Psycho (1960)

$807K. That’s the reported budget Alfred Hitchcock used to ruin motels for everybody, forever. The first act is basically a different movie, a nervous office worker on the run with an envelope of cash, and Janet Leigh plays the guilt so well you start sweating for her at every traffic stop. Then she pulls off the highway and Anthony Perkins does the most polite, most twitchy small talk in film history. He munches candy corn like a nervous bird and you somehow feel bad for him. Those screeching strings do half the scaring. The weak spot is the last stretch, which stops for a long talk explaining what the pictures already told you, like a teacher reading the answer key out loud. It made $32.2 million in the US, in black and white, with no big effects at all. A 9.3 because it still sets the rules every horror movie plays by. $242 says you never look at a stuffed owl the same way again.

What works: Anthony Perkins makes Norman sweet and unsettling at the same time, and Hitchcock builds dread out of a parlor, a staircase and a rainy night.

What doesn’t: The closing explanation scene drags the pace to a halt and spells out everything the audience already figured out.

Who it’s for: Anyone who thinks old black and white movies can’t scare them, and anyone who books cheap roadside motels.