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October 2024: Psycho on Netflix (Also...Psycho II)

posted 4 months ago by roger1 (4026)
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I wrote "Psycho on Netflix (Also Psycho II) " because

..in no way should the quality of the two films be equated or the same reknown be given to Psycho II as to Psycho.

Which puts me at odds with Quentin Tarantino who is on record as liking Psycho II more than Psycho I, and (to some extent), Richard Franklin(director of Psycho II) better than Hitchocck.)

These Tarantino quotes are literally depressing to me, because a man I have the highest respect for as a writer director just comes off as an undiscerning boob as judge of Psycho. (Though I believe it is swanstep who has suggested that QT may just be contrarian for contrarian's sake -- to get a rise out of people like me. Mission accomplished)

Anyway, an article came floating in from somewhere about Psycho being on Netflix for Halloween this October 2024 and how absolutely GREAT Psycho is...how it hasn't diminished in time, how it is still a tense watch, etc.

So I took a glimpse at Psycho on Netflix. And then I took a longer glimpse at Psycho II:

My glimpse at Psycho: Netfllix has the SAME shrunken-square-ratio, slightly scratchy print of Psycho that they had a couple of years ago. Meanwhile over on Prime Video, they have a nice "somewhat widescreen" crystal clear 4K version. What's the deal? Netflix has to take "sloppy seconds" for contract reasons?

Back to Netflix: along with Psycho and Psycho II, they have brought back The Birds which -- as two years ago -- IS a nice big, sorta widescreen print which LOOKS better than Psycho on Netflix but allows one -- by switching from Psycho to The Birds back and forth -- to reveal that The Birds simply has neither the dialogue script, the story, the character, or the acting of Psycho.

The Birds is as famous as Psycho, but to my eyes, its just a comedown and switching back and forth between Psycho and The Birds only reveals the rift more strongly. (The Birds DOES have some absolutely stunning bird attack set pieces -- as landmark in special effects-land as Psycho was in shock. And not JUST special effects -- the one attack that is only SOUND -- almost -- the real birds and puppet birds that work great.)

Now to Psycho II.

I'll toss this out first. Due to the unfortunate fact of being owned by Universal Pictures and being given no respect, these two "blockbuster horror-hybrid classics" -- Jaws and Psycho -- both have AWFUL sequels. The Jaws sequels are demonstrably WORSE (Jaws 3-D and Jaws IV: The Revenge are supremely bad films) but the Psycho sequels -- despite marginally better scripts - aren't much more respectful of the original.

Steven Spielberg is on record as saying that he had no sequel rights to Jaws(he wasn't powerful enough yet) and was so dismayed by the Jaws sequels that he retained sequel rights forever after -- which is why the Jurassic Park films (with 2 directed by Spielberg himself) are at least TECHNICALLY as good as the original. Scripts are OK , too. "Quality controls."

Meanwhile, let it always be noted that Hitchocck wasn't even ALIVE to see ANY of the Psycho sequels . Let it always ALSO be noted that Psycho II didn't get a script and production until 1982...safely after Hitch's demise so he couldn't raise the objections that Spielberg raised to the Jaws sequels. (Hitchcock's family opined that Hitchcock would be "flattered" by a Psycho II, but I'm not so sure.)

Anyway, I watched about half of Psycho II. (So far.)

Some credentials are quite good. The score is by Jerry Goldsmith, one of the greatest and most commercial of film composers, and his key choice is right over the opening credits: a poignant, sad theme that could have gone over "To Kill a Mockingbird" and makes the statement: "This is the story of a poor sad and handsome middle-aged man named Norman Bates. Pity him."
Goldsmith came up with a "new kind of murder music" -- a kind of thumping electronic music -- that's good enough, but IMMEDIATELY takes us out of the musical world of Psycho itself. At least the Jaws sequels ALL used variations on John Williams Jaws theme AND other passages.

Meanwhile, they got two of the original stars of Psycho -- Anthony Perkins(still thin enough after 22 years to wear his original Psycho jacket for the opening scenes) and Vera Miles(still looking pretty trim if a bit more harsh and matronly in the face) .

Well, they got a third star from the original: The Psycho House. Or whatever was left or re-built of the Psycho house circa 1982 filming(for 1983 release.)

