THE SCARIEST MOVIE EVER MADE?

Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Psycho is still widely considered the scariest movie ever made.

Alfred Hitchcock’s creepy classic set a new standard for film frights by showing that terror could strike anywhere.

Anthony Perkins made an unlikely but unforgettable villain as Norman Bates, the nerdy motel manager with a murderous secret.

But he wasn’t the biggest name in the cast—that was leading lady Janet Leigh— and when her character Marion Crane was slaughtered in the shower a third of the way into the film, audiences knew Psycho was a game changer.

Killing off your biggest star so early in a film was a new departure for movies back then—and so was the lack of a happy ending, something previously thought essential for a box office hit.

But audiences loved Psycho from the start and it earned $50 million—and with a budget of just $800,000 became director Hitchcock’s most profitable film ever.

Psycho threw out the rule book and ushered in a new era of slasher films and horror classics—all of which owe a huge debt to this often imitated but never bettered 1960 chiller.

—Sandro Monetti