Psycho II: The Wrath of Ma

A sequel to what's considered one of the best movies of all time sounds like insanity, and while I'm not really fond of Psycho II, it could have turned out worse. The movie has some clever ideas -- maybe tries to be a little too clever -- and a lot of my problems are in the execution and in some of the casting choices. (Namely: Meg Tilly, who I think is miscast as Mary.) It's not entirely plausible, in my opinion, and not subtle, forgoing the thriller and atmospheric horror of the original in favor of a mystery-suspense plot that takes brief excursions into slasher movie territory. (I'm assuming Psycho II came about as a way to ride the popular Halloween slasher cash wave. Which is funny when you think of how Halloween wouldn't exist without the original Psycho.)

I think when Hollywood tries to make a sequel so long after the fact it should be approached with suspicion or even apprehension -- maybe the style of filmmaking has changed too much, maybe the actors have gotten lazier, maybe there's too much corporate greed driving it -- but Psycho II has an interesting premise which necessitates a lengthy passage of time. (Though, again, I'm not sure of its plausibility.)

After two decades of psychiatric care, Norman Bates is deemed well enough to release. While 22 years is a long time, and you might find it striking to see how aged Bates/Perkins looks, Norman's problems were so severe, you're wondering right off the bat how he could come close to approaching being healed. But, there he is, despite protests and petitions, being cut loose. Strike two for plausibility? That Norman's psychiatrist thinks it's suitable to take him back to the Bates house and motel on the Universal lot to live. There's exposure therapy, sure, but letting Norman out and taking him immediately to such a traumatic place for him? Bad news waiting to happen. Norman's even apprehensive and twitchy about being there, but the Doc is all "Hey, c'mon! It's home. You'll be comfortable here. Forget all of those bad memories, Norman! Hey, too bad the state has cut back on our budget so we can't have someone tend to you full time, as planned, but that would get in the way of your murderin' for our sequel!"

Strike three of plausibility is the idea of someone immediately scooping Norman up for work. While Norman was never convicted of murder (by reason of insanity), I know of the real life programs that give jobs to ex-cons, and while the character employing him says they're doing it out of Christian duty (but her real motivations come up later), I still don't really buy it. The very same day he's released, he gets a job. And it's a small town, so you know everyone has heard Norman's story. They've had 22 years to tell it, to gossip, to have it grow and mutate. And everybody's pretty much OK with him! A dude who kept his mom's corpse, dressed up like her, killed several people and buried 'em in a swamp...I don't think a lot of people are going to be eager to have their lunches cooked by him.

The main idea of this movie is interesting. On the surface, Norman seems better. He seems he wants to stay better. But someone is cruelly trying to manipulate him and push him over the edge. It's damned cruel, but it works with the whole way Hitchcock and Perkins were trying to make you pity Norman in the original. And the people trying to push him over the edge...Lila Crane, Marion's sister from the original, and her daughter Mary, who works at the diner and befriends Norman. (Though she's not Lila Crane anymore, but Lila Loomis. This movie marries her to Sam, which I think is a big mistake, just making Sam and Lila both look coldhearted. Like "Hey! Good thing Marion got killed, or else I couldn't have shacked up with you! Fuck Marion, who needed her, anyway?" If the original's screenwriter, Joseph Stefano, thought a romance between Sam and Lila was a plot turn best avoided, I think it should have remained avoided.)

Vera Miles returns as Lila, who's out for revenge, her and Mary playing tricks on Norman -- passing through his house dressed as his mother, leaving him notes, pestering him on the phone -- with the goal to get him to snap, so he'd be recommitted, with the key thrown away. Vicious, but you can imagine Lila doing something like it. (Another lapse of plausibility, though? I don't think she'd endanger her daughter by making her do these things. Knowing damn well what Norman's capable of, and after losing her husband, I don't think she'd just throw her daughter into the center of danger.) The joke's on Lila, though, because Mary ends up feeling sorry for Norman and rejects her mother's plan and tries to protect him.

Meanwhile, Norman slips more and more, insisting he's been talking to his mother. (The movie gets pretty repetitive, with all of the Norma mind-games going on and denials and mother this and mother that -- you have yourself one motherfuck of a drinking game here.) While Mary's certain it's Lila resuming her plan, she starts to suspect there's a third player when the little mind-games that have been played on Norman begin to escalate...with MURDER! It's an interesting twist, and the film makes it clear it's not just Norman picking up old habits, but it results in a sloppy retcon of a climax...

