After robbing her company's safe of $40,000, Marion Crane drives from the city, staying overnight at the Bates Motel and meeting the owner, a withdrawn young man called Norman, who runs the Motel with his mother. Marion meets a horrific end while having a shower. Investigating her sister's disappearance Lila Crane, along with Marion's boyfriend Sam Loomis, manage to trace her to the Bates Motel, but Norman insists she drove off the next morning. With private detective Milton Arbogast also on the trail of the missing money, Sam and Lila decide that Norman isn't telling the truth, and decide to investigate the creepy Motel further. But Norman's mother isn't going to give up her secrets easily..... A genuine cinema classic from Alfred Hitchcock, and one that broke all the rules by first turning a standard robbery plot into something far more disturbing, then having the leading lady - Janet Leigh - killed off within the first twenty minutes, a shock the audience just wasn't ready for. The whole pic is a superb exercise in controlled style, from the crisp black and white photography to the incisive editing, and at least two real jump moments. All the actors are well cast, but the role of Norman Bates was perfect for Anthony Perkins, but so effective was he that he would be asked to play variations on the insane Norman Bates for the rest of his career. A milestone of the horror / thriller genre, Psycho spawned two theatrical sequels, the first, 22 years after the original, a cable sequel (Psycho IV - The Beginning), a TV series pilot (Bates Motel) and a colour remake in 1998.