Alfred Hitchcock is known as the master of suspense, and he’s one of my favorite classic film directors, creating some fantastically memorable scenes and characters. One of my absolute favorite sequences in all of cinema is in North by Northwest, when Leo G. Carroll, the spy handler, explains the reasons behind the espionage operation they’re asking Cary Grant to help with, and the entire speech is drowned out by the roar of airplane engines. Hitchcock knew the importance of pulling the audience into the story in such a way that the plot details don’t really matter if the rest of the film is compelling through acting, music, and shot composition.
While a great many of Hitchcock’s films are of the thriller persuasion, he dabbled in other genres as well. Over the course of his long and varied career, he directed films that explored everything from spies and political thrillers to romance to dark comedies. He also made three films that I consider either horror or at least horror adjacent: The Birds, Psycho, and Vertigo. Frenzy deals with a serial killer in rather graphic fashion for the year it came out (1972), but I think it reads more as straight-up thriller than horror, since much of it is told from the perspective of a man who is wrongfully accused of the murders, unlike a horror film where the audience is put in a place of tension and discomfort and fear of the unknown. All three movies discussed here not only embrace horror elements; they also feature strong romance cues.
Before we dive into the films, though, a note on Hitchcock and his behavior behind the scenes. It’s no secret that Hitchcock was both a fantastic director and an awful person to many women in his life. He fetishized women, particularly his icy blondes, and when they spurned his advances, he was often rude or worse, sometimes assaulting them by groping or attempting to kiss them without their consent. Tippi Hedren, who starred in two films for Hitchcock, went on to describe such an experience with him in her autobiography during the filming of Marnie, but his terrible treatment of her began during her first film, The Birds.
In the climactic scene, Hitchcock forced Hedren to deal with live birds for the filming, instead of the mechanical ones that were initially proposed, and she is really being pecked and attacked in the scene. The crew threw live birds at her, inflicting real injuries and once coming dangerously close to hurting her eye. Filming the scene took five days of production (for only about a minute of finished film), and Hedren was deeply traumatized by the experience, much as her character Melanie was.
In light of the revelations surrounding Hitchcock’s treatment of not only Hedren but other women in his professional life (ranging from inappropriate comments to outright sexual assault), it’s difficult to watch this scene (and others) and not feel uncomfortable. Much as we need to acknowledge the many romance novels that perpetuated dangerous tropes like dubious consent, exoticizing and fetishizing non-Western cultures, and, let’s face it, outright rape in earlier works, there’s also no sense in hiding the problematic aspects of powerful figures in the film industry, from directors and producers to actors and agents. So, while Hitchcock played a pivotal role in horror romance, I’m not romanticizing the man himself.
Though Psycho is definitely a horror movie, there is romance here as well.
Psycho (1960) is, arguably, Hitchcock’s most influential and most famous film. It regularly holds a place on best-of lists, and it changed the movie landscape in so many ways, from graphic depictions of violence onscreen to plot twists to theaters making sure film audiences were seated before the opening credits began rolling (so as not to spoil the shocking twist at the beginning). Much has been written about the production of the film (see Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho among others), so I don’t think I need to go into many of those details here.
But here’s the lowdown: The film is based on Robert Bloch’s book of the same name, which was in turn inspired by real-life serial killer Ed Gein, who murdered at least two women and desecrated the bodies of many more in order to create a “woman suit” of human skin. Hitchcock’s film was a huge pivot from his previous production, North by Northwest, which was a slick spy romance starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason in beautiful Technicolor. Hitchcock used his Alfred Hitchcock Presents crew to shoot Psycho in black and white with a short shooting schedule and a lower budget, and this lends a grittier, bleaker feel to the project.
Though Psycho is definitely a horror movie, there is romance here as well. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is involved with Sam Loomis (John Gavin, and the inspiration for Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis in the Halloween franchise). Marion and Sam’s relationship is framed as illicit; the film opens with the two of them in a hotel room, clearly post–romantic interlude, with Marion in her undergarments, though the couple is not married. A bit of a scandalous start, and it sets the audience up to prepare for something a bit wilder, a bit more extreme than a typical romantic thriller. Still, since spoilers were much less readily available in 1960, most people who saw the movie in the theater wouldn’t have known it was anything but another Hitchcock suspense film for the first third of the runtime. Marion impulsively steals some money from her boss so she and Sam can move on and start a proper life together, and the film follows her as she goes on the run, very straightforward thriller fodder. Right up until she arrives at the Bates Motel, looking for a place to stay.
