Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"

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        Psycho

Ironically Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” was originally a crime thriller and was never meant to be a horror film. Yet it turned out to be the most famous of all horror films. It had changed the horror genre from the classic “European monster” like Dracula which the “monster” is clear to a modern day horror where the “monster” is one of us, an ordinary man.

The film starts off with the narratives supposed protagonist Marion Crane, Hitchcock appears to establish Crane as the main character of "Psycho" from the film's very first scenes. From here we meet her boyfriend Sam Loomis in a discussion about his in debt and alimony payments, this tends to suggest to the audience that there will be conflict arising. After the establishment of these and the catalyst of the story by way of Marion’s theft of $40,000 we are introduced to minor characters. These include the police officer who pulls over Marion and then proceeds to watch her at the car shop; he acts as a blocking character, who is there to firstly create tension in the mind of Marion but also in the mind of the unknowing audience who still thinks that the story is about her. After Marion’s journey to the Bates motel we meet the real central character to whom the title refers to, Norman Bates.

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Norman Bates is introduced as a young, shy and defensive individual, who lives with his mother. Norman does not seem like a threat, just an ordinary guy who runs a quite motel which leads the audience to think otherwise about the apparent "psycho’ that they have already established in their minds. However by the end of the film we find that there were two sides to Norman. One side is the ordinary guy which he shows to the public and the other half which is the “monster” side of him, who conducted all the murders in the film. The ...

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