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Often, 1960 is cited as the year the modern horror film was born, seeing the release of Georges Franju's Les yeux sans visage, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. It is the last of these that has carved a privileged place not just in the annals of horror history itself but also in the broader pop-cultural imagination. Evidence of its recent legacy exists in the current popular US television series Bates Motel and Sacha Gervasi's 2012 biopic, Hitchcock, which focuses explicitly on the making of Psycho. Despite being one of Hitchcock's most controversial movies, and one that was marked by a swathe of difficulties during its production, it garnered four Oscar nominations for the director and continues to frequently rank highly in lists of the greatest and most important movies ever made.
Hitchcock's film was an adaption of Robert Bloch's 1959 novel, Psycho, that itself took its inspiration from the macabre activities of American serial killer Ed Gein (who would years later also inspire the Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise). Bloch's book provided Hitchcock with some of his film's most brutal shocks: the infamous 'shower scene' first and foremost, of course, but also the killing-offof his ostensible protagonist, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), during the first half of the film. The story begins as Marion and her boyfriend, Sam (John Gavin), meet for a lunchtime sexual encounter in a seedy hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona, where Sam tells a disappointed Marion that he does not have the money for them to get married. Returning to her work in a real estate agent's office, Marion is entrusted by her boss to take the US$40,000 cash from a sale to the bank immediately for safekeeping. Unable to resist, Marion instead hastily packs a suitcase and decides to drive to California to find Sam. Haunted by both her conscience and a suspicious policeman she encounters on her journey, Marion decides to stay at the isolated Bates Motel. It is here that she encounters the shy, nervous Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), who tells her he runs the motel under the watchful eye of his possessive mother, who is ensconced in the large dilapidated mansion that looms over the motel from a nearby hill. Marion's plans to return...