Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho

If you don't believe us when we say that Stephen Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is a killer book concerning the killer movie of all time, then why don't you listen to Tony Perkins, the star? Perkins called this scholarly yet super-readable volume "marvelously researched and irresistible ... required reading not only for Psycho-philes, but also for anyone interested in the backstage world of movie creation." And Time critic Richard Schickel (biographer of Clint Eastwood) calls Rebello's book "one of the best accounts of the making of an individual movie we've ever had."

It's even more reliable than Francois Truffaut's magisterial interview book Hitchcock, because Rebello interviewed the fat master himself, plus many Psycho insiders less cagey and truth-dodging than he.

At last, thanks to Rebello, we know all about the celebrated shower murder scene and all that swirls around it. Like Ernst Lubitsch, who conveyed the thrill of adultery by having the lovers open a door and cast their shadows on a bed, Hitchcock knew that, in film, artful discretion can be the most shocking effect of all. --Tim Appelo