll see, they'll know, and they’ll say, 'Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly!'" A brief epilogue shows Marion's car being towed from its watery grave in the swamp, presumably to collect her body and the remaining $39,300.

Censorship

According to Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the censors in charge of enforcing the Production Code for the MPAA wrangled with Hitchcock because some censors insisted they could see one of Janet Leigh's breasts. Hitchcock held onto the print for several days, left it untouched, and resubmitted it for approval. Astoundingly, each of the censors reversed their positions -— those who had previously seen the breast now did not, and those who had not, now did. They passed the film after the director removed one shot that showed the buttocks of Leigh's stand-in. The board was also upset by the racy opening, so Hitchcock said that if they let him keep the shower scene he would reshoot the opening with them on the set. Since they did not show up for the reshoot, the opening stayed.

Another cause of concern for the censors was that Marion was shown flushing a toilet, with its contents (torn-up paper) fully visible. In film and TV at that time a toilet was never seen, let alone heard. This tradition became so well-known that later shows like All in the Family and Sanford and Son added a laugh track every time a flushing sound was heard.
Also, according to the "making of" featurette on the Collector's Edition DVD, some censors objected to the use of the word "transvestite" in the film's closing scenes. This objection was withdrawn after writer Joseph Stefano took out a dictionary and proved to them that the word carried no hidden sexual context, but merely referred to "a man who likes to wear women's clothing".

Internationally, Hitchcock was forced to make minor changes to the film, mostly to the shower scene. Notably, in Britain the shot of Norman washing blood from his hands was objected to and in Singapore, though the shower scene was left untouched, the murder of Arbogast and a shot of Mother's corpse were removed.

The scene with Dr. Fred Richmond was just about forced upon Hitchcock so that the audience would have a sense of relief that everything about Norman could be neatly explained and tidied up. However, he had the last laugh by cutting back to Norman Bates after Richmond's speech and scaring them all over again, just like the novel.

Psycho is a prime example of the type of film that appeared in the 1960s after the erosion of the Production Code. It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right from the opening scene where Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing the same bed. In the Production Code standards of that time, unmarried couples shown in the same bed would be taboo. In addition, the censors were upset by the shot of a flushing toilet; at that time, the idea of seeing a toilet onscreen - let alone being flushed - was taboo in American movies and TV shows. According to Entertainment Weekly, "The Production Code censors... had no objection to the bloodletting, the oedipal murder theme, or even the shower scene—but did ask that Hitchcock remove the word transvestite from the film, He didn't. At one point, Hitchcock actually considered releasing the film without censorial approval. Its box office success helped propel Hollywood toward more graphic displays of previously-censored themes.

Psycho is widely considered to be the first film in the slasher film genre.