If you love to be scared, or are a fan of classic movies, then you know the story of Norman Bates, his mother, and the dark and frightening Bates Motel. Alfred Hitchcock’s taut, shocking scare-fest starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh is a classic movie, as scary today as it was in 1960 when it was first released. The shower scene may be the most famous scene in movie history.

Here is the 1959 novel upon which the movie is based. Robert Bloch based his taut psychological thriller on the all-too-real story of Ed Gein, a psychotic murderer who led a dual life. It was here that the legend of the Bates Motel was born.

Norman Bates loved his mother, though she has been dead for the past twenty years. Or is she dead? Norman knows better. He has lived with Mother ever since leaving the hospital in the old house up on the hill above the rundown Bates Motel. One night Norman welcomes a beautiful woman who checks into the motel, and spies on her as she undresses. Norman can’t help himself. Mother is there, though. She is there to protect Norman from his filthy thoughts. She is there to protect him with her butcher knife!

The story of Norman Bates and his mother has become one of the best known in the annals of horror. But if you only know the Hitchcock movie or The Bates Motel prequel television series starring Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates and Vera Farmiga as his mother, then you don’t know the whole story, because it was Robert Block who first brought their story to the world.

I’m a horror movie lover, and every Halloween season, I try to read at least one horror book with a movie based on it. Last year, I reread “The Exorcist,” and I had forgotten how scary it is. The movie is one I tend to watch every year, but it had been several years since I’d last read the book. It’s even better than the movie. I highly recommend it!

This year, I decided to go for another classic – one that is even older than “The Exorcist.” We’re likely all very familiar with Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, “Psycho”. The shower scene and the audio track/music that goes along with it are instantly recognizable. What many people may not know is that this film was actually based on a book. I didn’t realize this until just a few years ago, and as soon as I learned that, I immediately put it on my TBR.

If you’re unfamiliar with the movie, you may want to skip this review because there will be a few spoilers since I will be comparing some scenes in the film with how they play out in the book.

The story focuses on Norman Bates, a 40-year-old, overweight, and somewhat dumpy man living in a large, creepy house with his mother behind a motel they run together. In the movie, Norman is played by Anthony Perkins, who was only 28 at the time and pretty slim – the complete opposite of how Norman is portrayed in the book.

The Bates Motel hasn’t seen much business lately due to a new highway that was built that takes passersby along a different route. When Marion Crane shows up looking for a room, the trajectory of her and Norman’s lives takes a turn for the worse. Little does Marion know that when she goes to take a shower, Norman’s “mother,” Norma Bates, will pay her a visit, eventually stabbing Marion to death before decapitating her. (Another difference from the movie – in the film, Marion is only stabbed.)

Norman discovers Marion’s body and cleans up, packs her body in the trunk, and sinks the car in a nearby swamp. He assumes this is the end of his troubles, but little does he know that Marion had stolen $40,000, and the police are now looking for her. When Marion’s boyfriend and sister show up and are then joined by a PI looking for Marion, things get tricky for Norman and “mother.” It’s not long before we learn that Norman had actually killed his mother and her lover several years earlier, and the stress of it had caused him to develop a personality disorder where his “mother” would take over his mind and murder people.

It’s been a while since I last watched the film (though I will be watching it again soon), but I found the movie followed the book quite closely, aside from the description of Norman and the extent of how Marion is murdered. We get a lot more of Norman’s inner thoughts in the book, which I found especially creepy. I listened to this as an audiobook, and the narrator’s voice was perfect. I liked that he didn’t try to mimic Anthony Perkins and completely made Norman’s character his own.

What I find especially interesting about this book is the slasher nature of it. It was published in 1959 – way before slashers became popular, and honestly, I’m surprised that it was published at all. This was several years before the hippie movement, which sought to break up the oppression of the “good, Christian American values,” so in a way, this book was pretty outside the norm at the time.

I also read somewhere that the book got a positive review in the New York Times, but it didn’t have much commercial success (likely due to America’s values at the time). Hitchcock read the review, then the book, and purchased the rights himself, but under a pseudonym so no one would know. He then did everything he could to ensure the book didn’t become popular because he felt the surprise reveal at the end made the book/movie as powerful as it was. He did everything to keep it a secret so no one would go out and buy the book. He allegedly also had his assistant purchase every copy of the book she could find either in bookstores or from the publisher to keep it out of the press. How’s that for commitment? It paid off because Psycho turned out to be a huge success!

If you’re a fan of the movie, and if, like me, you enjoy going back and reading the source material that some horror movies are based on, I recommend checking this one out. It’s a quick read at just over 200 pages and a perfect addition to your Halloween TBR.