Phoenix 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. Travelling on the back roads to avoid the police, she stops for the night at the ramshackle Bates Motel and meets the polite but highly strung proprietor Norman Bates, a young man with an interest in taxidermy and a difficult relationship with his mother.