Psycho II

For my return after a 3-year absence from blogging, I decided to select this year's movies by dice roll. 2 24 sided dice were thrown to choose a Style of Horror-movie, and a "scare" type. This is adapted from an idea shamelessly stolen from Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9.

For today's movie, I threw a 16 for Sequel, and a 24  for Psychopath.

22 Years after his killing spree Norman Bates is released from the Asylum, a cured man. Moving back into his home at the motel, Norman takes a job at a local diner, where he befriends young waitress Mary, and offers her a place to stay following the breakup of her boyfriend.

But Norman starts getting worrying notes and phone-calls; it seems that "Mother" is back...

---

I've seen Psycho (obviously) and back in my teenage VHS rental days I saw Psycho IV: The Beginning (I worked my way through my local video shop's entire horror section - including sequels to movies they didn't stock, and I hadn't seen. Although part 4 requires no knowledge whatsoever of parts 2 and 3, it was still fun to go back and fill in a gap in my Psycho knowledge. 

While not a suspense movie in the same way as the 1960 classic, the movie still holds it's own in the directorial stakes, and it's perhaps no shock that director Richard Franklin was a student and friend of Hitchcock's.

The resolution of the film's central mystery is a little info-dumpy, and the very end feels a little as though it was written a little later than the rest of the script, serving both to bring things full-circle, while also leaving the door open for further entries.

Mention must be made of  Jerry Goldsmith's superb score, which perfectly evokes the truly classic score of the first movie, and really helps Psycho II feel like a true part of Norman's world, rather than a cash-grab. (fun titbit; mirroring the relationship of Franklin and Hitchcock, Goldsmith was a friend of Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann).

For a sequel I'm sure that no one asked for (especially not 22 years after the fact) it's a pleasant surprise to be able to say that Psycho II is a worthy successor to Hitchcock's classic.