The seemingly kindly old woman who hired Norman at her diner ends up being Norma Bates' sister, who claims Norman is actually her son, and she had him out of wedlock when she was young and was a nut who was institutionalized so Norma raised Norman and...yeah. Retcon, and pretty much goes against any of the background info you heard about Norman in the original. And it's a retcon that doesn't even stick, it ends up getting retconned itself, so it becomes a nice mess. After Norman's been cleared of this movie's crimes, Mrs. Spool confesses to him that she was responsible. Norman's just listening casually and kills her, taking her corpse to Norma's room. I think it's meant to be a "fuck yeah, the Psycho is back!" moment, but it doesn't work for me...

And I know the point of the reveal is that Norman's snapped again, and it doesn't even matter who Norma Bates was, who his mother really was -- it's always been Norman and his mind's representation of his mother. There is no Mother, only Norman, and it doesn't matter what dead body is sitting in the Bates house as long as he believes it's his mother. But...it doesn't work for me. Part of it's the retcon, because I think the point could have been made without the "twist" that Mrs. Pool was his actual mother, but it's also the way it removes any ambiguity. If you're meant to pity Norman, and never be sure if his killing is his mental condition or not, this removes any doubt as he casually and deliberately kills Mrs. Pool for the sake of continuing his crimes. It just seems like there hasn't been any progression made, and that the movie just went in a circle and ended the character where he started.

And for as harsh as Lila's plan was, I think the movie goes overboard in how they handle her and Mary's demises. Lila, a character and actress from the original, is given a nasty, Friday the 13th-styled death, where she's stabbed through the mouth with a butcher's knife to the point where the blade pops out through the back of her skull. Grisly overkill, and the type of death that Game of Thrones uses to dispose of their nastiest characters.

I assume Mary's death is meant to be tragic and a Hitchcockian twist, in which she tries to convince Norman there's no Mother by again dressing like her. Once she discovers Lila is dead, she flips out and tries to defend herself with a knife, stabbing Norman, who is further cut by grabbing onto the blade. The police show up, with knowledge of Lila and Mary's plan and seeing Norman with what looks like defensive wounds on his hands, and mistakenly gun down Mary. This is going just one twist too far, and the way it's handled makes the police characters look incompetent.

The movie goes on about 25 minutes too long, takes one turn too many and yet somehow feels like it's just chasing its tail.

So Cool, Brewster

Fright Night is one of my favorite horror movies. Its premise is extremely clever, and it's just a well made and filmed movie at a time when a lot of horror movies didn't have love put into them because they were copycatting a Jason or Michael.

The movie has a lot of elements of classic Dracula or vampire stories, but completely contemporizes them. Main antagonist Jerry Dandrige follows the typical Dracula type template -- he can be smooth, he can be charming, but he's still dangerous -- and brings him into the '80s, into the city. Farewell 19th century, farewell backlots mimicking London. But here's part one of what makes the movie gets really creative...the vampire is facing people who are well-versed in how to deal with him: horror fans. Part 2? That the horror fans, when every adult fails to help them, turn to a failed horror actor for help. That's just a stroke of genius to me, and writer-director Tom Holland has said that the movie only lingered in his mind until he came up with Peter Vincent, and after that flash of brilliance, the entire movie wrote itself. The characters and movie are aware of movies and genre convention, but not to the annoying degree of something like Scream, to where everything is a reference and it's really putting down the genre and has characters who think they're superior to typical genre characters, but fall into the same trap as those they ridicule.

People who criticize this movie think the premise is "cheesy" or "unrealistic," when you just need to go with the flow. You have to keep in mind the ages of the protagonists. At 16 years old, what choices do you have? Charley already tried to get his mom to help, but she's self-involved. He went to the police, they wouldn't listen. In his movie-obsessed mind, the only option left was someone who had done decades worth of fake vampire hunting, who had enough experience to know what to do and what they're up against.

It's a well made movie. The casting is great, the performances are good, everyone is likable. It's one of the rare horror movies that is comedic, but still scary. (I like to try to avoid calling it a "horror comedy," because that detracts from just how scary it actually is.) Honestly, while I like a lot of vampire stories, to me they're not really the scariest, but Fright Night has a lot of imaginative vampire designs that I actually DO find scary. When Jerry goes monstrous or how Evil Ed ends up and especially Amy with the shark mouth? That's scarier than that whole Lost Boys look, with their Klingon foreheads, which most vampire movies and shows have stuck with since. (Some people associate the look with Buffy, but Buffy ripped it off of The Lost Boys.)

