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.
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.