PSYCHO III (1986)
Article 4883 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-27-2015
Directed by Anthony Perkins
Featuring Anthony Perkins, Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey
Country: USA
What it is: Another visit to the Bates Motel

Norman is running the Bates Motel again, and he encounters a drifter seeking temporary employment as well as a woman who bears a resemblance to Marion Crane. Then the murders start up again…

After watching this movie, I found myself asking what Alfred Hitchcock would have done if he’d directed a sequel to PSYCHO. My first answer is, of course, “he wouldn’t”. My second answer is “if he did, he certainly wouldn’t spend most of the movie referencing his scenes from the earlier movie”. Of course, none of the sequels had a director the calibre of Hitchcock, and for this one, I got tired of the way so many scenes were set up to remind us of scenes from the earlier movie (though it does throw in a VERTIGO reference for good measure). The best thing about this movie is Anthony Perkins the actor (as to differentiate from Anthony Perkins the director); he’s still fascinating to watch in the role of Norman Bates, though it’s starting to become clear that he’s treading ground he’s already covered before. The script has one good twist when the movie is referencing the shower scene, but I’m less impressed with the rest of it; some of the murders occur simply because it was a convenient time to shoehorn another murder into the story. By the time the ending rolled around, the whole thing was starting to feel rather silly. That didn’t keep another sequel from being produced, though reportedly that one’s a prequel.