"Aint It Cool?" A Death Match Between Norman Bates and Patrick Bateman

A "guilty pleasure" movie website that I sometimes visit is called "Aint It Cool News" named after villain John Travolta's line to hero Christian Slater in the so-so 90's action thriller "Broken Arrow":

Slater: You're insane!
Travolta: Yeah...ain't it cool?

Ain't It Cool News is for people a lot younger than me and yet, QT frequents it and had a friendship with the young founder of the website(who was expunged, I think for metoo reasons.) Aint It Cool News has Texas roots and often ties into the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Texas...which appears briefly in QT's "Death Proof."(2007.)

So anyway, if QT can go to the "Aint It Cool News" website, I can too.

And they've got this rather "youthful" series of fan fiction essays going on where famous monsters fight each other -- one on one -- (The Wolf Man versus the Creature from the Black Lagoon) . The winner advances to the next round and fights another monster. Like with football or pro wrestling. I read a couple of these essays and decided...they are indeed for a younger generation.

But then...I glanced to that column the other day and the death match was: "Norman Bates versus Patrick Bateman." Patrick Bateman is the lead(of course?) in "American Psycho," and was played by a young Christian Bale in the film. Its believed that the name "Bateman" was, indeed, an homage to you-know-who.

I report on "Norman Bates versus Patrick Bateman" because, well, it gives me a "youthful" post to make on Psycho, and it was interesting in certain ways.

The fan fiction has Patrick Bateman bringing a female victim to the Bates Motel and Cabin One, for sex followed by slaughter. But Norman ...and then Mother...get in the way.

I don't think its much of a spoiler to say that Bateman kills Bates , here. And this is where the writer's post-story explanation(ala Hitchcock at the end of his TV show) gets interesting: In explaining why Norman Bates loses, the writer points out, "I always felt that Norman was kind of a wimpy character" and that "he only truly is able to kill his victims when he has the element of surprise"(very true with the formidable Arbogast, true enough with Marion and -- he loses to Sam in the fruit cellar in the end.)

Its the same old thing here for me with this "fan fiction" -- flattering that My Guy Norman Bates merits a mention in a 2019 article mainly for youth; NOT so flattering in the "devaluation" of how wonderfully terrifying the "mysterious Mrs. Bates" was in 1960; Norman shouldn't be viewed simply as "a wimpy guy." He was so much more. And so was Mrs. Bates in her murdering mode.

And...that's all I got.

Ain't it cool?

PS. After killing Norman Bates at the Bates Motel...Bateman DOES kill the woman with him, too.