PSYCHO III was directed by Anthony Perkins. I'm guessing that was his stipulation for returning to this franchise. You want me back as Norman? Then you give me the chance to direct.
The movie has a most unusual opening. A suicidal nun accidentally causes the death of one of her compadres. This scene bring to mind Hitchcock's VERTIGO, both with its clock tower and innocent person plunging to their death.
Obviously, it would be too awkward for her to remain in the convent. I bet every time the bells rung, everyone would be looking at her like, "Yeah, we remember what you did."
We see the rundown hotel. There are some subtle call-backs to PSYCHO II. Abandoned in the dirt, we see the book Lila Loomis' daughter was reading. On the storm window, we see the marks left behind by the murdered horny kid. Wait, the murderer didn't clean those up when they disposed of the body before the police arrived?
The scene introducing us to Norman is great. He poisons the bird feeder so he can collect sample for his "hobby". What a ghoul.
Now, it's obvious the camera pans away to Norman, so that the live birds can be switched out with fake dead ones by the time the camera pans back, but I wonder how they achieved the effect of the birds falling to the ground and flopping around. Can you really train a bird to do that? I think the animal wranglers pulled a Bill Cosby and drugged those birds.
There's a newspaper reporter digging up dirt on Norman. She starts with his previous place of employment.
The restaurant owner claims Norman was a great employee, but he only worked there a couple of days before quitting to run the motel. And during that time he broke plates, got into fights with customers, and burned the restaurant guy's arm. He's remembering Norman's work record with rose-coloured glasses.
The ex-nun meets some sleazy musician named Duke, and the both of them wind up moving into the motel. Norman immediately gives Duke a job, putting him in charge of the business. As for the Nun, Norman immediately begins watching her undress through the back parlour peephole. Don't the motel TV's have Skinemax or something Norman can watch to get his rocks off to? He's getting too old for this peeping through the wall nonsense.
I like that they've kept the same painting hanging over the peephole since the original movie.
The painting depicts the Biblical story of Susanna and the Elders. As it goes, Susanna was bathing alone in the lake when these two horny old guys came by. The elders threaten Susanna, saying they'll claim they saw her having sex with some guy, unless, of course, she has sex with them. Back in those days, promiscuous women were put to death. However, just before Susanna is executed, Daniel questions the elders and figures out they're full of shit, and they get executed instead of her.
In PSYCHO III, when Norman looks at the picture, he hallucinates, now seeing Susanna as enjoying the company of the elders. It's his twisted mind telling him, "She's a slut, she deserves to die."
But the jokes on him! After he dresses up like Mother and prepares to stab her, it turns out she's already slit her own wrists.
For the second time, the Nun fails at her own suicide.
Perhaps frustrated he didn't get to kill her, Norman stabs some bar girl Duke brought back to the motel. Clearly, this scene is supposed to mirror the shower murder, having the victim trapped in a confined space. They even repeat Norman's "Oh God, Mother! Blood! Blood!" dialogue.
Now before she was murdered, Duke gave the girl a five dollar bill with a missing corner. The next day, he knows something is up when he finds that same bill in the cash register.
This feels really off that Norman would take the five dollars. She had it tucked into the waistband of her underwear. You mean he patted her down looking for cash? That isn't his MO at all.
The movie spends a lot of time throwing romance our way, as Norman and the Nun get friendly. It's kind of sweet, seeing two damaged people make a connection. Instead of rooting for her to get the hell away from Norman, you're pulling for him to get his shit together.
And stop doing stuff like this. Jeez, poor woman is just trying to take a dump, and the next thing you know she's the most brutal murder in the movie.
The filmmakers clearly want you to feel bad for her. They shoehorn in some random scene of her telling the Nun to keep her door closed. I guess that's supposed to be enough to make me think she's a wonderful, full-fledged character, so I'll feel bad when she gets killed. But I'll be honest, it has no where near the same effect as the murder of a character you've been sympathizing and rooting for for over twenty minutes.
This is likely the best scene in the movie, where the Sheriff, there to investigate the disappearance of the toilet lady, eats bloody ice cubes out of the chest where her body is hidden. It's such a great gag. Suspenseful, darkly humorous. It reminds me a bit of that episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, where the woman murders her husband by beating him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb, and then cooks and serves the lamb to the officers investigating his murder, tricking them into eating the murder weapon. No doubt, Hitchcock would loved to have had this ice chest scene in one of his movies.
Perkins really did a fantastic job directing PSYCHO III. The photography is elegant, the atmosphere is rich, both the barren desert landscape and the seedy neon-lit hotel rooms. It's a shame he didn't direct more movies, as PSYCHO III demonstrates his ability to craft wonderful cinematic moments.
Of course, the movie ends tragically, with the Nun being killed when Norman accidentally knocks her down the stairs. I guess it's supposed to be punishment, for her accidentally knocking that old Nun off the tower at the beginning of the movie. I suppose Alanis Morrissette would call this ironic. Don't you think?
Just as PSYCHO II ret-conned PSYCHO I, PSYCHO III decides to ret-con PSYCHO II, by getting rid of Missuss Spool being Norman's real mother. They weren't clever about it or anything. They just had the reporter tell Norman, "Yeah, she was crazy. She made all that shit about being your Mother up."
The final shot of the movie is interesting. As Norman is being hauled away to the mental hospital, most-likely for good this time, Perkins' films the scene using an obvious, out-dated rear-projection. It looks nothing like the other driving scenes in the movie, which as far as I can tell were shot with car rigs on real roads. My guess is Perkins wanted to honour the sort of technology Hitchcock used decades earlier, and for the last image of his film to look like it belonged in that era.
Released in the summer of 1986, PSYCHO III didn't do as well at the box office as PSYCHO II, grossing only 14 million. So it made more money than BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (11 million), but not as much as HOWARD THE DUCK (16 million).
For better or worse, this was the end of the Anthony Perkins PSYCHO franchise.
At least, on the big screen.
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| "Psycho III" plays at the Can-View Drive-In in June of 1986 |
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