You can see these historic Phoenix buildings in "Psycho"

• And who can forget the slow zoom into the fourth floor of the Jefferson Hotel (now called the Barrister Place Building) where Marion Crane has a lunchtime tryst with her boyfriend before embezzling from her employer and fleeing Phoenix?

Zoom in: Valley historian Douglas Towne tells Axios Phoenix almost all of the buildings in the movie remain standing, but they are sometimes hard to spot because of the taller structures that have risen around them.

The intrigue: No one is entirely sure why Phoenix was picked as the backdrop for the iconic movie's introduction, but local film guru Steve Weiss in a 2020 history column surmised that the Valley's sunny ambience juxtaposed nicely against the dark plot.

• "It's always that great contradiction of wonderful weather and tragic outcome," he said.

Reality check: There is a radio tower on one of the buildings shown in the opening pan that is commonly mistaken as the Westward Ho. It was actually a KTAR radio antenna on top of the still-standing Heard Building that was removed sometime after filming.

• Towne says he's had to deliver the bad news to disappointed tourists photographing the Westward Ho.

Yes, but: The Westward Ho was in the 1998 remake of "Psycho."

1 fun thing: ASU Online is now offering a class about Hitchcock and his suspenseful filmmaking through the university's Sidney Poitier New American Film School.