[7] In need of money to get her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, out of debt (John Gavin), Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals $40,000 from her employer and flees Phoenix, Arizona by car.

Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers (John McIntire) is perplexed to learn Arbogast saw a woman in a window since Norman's mother died ten years ago.

The following day, Norman reports to a pre-arranged job at a nearby diner, run by a kindly old lady named Emma Spool (Claudia Bryar).

He also orders the corpse of Norma Bates (which was buried in a proper grave after the events of the original film) to be exhumed, to prove that Norman isn't being haunted by his mother.

Sheriff John Hunt (Hugh Gillin) and Statler have a conversation at the diner, when Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxwell), a pushy journalist from Los Angeles, interrupts them.

They share a tender moment at the top of the staircase when "Mother" shouts furiously at Norman, which startles him and causes him to lose grip on Maureen's hands.

Norman, sitting silently in the back of the squad car on the way to the institution, enjoys his victory over his mother by caressing a trophy: the severed hand of Mrs. Spool.

Willie becomes suspicious and eventually they find that the haunting was a prank by the bank manager, Tom Fuller (Gregg Henry), who had approved a loan with predatory terms with Alex and was trying to sabotage the motel by trying to scare him away.

Meanwhile, not all ghost stories turn out to be hoaxes as Barbara Peters (Kerrie Keane) books a room in Alex's motel for the night, contemplating suicide for getting older, going through three divorces without children.

It is then revealed that Barbara's real name is Sally, and that the teenage girl took her own life 25 years ago and is now trapped in "the other side", along with Tony, and other teens who also committed suicide.

Due to Norman's sexual repression at her hands, when she was frolicking with him he had an incestuous erection, causing her to dress him in women's clothing and taunt him by calling him "Norma".

In need of money to get her boyfriend Sam Loomis (Viggo Mortensen) out of debt, Marion Crane (Anne Heche) steals $400,000 from her employer and flees Phoenix, Arizona by car.

The proprietor, Norman Bates (Vince Vaughn), tells Marion he rarely has customers because of a new interstate nearby and mentions he lives with his mother in the house overlooking the motel.

He cleans the bathroom and places Marion's body, wrapped in the shower curtain, and all her possessions - including the money - in the trunk of her car and sinks it in a nearby swamp.

Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers (Philip Baker Hall) is perplexed to learn Arbogast saw a woman in a window, since Norman's mother died ten years ago.

He proposed this cost-conscious approach to Paramount but executives again refused to finance the film, telling him their sound stages were occupied or booked even though production was known to be in a slump.

The final shot in the shower scene, which starts with an extreme close-up on Marion's eye and pulls up and out, proved very difficult for Leigh, since the water splashing in her face made her want to blink, and the cameraman had trouble as well since he had to manually focus while moving the camera.

[18] Lastly, the scene in which the mother is discovered required complicated coordination of the chair turning around, Miles hitting the light bulb, and a lens flare, which proved to be the sticking point.

According to Garris: "He would get into long, drawn-out discussions in front of the crew, testing his director, making sure choices were not made "because it looks good", and seeing how deep the understanding of the story and process were.

[40] Screenwriter Joseph Stefano, who worked on the 1960 version, thought that although she spoke the same lines, Anne Heche portrays Marion Crane as an entirely different character.

[42] Janet Maslin gave the film a positive review, calling it an "artful, good-looking remake (a modest term, but it beats plagiarism) that shrewdly revitalizes the aspects of the real Psycho (1960) that it follows most faithfully but seldom diverges seriously or successfully from one of the cinema's most brilliant blueprints"; she noted that the "absence of anything like Anthony Perkins's sensational performance with that vitally birdlike presence and sneaky way with a double-entendre ("A boy's best friend is his mother") is the new film's greatest weakness".

He describes it as a "slow, stilted, completely pointless scene-for-scene remake of the Hitchcock classic (with a few awkward new touches to taint its claim as an exact replica)".

In 1960, Psycho received four Academy Award nominations: Best Director for Alfred Hitchcock, Best Supporting Actress for Janet Leigh, Best Cinematography for John L. Russell and Best Art Direction for Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy and George Milo.

J. Schow stated in The Psycho Legacy: "It brought the idea that the killer in a horror film was not a mutant, didn't have dents in his head; he could look like that nice young boy from next door".

Merchandise includes T-shirts, posters, DVDs, books, stationery, shot glasses, shower curtains, action figures, model house kits, pens and more.

[citation needed] A horror adventure game with a key-driven verb interface vaguely based on the same-named film by Alfred Hitchcock for Commodore 64, DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST was released in 1988.

Interiors of the Bates house and motel were constructed on Sound stage 18-A at Universal, just a short walk from the actual exterior locations making production convenient for all involved.

TV shows during the '80s promoted the Universal Tour and prominently featured the Psycho House including Amazing Stories, Knight Rider and Diff'rent Strokes.

A 1992 episode of Murder, She Wrote called "Incident in Lot 7" featured the Psycho House and Bates Motel as key locations in the popular Angela Lansbury series.

The cast of participants included Guillermo del Toro, Peter Bogdanovich, Bret Easton Ellis, Jamie Lee Curtis, Karyn Kusama, Eli Roth, Oz Perkins, Leigh Whannell, Walter Murch, Danny Elfman, Elijah Wood, Richard Stanley and Neil Marshall.