For a lot of people, one character stands out. And for as much as this movie has going for it, I think without this character, without this specific piece of casting, the movie would be remembered less. That character is, of course, Stephen Geoffreys' Evil Ed. Where Charley Brewster is meant to be a horror fan, he kind of represents to me the type of casual fan who's a bit of a dabbler, who likes horror, but his attention can be swayed elsewhere. He's a "normal" fan, who will probably eventually abandon his being a fan and anything associated to that fandom -- including friends -- for a shot of "normalcy." Evil Ed is the bigger horror fan. Look at his room. This kid breathes horror, bleeds horror. He's the one who helps Charley further understand vampire rules, he's the one who impresses Peter Vincent with his knowledge of Peter's old movies. He hears the grisly newscasts about the murders and see Charley's descent into obsession over the possibility of Jerry being a vampire -- his town, his life, is turning into a horror movie all around him and he loves it. Evil's the die-hard fan who's often the point of ridicule, who knows he's not seen as "normal."

Evil Ed's seen as a nerd and an outcast and a weirdo -- look at the nickname he's earned. And he puts up this front about not believing Charley. While he enjoys the idea of his life turning into a horror movie, I don't think he's quite as wicked or "evil" as people in the movie and in the fandom think he is. He wants to think there are creatures out there in the night, but the idea still frightens him. He's still obviously scared deep down. Look how panicked and desperate he is when Jerry's after him. He gets cornered and bursts into tears knowing he's dead. But Jerry, in the smooth talking charm of Dracula, offers him power. A power Evil thought he'd never have, the power to be better than the "normal" folks who torment and ridicule him. The power of one of the monsters from the movies he loves. A power that can show those who have judged him what evil really can mean. He'll become the monster he's always been accused of being. His life now completely a horror movie, with him as its featured monster, he really lets loose.

We've seen a dozen mopey vampires in movies or on TV -- Jerry included -- but in Evil Ed we have a vampire who really loves being a vampire and is going to use it to his full advantage. It's interesting to me that the movie takes a character who was good, who was normal, and turns them into an antagonist. Unfortunately, once Evil Ed is injured by Peter, he drops out of a big chunk of the movie, until his one last scene at the end. And the movies loses a lot of life. The quirky energy, the manic glee brought to the character and movie by Geoffreys really energizes the movie and you don't quite realize just how much until he takes an absence. Geoffreys is such a good match for the character and gives him such unique life it's hard to believe he was under the impression he'd be playing Charley. I didn't care much for the remake, but was surprised that Colin Farrell often expressed how much he liked the original in interviews, even singling out Stephen Geoffreys and his performance as Evil Ed.

And, of course, the movie ends with a hint that Evil Ed has survived to terrorize another day. There's only been rumors and speculation, but most people seem to think he would have been the primary antagonist of Fright Night 2. I know the comics had this bizarre storyline of Evil Ed returning and running a nightclub, but...yeah, those comics were nonsense. Fright Night 2 itself ended up being a really weak and forgettable movie, a cheap, lazy and half-hearted flip of the first one. So I think it's better that Evil Ed and Geoffreys were left untainted by inferior follow-ups. (Tom Holland says he had written a spec script for Fright Night 2 that the studio nixed because they wanted someone new...and cheaper. I'm really curious what Holland would have done with a sequel, but he sidestepped the question when I asked.)

Horror fans seem to generally think positively about Fright Night. At the time, it was successful at the box office. Yet I always thought it kind of slipped between the cracks. (So I was surprised that it was deemed big enough to remake.) The Lost Boys -- which Fright Night is constantly pitted against by horror fans -- certainly seems more well known. Even feeling like Fright Night was a little under the radar, I felt a flicker of hope that maybe they'd make a couple of figures from the movie once I saw Lost Boys figures coming out. You could do vampire Jerry, Evil, shark-mouth Amy. But...no. Evil Ed's good enough to put on T-shirts, but not have a figure?! So it again falls to fans to make their own figures. Here's the custom Evil Ed I had made:

Boxed, front and back.

Before and after vamping out.