To wrap up my Frightful Friday series this week, I'm taking a little trip back in time to when horror movies were all about suspense and Bosco chocolate syrup. Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller Psycho is the perfect movie for a spooky fall night, its chilling story seemingly old-fashioned to us now for its lack of gore (or, "gore" by our modern standards). Also, that terrifying string score! It's up there with the theme music from Jaws as some of the most iconic and evocative of all movie music.

Psycho is also, in some ways, a very sad story. The character of Norman Bates is deeply disturbed, and if he weren't so murderous he'd be rather pitiable. Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a secretary who has just embezzled a bunch of money from her employer and is on the run. She goes to the Bates Motel to hide and its there that she meets the lonely, reclusive Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a young, handsome man who looks after the motel as well as his ailing mother... or so it seems.

Apparently, the initial critical reviews for this film were mixed at best, but after the overwhelmingly positive audience reaction to the film, critics re-reviewed it, publishing glowing reviews the second time around.

Final little bit of trivia for you: Psycho was the first movie to show a woman in just a bra and slip.