Psycho II (Richard Franklin), 1983
It might seem like the ultimate piece of Hollywood crassness to make a sequel to Psycho. After all, the original was a classic, and sequelising Psycho risks dragging it from that mantle down to just another horror franchise in the Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, and Nightmare on Elm Street tradition.
Franklin's film has definitely suffered from this perception. Ultimately, it probably ended up falling between stools, dismissed by most critics and neglected by the teen horror fans. It's a shame though. The film isn't a masterpiece, and you don't have to be a horror buff (I'm not) to realise it's not breaking new ground, but it is a lot of fun. It goes on a short list of mainstream sequels (Mad Max 2, The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part 2, Aliens) that actually offer something new and interesting.
The great thing about the film is the way it revisits the landscape of the original - the places, the people (Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles are both back), and the events. Australian Richard Franklin, directing, sets up the motel and house we saw in Hitchcock's film by using many of the same camera angles for the early shots... but then we start to move around and explore those bits of the house we hadn't seen before. It works well - somehow, rather than diminishing the original (as most sequels do), it fleshes it out. Hitchcock created a mean little shocker with no wasted effort. Franklin's film meanders all over the place, but we don't mind, because shocks are only part of the reason we're here. The film is, oddly enough, a nostalgia piece as well as a surprisingly effective character study.
Unlike Psycho, which kidded us that it was really about two peripheral characters (Marion and Mother), from the start Psycho 2 centres on the figure of Norman. Perkins is once again astonishingly good as Norman - he knows what to leave the same about his performance, and what to change. Norman is still eager to please, still likeable, but he's haunted by the memory of his crimes and is obviously not sure his regained sanity is going to hold up. The film cleverly casts doubt over who is committing the murders, destroying our complacent assumption that we know the ins and outs of Norman's mind. We don't find out till near the very end if Norman is the killer or not, which is a masterstroke. It keeps us off balance, but that's the least of its virtues: the real beauty of it is that it gets us hoping that Norman is still sane. The film understands that empathising with Norman is central to the appeal of Psycho.
The film, like Hitchcock's, is also an elaborate game. The first hour or so works the best, as Norman befriends a young coworker, Mary (Meg Tilly), and invites her to stay in his house. Franklin and screenwriter Tom Holland have a lot of fun with just how much Mary does wrong: sleeping (and showering) in the house, taking Norman into his mother's bedroom, insisting Norman cut her sandwich with a gigantic kitchen knife... While Perkins, of course, is showing us just how much torment the whole experience is putting Norman through. It quickly becomes apparent Mary is not all she seems, and Holland's script has plenty of twists (rather than the single major twist used by Stefano) to maintain the interest.
Ultimately, the film probably outwits itself - there
is a twist and turn too many, and the final sections of the film are
frankly absurd. By trying to provide one surprise too many, it loses
its grip on
reality and reduces Norman to merely being a sick joke. It's a shame,
because
ultimately the film's best surprise is simply how good it is.
Related Items
For my review of Hitchcock's original click
here.
Comments? Click
here
© 2005 by Stephen Rowley