Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Produced by Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay by Joseph Stefano

Starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin

Running time: 109 minutes

Budget: $806,947. Box office: $50 million

Alfred Hitchcock’s impassable, influential and impeccable Gothic thriller, famous for its screeching theme music, old dark house and notorious shower scene, not to mention Anthony Perkins’ twitchy Norman Bates.  Janet Leigh is the ill-fated embezzler who winds up at the Bates Motel only to check out in advance, leaving private investigator Martin Balsam, hunky boyfriend John Gavin and no-nonsense sister Vera Miles to pick up the pieces.  A masterpiece of atmosphere and tension, and bitingly blackly comic, it remains one of the definitive films of cinema.