S.W.’s Scores
Continuity
+6
Entertainment
+6
Rewatchability
+4
CastAnthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin
StreamingPeacock, Paramount+
S.W.’s Verdict
Hitchcock killed his lead actress forty minutes in and the audience never recovered. The shower scene gets all the attention, but the real horror is Perkins — a man so gentle and nervous that you spend half the film feeling sorry for him while he's standing in front of a swamp. The structure is a magic trick: you follow one character's story, then the rug gets pulled and you realize you've been watching a completely different film. Sixty-five years later, it still works because the craft is clinical and the tension never relies on what you can see.