Good evening… or rather, good news, ladies and gentlemen!

Alfred Hitchcock is in the house. Well, House Samyan, to be precise. (He did say that puns are the highest form of literature, after all.) Starting 21 August with limited screenings, Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) are coming to the big screen as part of the House Classics programme. These two monumental pieces of pure cinema make a fantastic double bill you’ll definitely want to catch in the theatre before you die – the perfect entry point to dive into the Master of Suspense’s filmography.

Hitchcock’s movies have been analysed to death – excuse the pun – dissected by endless film theories, picked apart frame by frame for symbolism and given more psychoanalysis than a therapist’s sofa. But the obsession makes sense: without him, the modern thriller genre wouldn’t exist, and we’d all still be sitting in cinemas completely unsure of how to properly panic.

First up is Vertigo (1958), which might not go down well if you suffer from acrophobia, though it’s well worth the dizzy spell. It’s about a retired sleuth coaxed back into detective work by an old friend to investigate his wife’s strange behaviour. Obsession turns deadly, fear of heights stops being figurative and no one is who they seem as he gets closer to the truth. To top it off, it stars the indomitable James “Jimmy” Stewart alongside the magnetic Kim Novak!

Then comes Psycho (1960), cinema’s most famous plunge into the mind of a murderer. Anthony Perkins created the eternal blueprint for movie killers with Norman Bates, the eerily friendly motel proprietor who is entirely too tied to his mother’s Oedipal strings. After an embezzling secretary pulls in for the night, film history is made. Imitators have spent decades trying to recreate its defining scenes – including that final double-exposure shot – proving that while we all go a little mad sometimes, few do it as brilliantly as Hitchcock.

Be sure to check screening times via the House Samyan app or website, and keep an eye on their Facebook and Instagram pages for the latest updates. Death comes for us all, though in this case, it’s strictly death by boredom you’ll be escaping, because Hitchcock’s films are infinitely watchable.