Director: Anthony Perkins
Screenplay: Charles Edward Pogue
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey, Roberta Maxwell
Release Date: July 2, 1986
“THERE IS NO GOD!”
This wail of despair, played over a black screen, serves as the opening line of PSYCHO III. With that one line first time director Anthony Perkins and writer Charles Edward Pogue set the tone for the rest of the film, offering up a worldview of weary resignation and grim inevitability. The scream is uttered by a young nun named Maureen (Scarwid), who has climbed to the top of her convent’s bell tower in an attempt to commit suicide. When the other nun’s come to her aid, she accidentally pushes one them over a railing, sending her plummeting to her death. Needless to say, this does not please the other sisters, who condemn her to hell and force her out of the convent.
That’s how Maureen winds up hitchhiking down a lonely desert road, eventually catching a ride with aspiring musician and all-around good ol’ boy Duane, played with greasy zeal by the always-great Jeff Fahey. After an attempted sexing that doesn’t play out in his favor, Duane kicks Maureen out of his car in the middle of a downpour and high-tails it to the Bates Motel. There’s a “Help Wanted” sign in the window, and Duane needs to score some quick cash before he gets to California. Enter Norman Bates (Perkins).
It’s only been a few weeks since the climax of PSYCHO II, in which poor Norman was tormented by the sister of infamous shower-victim Marion Crane. She and her daughter attempted to drive Norman mad, believing no amount of rehabilitation could ever make up for what happened to her sister. In that film’s denouement, Emma Spool, a waitress at the diner he worked at, revealed to Norman that not only was she responsible for the latest murders, but she was really his mother, and that the demented woman who raised him was actually her sister, or his Aunt. Norman accepted this news as well as anybody could, by forcibly introducing the back of her skull to a shovel. Her disappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed, as the authorities are still searching for her. The case has also gotten the attention of Tracy (Maxwell), a journalist from Los Angeles doing a story on insanity pleas and rehabilitation of psychopaths. She believes Norman had something to do with the disappearance, and spends the bulk of the movie hounding him at every corner.
Norman, is struggling to assimilate back into civilian life, but is finding it difficult due to the second “Mother” personality that still haunts his psyche. This is exacerbated by the arrival of Maureen at the motel, whose resemblance to and shared initials with Marion Crane puts him immediately on edge. He initially believes Maureen is Ms. Crane herself, come to haunt him from beyond the grave. Of course, his attraction to both women sends “Mother” into a temperamental fit, demanding that Normal kill the “whore” before she comes between the two of them. Meanwhile Duane goes to a local bar and encounters Tracy who, once she discovers where he’s employed, lays down the scoop on Norman Bates. She convinces him to keep an eye on Bates for her, and to snoop around the place when Norman isn't around.
Back at the hotel, Norman gives in to his urges and, after watching her undress through the same peephole in the original PSYCHO, sneaks into the hotel room to murder Maureen while she bathes. The joke’s on Norman, though, as he discovers Maureen has already started the job for him, having slit her wrists with a razor blade. Norman rushes her to the nearest hospital, and when she comes to expresses her deep gratitude for saving her life. When Norman came to kill her as she lay dying in the bathtub, she didn’t see a mad transvestite wielding a knife, but the Virgin Mary bearing a cross. Maureen believes this is a sign from God that she should try to turn her life around. So she and Norman strike up a relationship that very quickly transitions from platonic to something far more serious. None of this makes “Mother” happy, and since she can’t take out her frustrations on Maureen, perhaps she will have to vent them elsewhere. Like the group of partying football fans that have taken residence at the hotel for the night.
PSYCHO III is a strange hybrid, a film that yearns to be a mature thriller for thinking adults while simultaneously embracing the lurid exploitation trappings of your standard slasher fare. In it’s examination of three very fractured souls, the movie did a great job of making me feel downright dirty. Maureen and Duane seem to represent the two opposing sides of Norman’s psyche. Maureen, like Norman, is having difficulty dealing with her lustful urges, which she feels morally compelled to deny. Duane, on the other had, reflects Bates’ unbridled id, a man with no morals who oozes sexuality from every pore and who, like “Mother”, views woman as disposable commodities. None of these people are healthy for one another, and their convergence on the motel leads to an ending of tragic inevitability.
