Why is this considered to be a horror film?
To me it was a psychological mystery crime thriller at its peak point, but no horror.
To me the true horror film is The Exorcist.
In one of the polls of best movie of specific movie genres, Psycho was listed as the best horror film as it had the highest rating in horror genre.
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To me it was a psychological mystery crime thriller at its peak point, but no horror.I think that you are right that that's how Psycho mostly plays today... but in 1960 there were lots of walk-outs and lots of vomiting and fainting. It was pretty flat-out horrific at the time. And of course Psycho winks at prior horror traditions - skulls, stormy nights, spooky houses - even as it represents a move to a more interior, psychological form of horror (just as the other great horrors of the year do: Eyes without a face, Peeping Tom, Les Bonnes Femmes)
Agreed with the rest of the thread here.
Hitchcock himself called it a horror film, and it stands with The Birds as maybe the only such two in his canon. Frenzy -- such a unique thriller in ALL regards, says I -- is horrific in content without ever quite going the distance to feeling like a horror film.
But Psycho does. Above all: that house. That house. That HOUSE.
Some say that Psycho doesn't became a horror movie til Marion gets in that shower. I say it becomes a horror movie about 20 minutes earlier: when we first see That House. (I believe this is almost dead-on at the 30 minute mark, I may be wrong.)
The motel is more modernistic, but its isolation becomes the Stuff of Horror when the shower scene happens.
Other horror elements: Mother as a Monster(when she kills); Mother as a Skull-Faced Zombie(in the fruit cellar.) And, in a big way: the swamp. That's horror terrain.
The two murders are basically horror scenes. Especially in 1960. These aren't murders. Marion and Arbogast aren't shot or hit on the head or something quick and elegant like that. They are stabbed. Repeatedly. With the World's Biggest Butcher Knife. They are SLAUGHTERED. By an obscenely strong and vicious old woman(she's the stuff of nightmares.) In scenes staged cut and SCORED to make us jump and scream. That's horror.
All that said, Psycho benefits from its "hybrid status." I'd say horror is the overriding genre, but it is also a noir, a robbery thriller, a Gothic drama, a black comedy("The blackest of black comedies," wrote one critic) and, at times, simply a comedy (we laugh with it, not at it.) It is also a tragedy, and for some, a tearjerker(some have cried when Marion dies.)
I akin Psycho to Jaws as "hybrid." Jaws is a horror movie, a thriller, a seafaring adventure, a buddy movie, and a comedy. All in one.
The "mix" of emotion and genre makes both Psycho and Jaws far more multi-levelled than lesser films which stick to one genre.
To me the true horror film is The Exorcist.
No. Not exactly the only horror film in existence.
The Shining was also great, so were the conjuring , exorcism of emily rose, paranormal activities 1,2,3,etc. and The Ring.
But The Exorcist had a totally different effect on me. None of the above movies scared me to the effect that The Exorcist did. I literally fainted after watching that movie. Its direction, screenplay, cinematography, acting, editing and its atmosphere were all top-notch.
Psycho is also a great film and I liked many scenes and aspects of this film, though I haven't got into the deeper aspect of this film about psychology and sexuality.
But it was overall worth watching it. and I have rated it 10/10.
I never thought Psycho was a horror film either. I agree that today it is more of a psychological mystery crime thriller but in 1960 things were different. I watched all the Omen movies as a kid and thought those were fairly scary. I never thought the It movie or Chucky were scary either. Clowns and dolls dont scare me for some reason.
Have you ever seen the movie The Bad Seed? Its came out in 1956 and is considered a horror movie but again I think its more of a creepy drama.
No I haven't, but I'll soon watch it.
shareYou don't need the supernatural to make it horror. Halloween for example is horror. Even the Bates house looked spooky.
shareYes Halloween is indeed horror because we see that the characters do not make any attempts to catch the killer, they just try to escape him and that makes the killer more powerful and more menacing. That produces terror of what will happen to the characters.
Psycho on other hand depicts characters other than Marion attempting to catch the killer and making plans of how to do it. So I thought that it was more of a detective suspense film than horror.
But yes the house of Norman Bates was a bit spooky and the silhouette of the Mother on the window was even more creepy. The shower scene wasn't effective for me because I already knew about it long before watching the film, although the Arbogast's murder made me jump.
What part of a woman being butchered isn't horrifying to you?
shareIts the first slasher movie!!!
Unless you forget Herschell Gordon Lewis' films which were independantly made...
"CG is good. CG works" Gordon Ghekko
To me the true horror film is The Exorcist. "
I agree that non-supernatural horror (something that COULD happen) is more effective. For example, demonology is not part of my religion, so Exorcist leaves me cold. Likewise Alien. The jumping-out-at-you is scary, but not the nature of the creature. I know enough biology to understand that a creature can't consume an animal from a completely different line of evolution.
shareI know enough biology to understand that a creature can't consume an animal from a completely different line of evolution.
Explain, please.
OK, my thought was that if they are from completely different lines of evolution, they might have different chemistries. The "proteins" in the prey may not be the same type the nourish the predator. Even given ordinary organic chemistry, they are two varieties, dextro and levo, Dextro can't digest levo and vice versa.
This doesn't come up on Earth because all living things are ultimately part of the same line of evolution. (Levo, I think) But it might come up with a creature from another planet, like the Alien.
This was actually used in STAR TREK once. A creature that fed on the iron in hemoglobin wasn't able to victimize Spock, because Spock's Vulcan blood didn't contain iron.
I'm not a biologist so I can't explain it better.
OIC, okay. Interesting. Thanx! 😀
shareI've seen other movies that are now called horror which I would say don't really credit being in the genre. But I think there is enough about 'Psycho' that must give it an authentic horror tag:-
The Bates gothic mansion across the way from the motel; a skeleton in the cellar; Norman is a macabre killer that makes he seem like a monster rather than human. Yes, I think that 'Psycho' is a horror.