Reviews

"A boy's best friend is his mother."

The great grandaddy of all the slash-'n-stab horror movies is also the best out of the whole bunch. Marion Crane, a young woman who works at a real estate company, steals a large sum of money from her office and makes a run for it. She arrives at the seemingly innocent Bates Motel, next door to an old mansion, run by young Norman Bates and his unseen, tyrannical mother. Norman is a friendly but quiet fellow who stuffs birds and runs the Bates Motel primarily by himself, and explains to her that his mother raised him alone, but has become deathly ill, and he now looks after her. When Marion asks why he doesn't leave his mother, he explains how he is psychologically chained to her. Later, when Marion goes back to her room to take a shower, she is stabbed to death by a mysterious figure in a dress, who we assume is Norman's mother. The next day, Norman, mortified by what his mother has done, puts Marion's body in her car trunk and buries it in a swamp. Later, a private detective comes searching for Marion, who meets his end when Norman's mother stabs him and pushes him down the stairs. Convinced that something is horribly wrong, Marion's sister, Lila Crane, and fiance Tom go to the motel to investigate. Lila is horrified when she goes into the basement and finds Mrs. Bates's carcass down there, still dressed in her clothes and wig. Suddenly Norman bursts through the doorm, about to kill her, when Tom wrestles him to the ground. When Norman is finally in jail, a psychiatrist explains to Lila and Tom about his bizzarre split personality. During Norman's growing up, his mother had found another lover, and Norman had gone insane and poisoned them both. He then dug up his mother's corpse from the cemetary and kept her in the house, pretending she was still alive, imitating her voice and conversing with her, dressing in her clothes, and pretending to be her. He developed two seperate personalities- one that was his own, and one that was his mother's. Because Norman was attracted to Marion Crane, "his mother" became jealous and killed her. Norman was completely oblivious to any of this happening, but when he was caught and arrested, his personality was completely erased and his mother's took over him completely. As he says at the film's end: "They're probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of person I am...I hope they are watching. They'll see. They'll see, and they'll know, and they'll say... 'Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly!'

As I said before, this movie spawned bazillions of imitators, some good, some bad, some truly horrible, but this stands above them all as the best horror/suspense movie of all time and Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece. There are surprisingly few jump-out-the-closet scenes in this film- while it's true that the shower-stab scene, the death of the private detective, and the revelation of Mrs. Bates' corpse are effective in getting the audience's blood flowing, most of the movie's real substance occurs on a human level. Anthony Perkins is brilliant as Norman Bates, who goes from being cheerful, intimidating, and truly disturbed, and leads the audience through the film to its conclusion. There are times when the audience even feels sorry for him, in all of his madness, which is more than can be said about a buttload of modern movie serial killers. Hitchcock's master direction shines through, cramming every frame with symbolism, detail, atmosphere and mood. This movie is something that every single person on this planet should see, at least once. If you haven't yet, you should.

SPOILER Sinister things are happening at a funeral home. Strange little Jawa-like things are running around and chopped-off fingers turn into giant bugs. not to mention people having sex in a graveyard of all places. A man and his little brother decide to investigate these matters further, and discover that the dwarves are actually shrunk-down corpses brought back to life and given mustard for blood, and somehow they are also aliens that enter to this world through some kind of gateway. Later we find out that the whole thing was a dream, the kid's older brother is actually dead, and we're more confused by the end of the film than we were before we sat down. The best (funniest? dumbest?) scene is when a little flying orb with knives attached to it flies straight into some guy's head, drills a hole in it, and shoots blood all over like a firehose and he just stands there and screams, making no attempt to pull it off. If you're a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and like movies that are so stupid they're funny, rent this, but don't expect it to make any sense or be at all good.