Mary giggled again, then executed an amateurish bump and grind, tossed her image a kiss and received one in return. After that she stepped into the shower stall. The water was hot, and she had to add a mixture from the cold faucet. Finally, she turned both faucets on full force and let the warmth gush over her.
The roar was deafening and the room was beginning to steam up.
That’s why she didn’t hear the door open, or note the sound of footsteps. And at first, when the shower curtains opened, the steam obscured the face.
Then she did see it there—just a face peering through the curtains, hanging in midair like a mask. A head-scarf concealed the hair and the glassy eyes stared inhumanly, but it wasn’t a mask, it couldn’t be. The skin had been powdered dead-white and two hectic spots of rouge centred on the cheekbones. It wasn’t a mask. It was the face of a crazy old woman.
Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head.
    Merely the germ of an idea for Alfred Hitchcock to go to work on, although, in the book, all the stuff about Norman cleaning up afterwards is just as impressive as in the movie. Robert Bloch, here writing the most famous book that never became a best-seller, started with a conversation between Norman and his mum, interrupted when the girl checks into the motel. You don’t get time to know Marian (here called Mary) as well as you did the Janet Leigh character in the film…
    I wasn’t allow to see Psycho. I still needed adult supervision to see anything not shown at afternoon matinees and anyway, when the chance came to undertake a clandestine mission to the movies, other better prospects offered themselves. So I did the next best thing—I found a copy of the book and read it. Profound disappointment ensued. Only two murders, uninterestingly described, no chase or shoot-out at the end. Just this nut case, almost harmless, except he occasionally killed people...  
    Anyway, Hitchcock’s excellent half-hour TV series had recently been expanded to one hour shows that were really the old format stretched over extra time, and therefore a bit boring. And it happened that one of these tedious one hour episodes had been expanded further and became the film Psycho. That was why it was filmed in black and white, you see—because Hitch used his TV crew to do it. Double boring surely. Well... sometimes you can know too much and misunderstand everything perfectly. Years later I got more shocks than the average person when I finally got to see the film. They say the worst books make the best films. Never was it truer than in this case. The book had everything the film had, except the genius of Hitchcock.
    I read somewhere—I don’t care to remember where—that they reckon that Citizen Kane is no longer the greatest film ever made, and that Vertigo is. How can it be when it isn’t even Hitchcock’s best. Others elevate the much overlooked Marnie to be the one, but they are just artie-farties, trying to be controversial. In my view, the greatest film ever made is the one best remembered by the greatest number of people and by that I mean, not just the comment that they saw it, but the one where they most often describe actual scenes from the film and the impact that it had on them. And that is Psycho.
    The shower scene alone qualifies it, but what of the image of mother’s house on the hill, or the final horrible scene of mother herself. And the music—the opening credits raise your apprehension and sustain you for nearly an hour before anything horrible actually happens. And finally Anthony Perkins chilling performance.
    Perhaps most remarkable of all is a small scene in which Hitchcock actually gets you to feel concerned for the abominable Norman as the car is sinking into the swamp and then stops halfway and you, along with him, urge it to continue out of sight. Vertigo and Marnie are, along with several other Hitchcocks, excellent films, great films no doubt, but Psycho is the one that everyone who saw it will never forget.