“Nobody must know about her, or what she’s done!”
With Anthony Perkins sliding into the director’s chair for the second sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the series has come full circle; back to its roots as a slasher movie. Each victim is given obligatory screen time before somebody comes along, slices through a throat or stabs a chest.
I’ll bet film critics felt foolish comparing Psycho II to a slasher movie when Psycho III is the true spoof of Jason and Sleepaway Camp movies. Charles Edward Pogue’s script picks up right where the last movie left off, or maybe a little time has passed, as Mrs. Spool from the previous movie is still missing.
Journalist Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxwell) is in town to write a piece about the lunatic defense, and guess who she’s set her sights on but Norman Bates (Perkins).
Add to this, a disgraced religious sister, Maureen Coyle (Diana Scarwid), and a sleazy rockabilly musician, Duke (Jeff Fahey), on different paths who somehow find their way to the Bates Motel. Bates hires Fahey to run the place during the day and promptly falls in lust with Scarwid.
This is a different Norman Bates; a third variant from the blacked-out homicidal maniac who assumes the identity of his domineering mother in the original, or the recovering ex-patient being gaslit by the relatives of his victims.
This is a Norman who knows what he is; who is completely conscious of his acts and understands the monster that he has finally become. So while critics were correct to point out that the Psycho franchise had finally consumed itself because of the slasher movie craze, they, somewhat ironically, missed the boat on the character’s evolving psychology.
October 22, 2026
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