Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” is regarded as the ur-text of
the American horror genre, but its three sequels have proved harder to find, because
of their being perceived as both inferior to the original, and, and as an
obvious and poor answer to the rise of slasher film franchises like “Halloween”
and “Friday the 13th”. However, Arrow Video have released “Psycho II” on DVD
and Blu-ray, under licence from Universal Pictures, so I braced myself, and
handed over some money.
As much as Hitchcock did not like the idea of sequels to his
own films - although he had remade his British film “The Man Who Knew Too Much”
in Hollywood, with James Stewart and Doris Day - “Psycho II” was always going to
be out of his hands, especially by his dying three years before its 1983
release. Hitchcock had sold the rights to “Psycho” and his “Alfred Hitchcock
Presents” TV series to Universal in 1968, with the film having already made $18
million at the box office – not bad for having spent $800,000 of your own money
in the first place. Hitchcock became the third largest shareholder in Universal,
which had been bought by his agent, Lew Wasserman, and his company MCA in 1953.
As inevitable as a “Psycho II” was going to be by 1983, it was the perfect opportunity
to both commemorate and capitalise on Hitchcock’s work.
I am happy to say that this is a sequel worth watching. I
was worried that “Psycho II” was either going to be some hackneyed,
by-the-numbers horror flick, even though its director, Richard Franklin, had
studied Hitchcock’s work, and had met with him during the making of “Topaz”
(1969). Fortunately, it is also not the academic exercise of remaking the
original that Gus Van Sant’s 1998 “Psycho” is known for being – just because
you can now do the opening aerial shot of Phoenix, Arizona, that Hitchcock
could not in 1960, due to technical constraints, doesn’t mean you should,
whether you can do it in colour or not. Instead, what we have is a story that
makes good use of the twenty-year gap in both the film’s events and of the
public’s knowledge, while learning Hitchcock’s lessons in filmmaking without
just copying them (although starting the film by replaying the original’s
shower scene is a bit on the nose for me).
After twenty-two years in a mental facility, Norman Bates is
deemed to be fit and well, and is released, against the wishes of Marion
Crane’s sister Lila, who cannot believe that a murderer is not imprisoned for
life – it is pointed out from the start that he was found to be insane, not a
murderer. Initially working at a diner, he befriends and helps out Mary, who
was thrown out of her boyfriend’s place. Norman and Mary take up residence back
at his mother’s house and Bates Motel – the sleazy manager, played to greasy
perfection by Dennis Franz, is first to die, at the same point as in the first
film (after about forty minutes).
As the murders occur, Norman begins to see his mother again,
which Mary sees as being part of his mental illness, something that could not
make him a murderer. What is worse, Mary knows who is framing Norman: Lila, her
mother, who wants him put into jail, using a “mother” costume secreted in the
house. The climax of the film is that those who are implicated in the murders
are those that have been shown to have been cool and calculating all along, and
not the one shown to be almost incapable – fortunately, Norman is shown at the
very end to have regained his equilibrium, and his mother, with the use of a
spade, though not in the way you might think. As much as you think that “Psycho
II” might be playing with notions of mental illness, the definition of what is
“sane” is also shown to be different for everyone - as Norman Bates says in the
original film, “we all go a little mad sometimes.”
The older Anthony Perkins seen in this film looks
perpetually haunted, and this is to his advantage here, which is also the case
for the returning Vera Miles as Lila Loomis, née Crane – his father is said
to have died, presumably in an explosion with Michael Myers at the end of
“Halloween II.” As Mary, Meg Tilly is the audience’s point of identification,
but she is, and we are, ultimately proved wrong in the end, setting up 1986’s
“Psycho III,” directed by Perkins himself.
The black and white of the original “Psycho,” and the stark
string soundtrack, are traded for full colour and a lush orchestra, which could
be seen as a way of muddying the waters. At the end of the first “Psycho” we
got a nice summary of how Norman Bates took over his role as his own mother,
but we don’t get anything so easy to understand here... but it sets up a sequel
rather well.
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