Arguably the last of Hitchcock’s masterworks – some will champion The Birds – Psycho approaches perfection. Although flawed by an unnecessary and overlong summation scene and diminished in impact by the exploitative imitators that followed, Psycho still manages to shock, provoke, and entertain with its mixture of pitch-black comedy and agonizing suspense. The film’s best known for its bold narrative reversal and the dazzlingly edited shower sequence on which it pivots, but even if you know all of its surprises, Psycho holds your interest in a viselike grip with careful foreshadowing (a showerhead glimpsed through a doorway, windshield wipers tracing the same arc as the killer’s knife), brilliant use of the subjective camera (especially during Lila’s terrifying exploration of the Bates’ gothic home), Bernard Herrmann’s screeching-violins score, and fine performances by Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam, and, of course, Anthony Perkins as the bizarrely sympathetic Norman.