The legacy of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

Psycho returns to Manchester this Halloween in the form of Psycho Live, with an orchestral score provided by Manchester Camerata. But Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic has never been away, such is its impact on cinema. We look at some key films it influenced...

Le Boucher (1970)

Claude Chabrol was one of the first critics to propose Hitchcock, who at the time was seen as a low-rent technician, as a cinema genius. It’s no surprise that when the Frenchman began making his own films he was heavily influenced by the Master of Suspense. This is most clearly seen in Le Boucher, in which a small-town schoolteacher falls for the local butcher, who may be putting his knife skills to more macabre use. As in Psycho, sex and violence are very much connected, but Chabrol’s approach is more objective. Hitchcock lets his gruesome sense of humour loose in Psycho; Chabrol, by contrast, never lets us off the hook.

Sisters (1973)

There’s no restraint with Brian De Palma, who, like Hitchcock, can almost be heard cackling behind the camera during his films’ most rococo moments of terror. Borrowing the plot of Psycho and throwing in elements of Rear Window and Vertigo for good measure, Sisters marked De Palma’s obsession with Hitchcock’s film grammar. He might even be the bigger joker, taking Hitchcock’s quaint Freudian ideas to demented extremes – and De Palma’s use of split screen is as inventive as Hitchcock’s iconic shower scene.

Halloween (1978)

Psycho may seem tame to audiences brought up on Freddy, Jason and the brutal Saw franchise, but those films wouldn't exist without it. The first slasher to make an indelible mark on the general public was Halloween, and director John Carpenter wears his love for Hitch’s chiller on his sleeve. There are superficial connections: Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Psycho actor Janet Leigh, stars; the psychiatrist trying to stop Michael Myers’ killing spree is Dr. Sam Loomis, named after a character in Hitchcock's film. But Psycho’s DNA runs throughout Halloween’s celluloid, from Carpenter's use of point-of-view to the sly framing and foreboding lighting.

24 Hour Psycho (1993)

In this much-celebrated video installation by artist Douglas Gordon, Hitchcock’s film is slowed down so its running time is a full day – turning a nightmare into a daydream. At this molasses-like pace, even the film’s moments of horror take on a serene quality. Gordon never saw his work as an act of appropriation: “It wasn't a straightforward case of abduction,” he said in 1993. “I wanted to maintain the authorship of Hitchcock so that [the audience] would think much more about Hitchcock and much less, or not at all, about me."

Psycho (1998)

This shot-for-shot Psycho facsimile from Gus Van Sant was greeted with confusion back in 1998. Why remake Psycho without calibrating its levels of sex and violence to meet modern audiences’ tastes? Looking back at this hypnotic film, it’s clearly as much a work of conceptual art as Gordon’s effort. The actors look like ghosts as they re-enact famous lines, with dialogue that seems innocuous in the original taking on sinister meaning. How apt that a film about split-personality and cross-dressing should get its very own off-kilter drag act.