Though the chemistry between Leigh and Gavin is not terribly strong (perhaps due to the fact that John Gavin is just okay), there is something both compelling and unsettling about Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates and his attitude toward the frank and direct Marion once they meet. He seems very friendly—almost too friendly—and he clearly has something to hide. But since Marion does too, the scene of the two of them in the Bates Motel parlor, as they eat a quick meal together, feels a bit like a dance, neither wanting to give away their secrets while trying to seem as normal as possible.
Of course, it’s difficult to know for sure how audiences would have felt when watching the film for the first time, but I know when I first saw this movie, I thought perhaps the twist was that Marion would leave Sam to take up with the shy and awkward Norman. It’s clear here that Norman is attracted to Marion, and that is reinforced when we see him spy on her through a peephole into her room as she changes. Clearly, not romantic from Marion’s perspective! Norman doesn’t seem to have a grasp on real love in any way; his relationship with his mother has completely skewed his sense of love and romantic relationships, and he turns his loneliness and yearning for connection into frightening violence.
Once Marion is killed, the rest of the film veers completely into the horror genre, setting up so many iconic moments that have been copied throughout the media landscape. But the romantic elements served as both a way to draw audiences into this very dark story and to trick them into feeling a sense of security; after all, if Marion Crane is the love interest, how could she possibly be killed so quickly and so violently?
TOP TROPES: Forced Proximity: Marion is stuck in the motel with Norman, and the initial scenes with him are played in such a way that the audience could be convinced that she would be able to save Norman from his controlling mother.
DARK MOMENT: Well, murdering the woman who showed you a bit of kindness and understanding definitely seems like the darkest possible moment.
HEA? No one ends up happy here. Sam and Marion’s sister Lila discover that Norman is in fact the killer, Marion is dead in the lake near the motel, and Norman is (according to the psychiatrist’s very exposition-heavy monologue at the end of the film) completely subsumed by his mother’s controlling personality.
Though it received middling reviews upon release in 1958, many critics now consider Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo his masterpiece. The story of a private eye who finds love, loses it, and mysteriously finds it again is an emotional, intense exploration of obsession and how far a person will go to reclaim the life they lost. It’s very romantic in so many ways, but is it horrific? Let’s dig in.
The story opens with an incredibly tense first scene, with Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie chasing a suspect across rooftops in San Francisco. The chase reaches its climax with Scottie slipping and hanging on to the roof for dear life while his partner falls to his death. This traumatic experience results in Scottie’s debilitating vertigo, and he retires from the force. But he needs work, so takes a job for an old school friend who needs his wife followed because, he says, he’s afraid she wants to hurt herself. Scottie begins following Madeleine, played by Kim Novak, and it’s easy to see why he’s so drawn to her (much to his best friend Midge’s dismay—she’s been in love with Scottie for a long time). Madeleine is beautiful and melancholy, spending hours driving around San Francisco and contemplating a painting that seems to haunt her. Scottie’s pursuit of Madeleine, first as a quarry, begins innocently enough. But he is slowly captivated by this woman and how mysterious and alluring she is. When she falls (jumps?) in the water at the Golden Gate Bridge, Scottie rushes to save her, and from that moment, there’s no turning back. He’s fully committed to following her down a dark path.
One of the reasons Hitchcock is called the Master of Suspense is because of the way he draws out the tension, keeping the audience on their toes as they anticipate the worst.
The film at this point reads very much like a romantic mystery: How can Scottie keep Madeleine safe from whatever is seeking to cause her harm (whether that’s an external force or inner demons)? Madeleine is drawn to Scottie as well, and the two work together to uncover the secrets haunting her.
But when the two of them end up at a Spanish mission, things get much darker. Madeleine climbs the bell tower, and Scottie tries to follow, but his vertigo prevents him from reaching her in time, and he watches her fall to her death. The scene is brilliantly shot by Hitchcock, using a dolly zoom that has become so iconic it’s called the Vertigo effect and has been mimicked in countless films, including, perhaps most famously, in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, when Chief Brody sees the shark for the first time.
