Set in 1960s Phoenix, Arizona, secretary Marion Crane, on the lam after stealing $40,000 from her employer in order to run away with her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, is overcome by exhaustion during a heavy rainstorm. Traveling on the back roads to avoid the police, she stops for the night at the ramshackle Bates Motel and meets the polite but neurotic Norman Bates, a young man with an interest in taxidermy and a difficult relationship with his mother.
