Critics of Psycho of 1960 have generally shown distaste for Hitchcock’s film’s gruesomeness and its gutsy methods of delivery. The Nation’s Robert Hatch writes, “It is not the material itself that revolts me; it is the use to which the material is put.” The sensitive topics Psycho has covered include that of psychological disorders in the form of a schizophrenic and obscenities such as sex and nudity. Hitchcock’s use of such material is viewed by reviewers like Hatch as childlike and a fake and predictable way to create a thrill. Hitchcock and his ideas were often the sole victims of these critics, as even Hatch complements the performances by Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins as “very [skillful], under Hitchcock’s cue, if sometimes long-winded, direction.”


A TIME Magazine top critic raved that the film was more than anticipated, and went too far in its attempts to scare the audience.

“Direct Hitchcock bears down too heavily in this one, and the delicate illusion of reality necessary for a creak-and-shriek movie becomes, instead, a spectacle of stomach-churning horror.”


The few who disliked the film found the content too intense for the times, where such violence and obscenities were not quite as common as found in the films of modern day. Essentially every film labeled with an R rating today would be regarded crude and offensive to an audience of the 60s, who had to deal with the heavy censorship of cinema of the time.