Where to watch Psycho (1960)
Psycho is available to stream in GB on Sky Go and BBC iPlayer. It can also be rented or bought from AppleTV and Amazon.
A real estate clerk steals a large sum of money and flees town, hoping to start a new life. During a rainy journey, she stops at an isolated roadside motel, where a polite but troubled manager and his controlling mother create an atmosphere of growing unease.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire, Simon Oakland, Frank Albertson, Patricia Hitchcock, Vaughn Taylor, Lurene Tuttle, John Anderson
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Trivia & production notes
- Hitchcock bought the rights to Robert Bloch's novel for $9,500 and reportedly instructed his assistant Peggy Robertson to purchase all available copies to keep the story's surprises secret.
- After Paramount rejected Hitchcock's proposal and claimed their soundstages were booked, he countered by offering to personally finance the film at Universal-International and take a 60% stake in the negative instead of his usual $250,000 director's fee.
- The Bates house design was modeled on Edward Hopper's painting House by the Railroad, inspired by a real Second Empire Victorian home in Haverstraw, New York.
- Janet Leigh agreed to her role after only reading the novel without inquiring about her salary, and accepted just $25,000, a quarter of her usual fee.
- Hitchcock shot the film in black and white partly to prevent the shower scene from appearing too gory and partly as a cost-cutting measure to keep the budget under $1 million.
- Most of Psycho's crew came from Hitchcock's television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including cinematographer John L. Russell and editor George Tomasini, with the entire crew costing $62,000.
- Hitchcock used 50mm lenses on 35mm cameras throughout nearly the entire film to create a field of vision similar to human sight and further involve the audience.
- The shower scene was filmed between December 17-23, 1959, after Leigh postponed filming twice, first due to a cold and then because of her menstrual period.
- Hitchcock made a cameo appearance through a window wearing a Stetson hat outside Marion's workplace, which allowed him to appear in a scene with his daughter who played Marion's colleague.
- The overhead camera angle for Arbogast's murder required a special dolly track constructed on pulleys alongside the stairway that had to be built and tested over several weeks to properly hide the film's twist.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article Psycho (1960 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.
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