Psycho is one of a number of films that is inspired by the weird American serial killer, Ed Gein. The other movies being, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deranged and Silence of the Lambs. Yep old Ed was quite an inspiration on horror!
The movie begins in a cheap hotel room where Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) has just been having a quickie with her lover. She goes back to her office where a rich client is waving money around. Our Miss Crane then steals the money and drives out of town (naughty girl!)
She ends up at The Bates Motel and soon encounters the owner.
On the surface Norman Bates seems like a perfectly normal guy, if a little edgy and nervous. What we don't know when we first meet the Motel proprietor is that he has a little hobby of dressing up as his dead mother, who he has nicely preserved in the cellar of the house that backs onto the Motel.
Every boy needs a hobby!
Bates, as Miss Crane is about to find out when she takes a shower, is a knife-wielding, transvestite, mother-fixated, madman! It's amazing just how wrong you can be about people!