Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990 TV Movie)
Going in with low expectations I found enough to like about this to make it an overall enjoyable watch. Every yang, however, comes with a yin.
The first thing to grab me was the score. I like that we've lost the electronic Eightiesness and returned to strings. It must be said, though, that most of the music cues are re-creations of Bernard Herrmann's original score. It's certainly good to hear them in stereo and they sound very full while still authentic to the originals. Graeme Revell's (few) original cues sound really good as well, especially as the action builds in the final act. For these reasons I'd happily seek out a soundtrack on CD, even though it is the least original score of the four films.
It's great to see CCH Pounder in a fairly meaty role as the phone-in host who ends up speaking to Norman while she's interviewing his psychologist (the same one from
Psycho, but now played by a different actor) . I associate her with roles of authority (she's probably best known to me for playing a judge in
LA Law) and her gravitas worked well, with her character's interest in Norman's past inviting the flashbacks and leading to the realisation that Norman is about to kill again. CCH holds the film together, but it feels quite wrong that she has more presence than Anthony Perkins.
Anthony is given more screen-time than I remembered. His "present day" story had potential but feels very poorly executed. I'm not sure how I feel about loner Norman being married and about to become a father and little of what I saw really interested me. There was potential gold to be mined in Norman being tied to another mousy-but-manipulative shrew and the script indicates his wife most certainly is this. But unlike most of Norman's actual and potential victims, we barely meet her. A phone call early in the film, then she's wheeled on to meekly react to the threat. The actress didn't work for me. She seemed so bland, passive and uninteresting. There was nothing about her that feels as though would have been enough to snap Norman out of killing her and so I struggled to believe it. There is what feels like a definitive ending with Norman ecstatic to be free. But we've been here before with the ending to
Psycho III and so it's more difficult to believe this time.
The flashbacks are arguably the film's "main" story. I don't quite buy Henry Thomas as a young Anthony Perkins (bear in mind that he's only eight or nine years younger than Perkins was in the original) but, at risk of sounding contradictory, he does make a good young Norman Bates if you accept him as a different reading of the character (which admittedly isn't easy in a film which also features the older Bates).
There's a similar "almost but not quite" vibe with Olivia Hussey's Norma Bates who, by the time of her death, feels much younger than what comes to mind when one thinks of the Mrs Bates character in the original film. There is an attempt to reconcile this with a line of dialogue which is appreciated (Norman says something about how she became older in his mind because of how she died and because he couldn't get the voice to sound as gentle as hers).
Of course people are interested to know the backstory, but for me it's the kind of thing best imagined, because the human mind is far more creative and frightening than any film crew and group of actors and editors. The deaths of Norma and Chet are a prime example of this. When strychnine is mentioned in the first film, it conjures up nightmarish visions. And the reality of that would be very grim indeed. As it is, both Norma and Chet get the effects almost instantly and are both dead within ten minutes and despite the vomit and expressions of pain, it feels a little underwhelming and almost dilutes the images that the original film created. Almost.
What it really comes down to is that almost anytime something is "explained" it becomes less interesting. Which is why I don't feel compelled to watch
Bates Motel just yet.
