The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

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.)