The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

66. 1960 - Psycho

Psycho Norman Bates
Paramount Pictures

Honourable Mentions: The Apartment, The Magnificent Seven, Peeping Tom

The slasher sub-genre of horror can trace its roots back to the early days of cinema, but 1960 is widely considered to be the most pivotal year in its development. Michael Powell's unjustly reviled but later revered Peeping Tom crackled with invention, introducing concepts like the POV killer shot that would be popularised in the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises.

It would take years for the influence of Powell's film to be recognised, but the other proto-slasher from that year, Psycho, didn't have to wait so long.

The granddaddy of slasher and serial killer cinema, Psycho's influence is long-reaching and well-documented, but it's obviously a whole lot more than a genre progenitor. Hitchcock revels in the suspsense of the story, manifesting an atmosphere of threat and paranoia long before Janet Leigh's Marion Crane makes it to the infamous Bates Motel. Saul Bass' jagged titles, Bernard Hermann's ominous, nails-on-a-chalkboard score, Crane's dreamlike journey through rain and monochromed neon  - it's a breathtaking opening salvo from the Master of Suspense, and the guns fail to let up for the remainder of its runtime, with Anthony Perkins providing one of the all-time great performances as the troubled Norman.

(Also, yes, the stairway scene is the scariest bit.)

 
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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.