Madeleine’s tragic death utterly breaks Scottie, and we see the aftermath of the police investigation and court case. Scottie is absolved of blame, but he remains catatonic and despondent, and a brokenhearted Midge visits him in the hospital to no effect. Barbara Bel Geddes’s portrayal of Midge is such a beautifully tragic character here, realizing she’ll never have her friend back, much less be able to move forward romantically with him. Once Scottie’s released from the hospital, the film takes a very dark turn.
In my opinion, the second half of Vertigo is more psychological horror than mystery. The romantic elements are slowly stripped away, but not before Hitchcock plays another cruel trick on the audience (and on Scottie). Scottie can’t believe his eyes when he notices a woman almost identical to his beloved Madeleine walking down the street. She tells him he’s mistaken, her name is Judy, but Scottie is so taken by her, he asks to see her anyway. Little by little, Scottie tries to transform Judy into his lost love, buying her new outfits and changing her hairstyle. Scottie’s punishing, smothering treatment of Judy, who bears much more than a passing resemblance to Madeleine, borders on truly terrifying to many women watching the film. Many of us know (or have experienced firsthand) this kind of controlling, jealous, obsessive behavior from a romantic partner. Judy is gaslit into changing her clothes, her hair, her personality to fit Scottie’s rigid vision of his ideal woman.
Why does Judy go along with it? Well, she is in fact Madeleine, and she still has feelings for Scottie. She falls deeper and deeper into the lies and deception she can’t seem to pull herself out of, and seems to give in because she wants to fix everything and make a life with him. There is a flashback of exposition explaining Judy’s role in the deception (a rather elaborate murder plot that, like North by Northwest, doesn’t really matter), and from that moment on, the audience is waiting for the revelation, to see how Scottie will react when he finds out how he’s been manipulated. One of the reasons Hitchcock is called the Master of Suspense is because of the way he draws out the tension, keeping the audience on their toes as they anticipate the worst.
But in Vertigo, we’re not only anticipating the worst: We’re hoping somehow that Judy will be able to save Scottie and herself, and that the two of them can move on from the past. This same tension building is often used in romance fiction to heighten the emotional stakes for the characters; will they get together, or stay together even though one of them (or both) have made mistakes? (For a great shout-out in a horror romance novel, check out Clay McLeod Chapman’s Devil Inside, which has a chapter that takes place in a second-run cinema where the midnight movie is, fittingly, Vertigo.)
Ultimately, though, the happy ending is not in the cards for Judy and Scottie. He figures out the deception and in the final act becomes even more awful. He whisks Judy away to the same Spanish mission and forces her up the stairs to admit she’s been lying to him. Even though Judy has succumbed to his every whim, she still ends up dead (and Scottie is cured of his vertigo, free to harass the next woman he obsesses over).
TOP TROPES: Other Woman: The labyrinthine film features not only the other woman in Midge, but also in Scottie’s vision of the fictional Madeleine spurring him to manipulate Judy’s appearance. Secret Identity: Judy first pretends to be Madeleine, then pretends to be herself before pretending to be Madeleine again. The concept of identity constantly shifts in Vertigo.
DARK MOMENT: Scottie sees Judy wearing Carlotta’s necklace (which Madeleine owned) and realizes that she’s the same woman he thought he lost.
HEA? Scottie misses out on an HEA twice, once with Madeleine, and again with Judy, and the woman ends up dead.
So, Vertigo being a horror (or horror-adjacent!) film might feel like a bit of a stretch for a lot of folks. But there’s no arguing that The Birds (1963), Hitchcock’s follow-up to Psycho, is anything but horror. Deeply unsettling, this adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s story details a world where birds of all kinds suddenly decide to start attacking humans. But the story doesn’t start there; after all, horror is when we go from comfort to tension, remember? Hitchcock does a wonderful job of setting the scene and half convinces the audience that we’re in for a much different film in the opening.
But the reason these frightening scenes work so well is that Hitchcock knows there must be some emotional investment from the audience, especially when the actual events are so random and inexplicable.
