Hitchcock based Psycho on Robert Bloch's novel of the same name, which was also based loosely on Ed Gein.
Hitchcock based Psycho on Robert Bloch's novel of the same name, which was also based loosely on Ed Gein. Hitchcock paid approximately $9,500 for the rights to the novel and ordered his secretary to buy every single copy of the story available to keep the book's ending a secret. The film is most famous for the pivotal shower scene, one of the best-known sequences in cinema history. The scene ran three minutes, was shot from December 17-23, 1959, and required approximately 78 shots.