1960: Psycho
Everyone the world over is familiar with Psycho: Pretty girl steals money, winds up in creepy Bates Motel, shower, chocolate sauce for blood, mother, you know the rest. You’ve only had 50-odd years to have seen it.
Technology would’ve saved Marion Crane, if only she’d just read the Yelp reviews or gone to TripAdvisor.
1964: Marnie
This movie is probably one of Hitchcock’s more twisted stories. A wealthy publisher falls for a serial burglar who he then blackmails into marrying him. It turns out she’s frigid! Oh no!
This is one story that hasn’t dated particularly well, and using frigidity as a plot twist is strictly passe today. So, to debunk this story, we have but to say one word: WebMD. The blackmail wouldn’t have gone far either with a simple LinkedIn search. BOOM! Game over!
There’s a scene in “A Perfect Murder,” the Dial-M remake, where Gwyneth Paltrow is in the tub, but is drawn to the kitchen by a ringing phone. The phonecall is part of the plan to get her in place to be attacked and killed.
And it plays out rather absurdly onscreen, because not only does it require the viewer to accept that the penthouse-dwelling Paltrow has ONLY ONE TELEPHONE, and it’s in the kitchen, but that she also has no answering machine, thus allowing it to ring a few dozen times while she gets out of the bath and walks to the kitchen to answer the still-ringing phone.
And since this is the very scene of the supposed ‘Perfect Murder’ as promised by the title, it’s not exactly a minor plot hole.