Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, revived in a spectacular new print at the
1996 Cleveland International Film Festival with co-star Janet Leigh in attendance, is
probably the esteemed director’s most famous film, but while it is now hailed as one of his
best, the critics were not too enthused about Hitchcock’s low-budget excursion into the
genre of horror at the time of its June 1960 release. Whether or not Psycho
qualifies as a “horror” film is a matter open to debate, but the film’s macabre elements and
the violent way in which those elements were presented was regarded as a step down for
the portly English director who, in previous efforts, relied on subtlety and suggestion to
convey the more unpleasant aspects of his films. While the justly famous “shower scene”
is tasteful by today’s standards, in 1960, the amount of blood exposited by the victim was
considered gratuitous.
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