While the movie tries it’s hardest to deal with big, adult themes, the tone of the flick is so uneven, and so very much unlike the previous two installments in the series that the film as a whole is a very unsatisfying experience. For a first-timer, Perkins does a great job of establishing a very particular mood for the picture. I’m just not sure it’s the mood the movie needs since, as previously stated, I felt like I needed a shower once the credits rolled, the sleaze was so thick. The character of Duane is incredibly misogynistic, his room bathed in garish red lighting and festooned with cut-out pictures of nude women. One of “Mother’s” victims is a girl Duane brings home from the bar. Before she is killed we are treated to an incredibly awkward scene between the two of them in which she writhes around on filthy sheets while he sits nude in the corner with two lamps covering his privates, staring at her insanely while bathing her in yellow light. Before she winds up getting murdered this girl is so thoroughly mistreated and degraded by Duane that I honestly felt bad for watching.
But then we have scenes where Perkins seems to be winking at the camera, re-using famous lines from the original film, at one point consoling Maureen by telling her that “We all go a little mad sometimes.” These call-backs fall flat on their faces, though there is a neat bit involving a hickish local Sheriff who comes to Norman’s defense against Tracy while popping ice into his mouth that comes out of an freezer containing the bloody corpse of a young girl. But most of the time the movie is brutally mean and nasty. I mean, one of the victims has her throat slit while she’s sitting down to take a piss, and the camera lingers on her taking said piss for a good while before the murder takes place.
I hope I’m not coming off as Puritanical in any way, because most of this kind of exploitation doesn't bother me. What bothers me is when a film that bearing the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece feels the need to stoop to such levels to get it’s point across. Sure, the original PSYCHO does deal with the topics of voyeurism and misogyny, and I’m sure audiences in 1960 felt just as dirty for watching Janet Leigh strut around in her pointy bra as I did watching this movie. But Hitchcock dealt with those themes in a much more restrained and far more effective manner. Norman Bates is a very sick man dealing with feelings of extreme sexual frustration. I don’t need to be bombarded with depravity in order to see that.
Performance-wise, Perkins by this point had fully embraced the fact that he would forever be known as Bates, and so relishes the role he made famous. Norman is a live wire, a twitchy bundle of nerves desperately clinging to some facade of normalcy. It’s is very easy to sympathize with the poor guy. Jeff Fahey excels in these type of slime ball roles, and I loved seeing him do his thing here. The weak link in the cast is Diana Scarwid, whose whiny portrayal of Maureen rendered the character entirely unsympathetic, which is the same problem I had with her in MOMMIE DEAREST.
Perkins’ direction isn’t bad. He keeps thinks fairly simple, with nice stylistic touches like the lighting in Duane’s room and some cool overhead shots and usage of rear-projection in a several scenes that are obviously meant to recall Hitchcock’s use of the same techniques. Where he fumbles is in the film’s ending, which I found confusing. It is obvious that the film was meant to end with Duane being revealed as the actual killer. All of the evidence leading up to the conclusion points to him, and yet the film’s final moments inexplicably finger Bates as the murderer. After doing some research I discovered that in the original script Duane WAS in fact, the killer, but Universal Studios insisted that Norman should be the one responsible, and so it was changed. So I guess we can chalk this one up to being another victim of unimaginative studio interference.
PSYCHO III has it’s heart in the right place, but it doesn’t know what it wants to be and, as a result, it just isn’t very good. I cannot recommend anybody checking this one out unless you’re a die hard fan of the first two. From a technical and performance standpoint, everybody in the production gives it their best, but the story they were brought together to tell is a meandering, unsatisfying mess that ultimately has no point.
My Rating: 5/10
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