It opens with Tippi Hedren, the newly minted Hitchcock It Girl. He’d been trying to find a replacement for his beloved Grace Kelly after she fell in love with Prince Rainier of Monaco and retired from the cinema, and he hadn’t felt that either Vera Miles in Psycho (who got pregnant before she could appear in Vertigo) or Kim Novak (Miles’s replacement) were quite right. Hedren, a model who hadn’t appeared in movies before Hitchcock discovered her, was beautiful, poised, and most importantly, new to the industry and willing to please. She’s delightful in the film’s first act as Melanie Daniels, a bored and capricious socialite who’s been told she needs to grow up after being caught getting up to no good overseas.
She meets Mitch, a self-important lawyer played by Rod Taylor, who pretends to mistake her for a salesperson in a pet store, but he’s well aware of her reputation. It’s a total meet-cute, setting up the audience to expect a romantic story full of silly hijinks and one-upmanship. After the misunderstanding, Melanie impulsively decides to buy the lovebirds that Mitch had been looking for at the pet store and bring them to his younger sister at their house in Bodega Bay. On the way across the bay, Melanie is attacked by a random seagull, setting up the sinister plot device.
The rest of the film quickly descends into various levels of nightmarish weirdness. Melanie is stuck with Mitch, his mother, and his younger sister (played by Veronica Cartwright, a horror veteran who’s played major roles in Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Witches of Eastwick, among others) in the small town, as increasingly large numbers of birds begin turning on the humans around them. Some incredibly tense moments follow, including a couple of scenes that will stay with me forever (the multiplying birds on the playground equipment and the rapid jump cuts zooming in on the farmer’s plucked out eyes, in case you were wondering). But the reason these frightening scenes work so well is that Hitchcock knows there must be some emotional investment from the audience, especially when the actual events are so random and inexplicable.
The love story that blooms between Melanie and Mitch is a classic rivals-to-lovers story. They’re prickly toward each other at the start, but they are both drawn to each other, despite their fairly obvious flaws and the fact that they should probably never get together. They need to overcome other external conflicts as well (aside from the birds, of course), including Mitch’s overly protective and reserved mother (played by the wonderful Jessica Tandy) and his ex-girlfriend who still has feelings for him, played by Suzanne Pleshette in a heartbreaking small role. Mitch is clearly intrigued by the confident and playful Melanie, and he seems to recognize the deeper layers of hurt and loneliness that Tippi Hedren keeps bubbling just under the surface of her performance.
The emotional beats in the story start out light and romantic and gradually become deeper and more fraught as the situation outside becomes more frantic and people are killed by the birds. As Melanie, Mitch, and his family try to stay safe inside his family home, the film comes to its truly unsettling climax. Melanie hears a noise upstairs, and contrary to what every audience member is thinking, she decides to investigate on her own. She opens the attic door and realizes that hundreds of birds have pecked their way into the attic. Poor Melanie is swarmed and viciously attacked until Mitch comes to her rescue in a scene that is visceral and frightening. The fact that Hitchcock used only ambient sound in the film (no score at all) makes things even scarier, as we only hear the fluttering and chirping of birds and Melanie’s slowly fading cries for help.
Mitch rescues Melanie, who is deeply traumatized, and the newly formed found family leaves the house, where they see malevolent flocks of birds perched all over the house and the surrounding area. Hitchcock leaves us with a very ambiguous ending, and we’re never sure if the birds take over the world and kill everyone, or whether the small group of humans is able to escape. But the romance remains—Mitch has welcomed Melanie to the group of women whom he loves, and he will try to keep the three of them safe.
TOP TROPES: Rivals to Lovers: Melanie and Mitch start off on the wrong foot with Melanie’s pranks annoying Mitch, but circumstances force them to band together. Found Family: Melanie’s personal life feels lonely and she’s happy to be welcomed into Mitch’s life, even though it takes his mother a bit of time to accept her. Meet-Cute Misunderstanding: A ridiculous set of circumstances set up the couple; this is a mainstay trope in romantic comedies and serves to set audience expectations for a very different (and less unsettling) kind of film here.
DARK MOMENT: Well, obviously birds attacking and murdering people all around you is pretty dark. But I think the darkest moment for the couple’s relationship is when Mitch seems to be taking his mother’s side against Melanie, causing her to break down.
HEA? The two end up together at the end of the movie—though Melanie is injured and catatonic, and we’re not quite sure when the birds are going to murder everyone. But they’re together, so I’m going with kind of.
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Excerpted from Love Never Dies: Romance in Horror Movies by Emma Cole. Copyright 2026. Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press.
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