OxfordPress.com

By SAM F. LUCCHESE
Cox News Service

Melodrama, with a couple of gory murders thrown in for good measure, plus the Alfred Hitchcock touch, make "Psycho" a picture that will have moviegoers talking to themselves when the depart the theater, many of them weak-kneed.

An excellent cast, headed by Anthony Perkins, who does a dreamy-type characterization in the principal role, responds to Hitchcock's masterful direction in this filmization of the Robert Block novel.

Perkins plays the keeper of a motel, practically abandoned since the rerouting of a highway. Janet Leigh, fleeing from an illicit romance with John Gavin (with $40,000 of her employer's money) becomes murder victim No. 1; followed by Martin Balsam, a private eye interested in recovering the cash, who meets the same gory end.

I shall not tell you the picture's ending out of deference to Hitchcock's admonition that "it's the only one we have," but will go on record as saying that "Psycho" will shock and chill you, just like Alfred Hitchcock intended it should ... and it rates as good entertainment.