Psycho IV: The Beginning

Psycho IV: The Beginning is the third and final sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic 1960 film. Made for cable TV channel Showtime, penned by Joseph Stefano who collaborated with  Hitchcock on the original, and once again starring Anthony Perkins, it drains the last drops out of the Psycho bucket (there was a failed 2013 attempt to develop a TV series, called Bates Motel derived from a 1987 spin-off telemovie  of the same name)

Inexplicably, given that in Psycho III, Norman was shown being led away after a slew of murders, he is back after a mere 4 year hiatus, living in a posh home owned by his psychologist wife (one presumably is meant to assume that she was somehow responsible for this, his second, rehabilitation).  This chapter, as the title indicates, is concerned with how Norman came to be so unhinged.

Whilst the previous three films were stylistically of a piece, this one is more tangentially related, using the device of a late-night radio talk show (hosted by C.C.H. Pounder) to have Norman explain in neat expositional  chunks how he became a matricidal psychopath.  We see Norman’s history played out in flashbacks with Henry Thomas (who had starred in Spielberg’s E.T.) playing the young Norman and Olivia Hussey playing his neurotic, sexually-confused mother. Perkins’s involvement is largely confined to talking over the phone although the final section of has him planning to kill again, not this time out of an insane compulsion but out of a rational desire to stop the evil Bates seed.

If the film’s screenplay is largely concerned with explaining Norman’s psychology the lack of the previous film’s B-grade style robs it of the schlocky fun that characterised its predecessors. TV director Mick Garris doesn’t add anything to take its place. The casting of Argentinian-born Olivia Hussey was a major mistake as she is not remotely credible as Norman’s mother, thus, with the help of Garris's semi-titillating staging of her scenes with young Norman, robbing the film of a critical tonal element.  Rounding out the cast members of note, exploitation-film buff, John Landis, appears in a small role as a radio show producer.

Too removed stylistically from its predecessors, too routine in itself, Psycho IV: The Beginning is strictly for completists.

 

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