Movies Changed Forever 60 Years Ago Today

Alfred Hitchcock's groundbreaking horror flick PSYCHO debuted 60 years ago and it's still as creepy and startling as ever. Audiences had never seen anything like it before and Hitchcock's infamous shower scene crossed a cinematic threshold that no director previously had. In the process, he simultaneously started a new genre and inspired a whole generation of directors. 

Before JAWS kept people out of the water, PSYCHO kept them out of the shower.

The way the darkness just sort of appears behind the shower curtain will always make anybody shit their knickers. Then you add in the iconic music that would come to represent exes for the next six decades, that huge fucking knife striking down from a faceless, feminine silhouette, a dead blonde's blood circling the drain that becomes her lifeless eye, and it's perfect. So perfect it altered the trajectory of moviemaking going forward. There's a documentary on Hulu titled 78/52 that breaks down exactly how Hitchcock shot it.

As famous as the shower scene is, there's still a lot of movie after it including another exquisitely shot kiIling. I hadn't seen PSYCHO in ages but caught it again about a year ago. It's still an incredible masterpiece with a knockout ending that nobody could have seen coming in 1960. And if you haven't seen it or been spoiled, you won't see it coming in 2020.

Here's where you can stream/watch PSYCHO.