Week of Review - Psycho II

Welcome back to Week of Review where we’re building up to tomorrow’s premiere of American Horror Story: Hotel.  When discussing the incredibly limited niche of hotel horror there are basically two elephants you all but have to address.  The most obvious we’ll be getting to tomorrow but today we’re taking a look at the other reigning kind of the genre Psycho.  Given Psycho’s incredible popularity now it’s easy to forget just what a massively important film it was and how much it changed the horror landscape forever.  Despite being a flawed film in a lot of key aspects there’s no doubt it’s Alfred Hitchcock’s most influential and enduring classic and is the movie a lot of folks point to as the first quasi-Slasher flick.  The film was based off of a book of the same name by Robert Block, which drew heavy inspiration from the crimes of Ed Gein, the same disturbed criminal whose actions would later inspire The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Given that impressive pedigree it really shouldn’t be so surprising the film got a sequel.

Yes, today we won’t be talking about a film that’s all that influential or important or even well remembered as we take a look at 1983’s Psycho II.  Released a mere 23 years after the first film this is one of those weird occasions where a film had a series and everyone just sort of agreed it didn’t happen.  As I said it’s not a huge surprise a sequel got made, it’s just surprising it took so long though it kind of makes sense given that the ‘80s was the decade when slashers were cutting up the screen so resurrecting proto-slashers like Leatherface or Norman Bates was very much the thing for money hungry studios to do.  Speaking of Norman Bates he is in fact played by the same actor from the original 1960 film, Anthony Perkins.  Perkins never really had much work beyond Psycho, a collection of minor roles but nothing to ever revival his success as Norman.  In Psycho II he was in his mid 50s and even though his age is starting to wear on him he’s easily the highlight of the film. 

Psycho II is set 20 years after the first one with Norman Bates having been declared sane by the psychiatric institute he was sentenced to after the events of the first film.  Against pretty much everyone’s better judgment he’s chosen to move back into his old house and is beginning renovations on the family motel while taking a part time job as a cook’s assistant at a local diner.  He befriends a young woman at the diner who ends up living with him when her previous situation changes suddenly.  All seems well for Norman when he starts receiving mysterious phone calls and notes claiming to be from his mother and it’s unclear whether someone is trying to drive him to madness, Norman is slipping once more, or something else is going on.

For as base level thriller as that plot is Psycho II is actually very well made and manages to slide through a lot of shaky ground more or less unscathed.  The film is juggling a lot of complex conspiracies and there seem to be no less than three separate games of cat and mouse playing out all at once but the film does a good job never getting lost in its own web of lies and half truths.  It even manages to sidestep a few of what might be otherwise considered flubs with the reveals and pacing.  For instance, there’s a scene at the diner where Norman finds a note from his mother but when he later tries to show it to the others its mysteriously disappeared. 

However, because we see the note before Norman does we know it must exist because the camera can’t be hallucinating.  I was afraid while watching that this was basically just sloppy filmmaking giving away the twist too quickly but only about 20 minutes later the film pulls the rug right out from under you with a sharp turn in the story that completely cuts out the whole problem.  It’s a tricky tight rope-balancing act but it makes it work, mainly because all the various conspiracies and plots emerge from the same core idea: the world wants Norman Bates to be crazy.

That simple little twist on expectations is at the key of what makes Psycho II a legitimately fascinating and great movie to watch, it’s all about recovery and aftermath.  I mentioned earlier that Norman returning to his old stomping ground is against pretty much everyone’s better judgment and I do mean everyone, in fact the only person actually cutting Norman any slack is the town Sheriff, which is a neat inversion of tropes.  Everyone else is constantly walking on eggshells around Norman or throwing his past in his face.  You’ve got the Lila Loomis, the sister of one of Norman’s victims who has been hounding him since before his release, Warren Toomy the motel manager Norman fires whose holding a major grudge, Dr. Bill Raymond Norman’s psychiatrist who seems convinced it's more a matter of when Norman will snap rather than if, and even Mary Samuels, the young woman living with Norman who keeps a gun under her pillow. 

Everyone Norman interacts with is basically filling the same role as we the audience, they want him to be crazy, to be a murderer, either out of fear or hatred.  Making that into the central driving force of the story is an excellent call that does a lot to elevate the movie, especially because films about recovered individuals like Norman are so incredibly rare.  The movie even does a great job turning the title of ‘Psycho’ on its head, with the townspeople using it as a slur to berate Norman with.  This is honestly one of the better films I’ve ever seen about rehabilitation and attempting to acclimate into a society that’s been trained to fear and mistrust you and consider you less than human. 

Now despite these major strengths Psycho II is not without its flaws, as its anonymous place in history no doubt suggests.  The film’s production value and visual ambition never seems to rise above a very good TV movie and not even a modern day TV movie.  Also as much fun as it is piecing together the various clues and motives that go into the complex web of plots that much interconnectivity can’t help but break its own rules and there are some major plot holes when the ultimate mystery is finally revealed.  There’s also a thoroughly peculiar ending reveal that feels decidedly out of place with the rest of the film, I’d call it a major continuity shake-up but I’m not sure the Psycho franchise really has continuity.  It’s biggest flaw, however, is simply not being as good as Psycho 1, which is an unfair complaint if we’re being honest.  For a sequel made 20 years later with almost no connection Psycho II holds up remarkably well and when you get down to it there are a lot of great movies that also happen to be “not as good as Psycho,” it’s not really a great metric of quality is my point.

Yeah the "coming home" tagline identifies this as the film Halloween helped make

Making a sequel to Psycho is the kind of thankless task you enter into with a sense of failure already hanging over the proceedings.  Even if the movie was amazing Psycho II was destined from birth to be consigned to the same dustbin of history as More American Graffiti or The Sting II.  Even despite that Psycho II has infinitely more meaning or ambition than anyone had any right to expect.  The unique blend of trashy backwoods quasi-soap opera with actual social commentary reminds me of the high class sleaze of the modern day rather than the slashers of the ‘80s.  I’d honestly like to see someone else take another stab at this material, pun completely intended.  The Psycho franchise would actually continue after this with Psycho III actually directed by Perkins himself and Psycho IV: The Beginning as a TV movie.  Follow that up with the 1998 shot-for-shot remake with Vince Vaughn and the recent prequel TV reboot Bates Motel and it seems like Psycho is a franchise we’ll always be willing to come back to even if it never manages to recapture that same sense of urgency and definition as the first one.  Tomorrow, we finish off this Week of Review with the great grandfather of all hotel horror.   


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