Psycho 2

I'd like to preface this with this:

"You're the bastard child of Pauline Kael and Joe Bob Briggs, with the spite of Harlan Ellison and the world-weariness of a man waiting for death in a bathrobe. " ChatGPT

Man, that goldurned Chat just keeps getting more and more astute with its observations.

I've just completed two articles of serious dope, one a personal reflection and the other a "Big Think." None of this pleases me as much as writing crapola reviews of cultural ephemera (comic books, movies, cult TV shows, roleplaying games, you name it), as life is short—and too short to continually spend time being gloopy.

I have a horrible flare-up of gout currently, but Norman Bates—who undoubtedly would celebrate yesterday's Mother's Day decked out in a cheap wig and a Victorian schoolmarm's dress, holding, perhaps, a huge kitchen knife that may or may not be a Ginsu, but is deadly nonetheless—helped me to cope with the pain as I sat on the edge of the bed, in the pitch black of my room, wondering about pain, karma, and the ways of an inscrutable God.

Getting back to it, Norman "Anthony Perkins" Bates (I have to reverse the order of the name in scare quotes here, because Perkins will never be identified for the rest of recorded history with anything OTHER than playing Norman Bates) gets released from a mental home, despite the best efforts of Lila Loomis (Vera Miles, the original Lila Loomis) to keep him jailed or confined—take your pick. Robert Loggia plays psychiatrist Dr. Bill Raymond, and it's not a role he fits into comfortably, as we're more used to thinking of him as that cucaracha Miami drug kingpin Frank Lopez, who gets snuffed by Tony Montana in Scarface, which was released the following year.

(Loggia also portrayed Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent in David Lynch's masterful film noir flop Lost Highway, which, despite being a box-office bomb, was undoubtedly one of the most incredible films of the Nineties.)

Norman evicts the corpulent Dennis "NYPD Blue" Franz, who plays Toomey—a kind of off-brand Ron Jeremy—who has been turning the sepulchral old Bates Motel into a drug den cum passion pit. Toomey surfaces again at a diner Bates is employed at, harassing his new girlfriend Mary (Meg Tilly), who is sort of little and kewpie-doll cute and has Janet-from-Three’s Company hair.

Mary moves in, and Toomey gets killed, and then some kids on the make get eighty-sixed in the basement, and the thing has a bunch of cheap pulp paperback plot twists worthy of Robert Bloch, who created Norman (in the same way, perhaps, Norman continually “recreates” Mother) and wrote his own Psycho 2, which has nothing to do with this cinematic Psycho sequel.

Anyway, there are a few bloody killings perpetrated by a shadowy Mother in a black schoolmarm outfit, but there's a lot of cutting away, too. Except, of course, when one old bag deep-throats the aforementioned Ginsu. They left that in.

A decent nod to Hitchcock, although Hitchcock most likely wouldn't have swallowed ninety percent of what goes on here. Scripted by Tom "Fright Night" Holland and directed by Richard Franklin, it is an entertaining meander through the Psycho universe, giving blow-by-blow (or rather shot-by-shot) more paeans to the Master of Suspense than any ten similar movies.

Mary Loomis Goes Psycho | Psycho II (1983) | Fear

At the end, we have a cringeworthy scene or two where Norman's psychosis (whatever official diagnosis that may entail—the symptoms seem baffling from a textbook standpoint) is played upon. But Norman, one reflects, is a little like the focus of some strange, demonic haunting, wherein his very presence in the old house (the monolith, Overlook, eternal movie set wherein the camera looks down often, God-like, upon the heads of the rat-like actors relegated to their maze of torment—to borrow a phrase from Morbid Angel) can open the doorway between the lurking shadow of a castrating old shrew that resides in the attic of his subconscious brain, and himself. Norman crosses the male/female divide, becoming a necro-incestuous black magician, taking the possession wrought by the disembodied Mother upon himself, in her neverending quest for living blood.

But perhaps all of that is a bit much for this sleazy little Gothic melodrama, this pulp paperback page-turner and potboiler, brought to cinematic life.

But I still have the gout, baby. And I'm looking at the phone.

No customers. No calls.

Not even from Mother.

Psycho II (1983) Official Trailer - Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles Movie HD

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