Retro Review: Psycho III (1986)

Happy Halloween everyone! As is now my tradition, it's time to review a "Psycho" movie on Halloween. This I plan on doing until I run out of "Psycho" movies to review. There's five of them if you're wondering. Four with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and one blasphemous remake. Today's subject is "Psycho III," which was directed by Anthony Perkins himself in his directorial debut. As a refresher course, I often claim "Psycho" as my favorite movie, which is why I made it my Halloween review when I started this series of Halloween reviews two years ago. Then I thought it would be fun to dive into all of the sequels because not many people realize they exist. They were put into production in the 80's, after Hitchcock had passed away, seemingly to cash in on the trend of horror franchises that started going rampant with the likes of "Halloween," "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street." They are 100 percent a shameless cash grab and thus you might think that there's no initial value, but they're actually a lot better than they have any right to be. "Psycho II" is especially shockingly good, even though it does get carried away with too many twists and not enough streamlined focus. "Psycho III"? Well... it's a bit of a handful, but there's still value here.

First of all, as far as the premise goes, this movie takes place shortly after "Psycho II" leaves off. The two movies are a companion piece, much like "Halloween" and "Halloween II." In fact, I was reminded last night that one of the big twists at the end of that movie plays very heavily into this movie as we're certainly not done twisting and turning, adding to the Norman Bates mythology that didn't necessarily need to be expanded on, but the writers had a lot of fun doing so. Spoilers for "Psycho II" if you haven't seen that one and still want to without being informed of what happens, but I kinda need to talk about that in order to even bring up the premise of "Psycho III." Emma Spool. She's Norman's aunt. Norma's sister. She shows up at the end of "Psycho II" and reveals that she is Norman's real mother. Is she telling the truth? Well, we'll get to that. But Norman quickly poisoned her and banged her on the head with a shovel, killing her. Then he took her corpse up to his room to become his new mother. And I had to tell you that because that's where "Psycho III" picks up. People are still investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Spool. As they do so, she takes on the new role of Norman's mother, arguing with him and haunting him as he tries to maintain some normalcy.

I think the good part of this movie is the continuation of Norman's arc. It is a bit of a regurgitation from "Psycho II," but it remains the highlight of this movie because Anthony Perkins does such a great job in this role. By the time this movie had come out, he had over 25+ years of experience as this character. He knows how Norman is supposed to act and respond. And the fact that he was also the director of the movie means that he can steer the ship where he wants it to go rather than relying on another character being able to make sure things go right. Thus I buy this constant torment that Norman has with himself and I like the fact that he's able to gain more control over it. There's even a scene where he's walking into the bathroom to seemingly kill this girl while she's in the tub, but ends up saving her life as she had attempted to commit suicide. Because of that, I was able to buy into the conflict he had with this whole situation and it made sense that this new girl, named Maureen Coyle, was able to fall for Norman because he saved her life. And while Norman was also equally attracted to her, she started a whole bunch of triggers in his head because she had a striking resemblance to Marion Crane, even having the same initials and similar suitcase.

While this relationship and Norman's continued conflict is of genuine interest and executed fairly well, unfortunately that's about as far as I can get when it comes to the positives in this movie. It's everything else that starts bogging up the movie. First of all, I do have to bring up the fact that there's a significant age gap between Norman and Maureen. I don't know how old the characters are supposed to be, but Anthony Perkins was 54 when this movie was released while Diana Scarwid, who plays Maureen, was 31. It's true that Perkins still manages to pull off a charming and charismatic older Norman, but there's still a 23 year age gap there that makes it so there's not as much emotional weight in that relationship, which is what this movie heavily relies on. In the original "Psycho," Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh as Norman and Marion had so much natural chemistry together, as well as nearly equally as conflicting backstories, that it made everything very beautiful and hauntingly tragic when Norman lost control and killed her. Maureen Coyle as a discount Marion Crane just isn't that interesting. And I also found myself not caring much for her backstory as a suicidal nun who decided God doesn't exist and ran away from her duties.

It also borders too far into the realm of being too repetitive. A beautiful and conflicted blonde runs away from her obligations and winds up at the Bates Motel, causing Norman to enter into a conflicted torment. It's a been there, done that sort of thing. And as the movie repeats some of the same exact elements of the first movie, especially as we get to the end where they even repeat the falling down the steps thing in the same exact way that Hitchcock did, "Psycho III" begins to feel less and less like its own thing and more like something that's just copying and pasting from better material. Even though "Psycho II" and the recent "Bates Motel" TV series also used some of the same signatures of this franchise, they managed to successfully be their own thing. "Psycho II" specifically felt like a proper continuation of what would happen with Lila Crane and Norman Bates if Norman was released into society 20 years after his incarceration and there's plenty of mystery and suspense as a new, intriguing story starts to unravel. "Psycho III" just begins to feel like they ran out of ideas and didn't know what else to do with this franchise, but continued out of obligation in order to keep up with the other 80's horror franchises that were still going strong, at least in terms of quantity.

Because of this, even though Anthony Perkins the actor will forever have a special place in my heart for what he brought to the table with Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins the director showed that perhaps directing wasn't quite his thing. Now I don't know all of the history behind the production of this movie. Perhaps Universal themselves should get at least some of the blame along with screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue, but it was Anthony Perkins steering the ship and when the ship as a whole just doesn't go anywhere interesting, the captain of the ship has to take a brunt of the blame, just like the coach of a football team or the manager of the business. There just wasn't anything super unique about this film to help it stand on its own. When the movie did try to branch off and do its own thing, it becomes a complete disaster. As I said, nothing about Maureen and her life as a Nun was very interesting. But also taking front and center stage was a character named Duane Duke, who attempts to rape Maureen at the beginning, then later shows all kinds of disrespect towards every woman he meets. And for some reason he becomes a huge character in this as he's trying to help crack the case as to what's up with Norman Bates.

