Norman Bates - The Birth of Slasher
Article by Bindi Lavelle

From Alfred Hitchcock's ground-breaking films comes much of the standard we have for horror and thriller films since. The best example of this is Hitchcock's adaptation of Robert Block's novel Psycho.
Inspired by Ed Gein , a man who lived with his mother's corpse in a house furnished by decor made from human remains, Robert Block created Norman Bates. Norman lived with his mother Norma, (cute, huh?) until he killed her, at which point he lovingly put her in her favorite chair to rot; also as a true sign of remembrance, Norman took on his mother's personality in a time share arrangement inside his brain.
As you can see our Normy had issues, but thankfully he found a tried and true method to deal with them, like the many that followed him, he opted for murder.
While there had been many bloody books out there, the film was the first of its kind because of that famous shower scene: explicit murder. We're not talking aliens with ray guns, or cowboys shooting each other without any blood flow, this is hack and slash.
This one scene (and the villain reveal at the end) has since been adopted and adapted to become the elements of the oh so familiar slasher flick convention. Hitchcock depicted Norman Bates in a manner that has left a huge mark on the world of cinema, and also allowed for horror films to take a much gorier path.