This scene from Psycho (1960) is the last scene of the film when Lila Crane and Sam Loomis discover that Norman Bates is the transvestite killer, and also that he has kept his dead mother in the cellar for 10 years. The Bates house is sinister and the cellar becomes creepier through the use of low key lighting which is created by a light moving from side to side lighting up the hollow eyes of the skull making it appear that Mother is still alive. A reason why Norman may have done this is misogyny; his unnatural hatred for women is coming out and making him kill them.
At the time this was even more shocking as it related to the context of the Ed Gein murders in 1957. Gein was a necrophile, he dug up his dead mother and made furniture and clothes out of dead peoples body parts.
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