In solving this mystery, he teams up, or rather is recruited by a random journalist, another character who I don't care about. She's just an angry, annoying journalist who is trying to probe the situation despite having no connections with Norman Bates. When Sam Loomis and Lila Crane started to investigate what's going on with Norman Bates in the first movie, there's some strong emotional connection with them as they are well written characters. They also have a specific connection to the case as it's Lila's sister Marion that has gone missing. So "Psycho III" lacks the personal connection, or solid motivation, with our side characters and they also aren't likable at all. I was waiting for them to get killed by Norman so they can stop bogging down the film. And that's not a right thing to cheer for. Every death in "Psycho" is tragic and upsetting. Not once do I find joy in someone's demise. And on that note, the first two kills in this movie are borderline extras. Two girls get killed who I'm not even sure are given names. And if they do have names that I don't remember, they most certainly aren't given a backstory. They just show up to get killed, making this movie fall into some bad tropes of the most throwaway 80's slashers that are all about the gore and nothing else.

The other major sin is how easily Emma Spool, Norman's aunt, takes on the role of his new mother figure who he argues with. In the "Psycho" lore, Norman initially took on the Mother persona because he was so traumatized with his killing of his mother, who he knew and loved for years. That sent him spiraling out of control into a severe case of Dissociative Identity Disorder. There's no trauma regarding his "new" mother. He killed her as more of an afterthought in "Psycho II" and now she has even more control over his mind in this movie. It almost treads the line of a supernatural occurrence of her demon haunting Norman and yelling at him a lot, rather it being Norman having lost complete control over his mind. The supernatural is not where this movie goes. But the execution just isn't there to make it believable this time around. And there's not even a major twist in this movie that blows your mind. It just progresses naturally as more of a drama than a twisted psychological thriller and leaves you feeling a bit empty. Some of the deaths have no weight because you're glad they happened while other deaths have no weight because there was no reason for them to happen. And the finale of the film doesn't leave you in a haunted daze. Rather, there's a lot of confusion, which is not what you want from your movie's ending.

For the sake of being a personal reference guide, this next paragraph is going to be a spoiler-filled paragraph where I dive into the details of the ending. If you want to check this out, turn away. If you've already seen this movie or don't care about spoilers, then lets proceed because I'm going to need these details for when I discuss "Psycho IV" next year, which is actually a prequel to the original. As it turns out, the big twist of this movie is a twist that retcons the twist in "Psycho II." Emma Spool is NOT Norman's mother. She is his aunt. But she was jealous of Norma as she was in love with Mr. Bates. She killed Mr. Bates and kidnapped Norman as she felt that Norman was the son that her and Mr. Bates should've had, rather than Norma and Mr. Bates. But then she gets discovered, is institutionalized, and Norman is returned to Norma. This I was fine with. It works better than what we learned in "Psycho II." And it does connect with that film as a continuation of the story arc. But all of this is important because "Psycho IV," in telling this beginning, tells a completely different story of what happened. We'll explore all of that next year. In short, "Psycho IV" is fine as a standalone film, but is very frustrating with how much continuity errors there are.

More spoilers in regard to the ending of "Psycho III" in present time, the conclusion of Maureen's ends with her dying, but not because of the fact that Norman lost it and killed her. He was actually fairly sane. At least to some degree. But she dies because because Mother's final scream (which is Norman's final scream, even though it comes from the bedroom while Norman is in the hall?) startles her and she falls down the stairs, becoming impaled on an arrow. That was disappointing because she died just for the sake of dying rather than dying in an emotional way that has meaning. The franchise felt the need to kill off all of the characters rather than letting some of them survive. However, our journalist lady then comes in and confronts Norman. And she DOESN'T die. Even though Mother orders Norman to kill her, Norman takes control of himself and instead stabs the corpse of Mother, seemingly destroying that personality. I thought this was a very solid conclusion to Norman's arc. Then when he gets arrested after the police learn that he was indeed behind all of the killings, he mentions that he feels free, so he doesn't mind being arrested. That would've a fine ending, until we learn that Norman kept a piece of Mother's hand, meaning he's not free.

And that's how we conclude this version of the Anthony Perkins interpretation of Norman Bates. There's still two more movies to review, but one is a weird prequel and the other is an unnecessary and shameless remake with no heart and soul. So given that "Psycho III" is the ending of Norman's arc, it's sad that we leave it off on a disappointing and unsatisfying conclusion. That said, this movie is fine enough. I'm certainly not upset at its existence and if you want to get another fix of Norman Bates, watching "Psycho II" and "Psycho III" is a worthwhile undertaking. But in reality, "Psycho" is 100 percent satisfactory as a standalone movie, which is what Hitchcock intended on it being. They're just a product of their times and very much reflect the era of 80's horror. If you like 80's slashers, you actually might enjoy "Psycho II" and "Psycho III" a lot more than you might think. But if you're going for pure Hitchcockian magic, neither of them quite hit the mark. And the fact that I always forget what happens in what movie might be their biggest flaw as they're simply just not as memorable as the classic original. That said, I still gave "Psycho II" an 8/10 last year. I stand by that. With "Psycho III," we're going a few notches lower and awarding it a disappointing 6/10.