But alas, the Psycho house never gets the great shots it got in Psycho (especially the crystaline shots of the house during the Arbogast scenes.) The house looks, as one writer wrote -- "like the Universal Tour Tram is due to pass by at any moment." In short it looks like a FRONT, a set. The excuse that 22 years have allowed the place to age into splintered disrepair is just another way in which Psycho II disrespects the original. There is almost none of the REAL mood of the house.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

The budget was so tight that they couldn't even RE-BUILD an exterior set of the Bates Motel itself.

I got to tour the Psycho II outdoor set in 1982 and -- all they built of the Bates Motel exterior set for scenes was the area at the left in which the office and parlor sit. You will notice that both exterior and some interior scenes take place ONLY in that area.

So instead; in the first shot of Robert Loggia's Dr. Raymond driving Norman up to the motel and house (in his Mercedes -- a good earner, this doc), the high above long shot(a Hitchcock specialty) is of a PAINTING of the entire motel and a PAINTING of the area around the Bates Mansion. And we never see the motel in full again.

But these technical issues are not the core of the problem with Psycho II. Its the script and the story of Psycho II that is just poor -- despite some OK passages -- and trite.

The movie begins -- before the opening credits -- with the neon Bates Motel sign turning on (a clip from the Arbogast-Norman interrogation in the original) and the shower murder scene itself -- a slightly truncated version. This rather "cheats" by allowing the most famous scene in the original to be a part of the new one, and it rather throws away the power of the original -- the surprising sudden death murder of our star (much as I say Hitchocck's 1960 trailer gives it away.)

As the shower murder aftermath concluded with a shot of the old house on the hill...our NEW story begins. The house becomes a dark silouette and slowly lightens to clarity and Goldsmith's beautiful but WAY wrong score plays. That the sequence ends in DAYLIGHT(the Bates House was mostly seen at night) and in COLOR(unavoidable) futher dispels memories of the original.

Then comes an opening scene that pretty much announces how bad this movie is going to be:

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

A courtroom. The sanity hearing and release of Norman Bates to society. The writing is banal, the acting(pretty much by unknowns except for Perkins, Loggia, and Miles) ranges from dull to outright bad(the prosecutor) and Vera Miles' matronly and white-hot mad Lila Loomis(aha, she DID marry Sam) rises to protest the release of a man who murdered 7 people(interesting, only 6 murders were accounted for in the original.)

The ridiculous premise is announced and amplified: a man who commited those 6 or 7 murders -- all of them as horribly as could be committed(knife attacks, strychine poisoning) and who STUFFED HIS MOTHER'S corpse -- is just let out? Impossible.

Lila confronts Norman and Dr. Richman outside the courtroom. It IS nice to see Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles in the same shot together 23 years after Psycho, but the effect is ruined by the dialogue:

Lila:(to Dr. Raymond) How could you allow them to let this murderer OUT? And when he kills again -- and he WILL -- the blood will be on YOUR hands.
Dr. Raymond: He's not a murderer. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Thus begins a rather wacky, bending-over-backwards movie-long attempt to present Norman as some sort of victim, always being coddled and defended by folks like Dr. Raymond and the new sheriff in town(said to be a deputy to Sheriff Chambers from the original.) Its as if the horrific murders that so terrified America(first) and the world in 1960 are to be forgotten, the human monster who committed them restored to "nice guy ness." its an insult.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

Recall Hitchcock scholar Robin Wood's description of Norman's final scene in the cell:

"The sense of finality is intolerable. Yet it is this that makes our release possible. We have been made to see the dark potentialities within all of us, to face the worst thing in the world: eternal damnation."

Eternal damnation. Those heavy words hung over me from 1970(when I bought Wood's book -- and I am quoting from the dog-eared 1970 copy in my bookcase right now) and then I watched them pretty much mocked by Universal studios 13 years later. Eternal damnation? Nah..jobs in a diner and running the motel again..

The opening courtroom scene becomes a dumb premise for dumb developments. Like "the state" getting Norman a job in a local diner(referenced but not seen in the original) where he handles HUGE CUTTING KNIVES.

Also: whereas in the original , the interior of the Bates Mansion was kept mysterious and largely unexplored -- Arbogast dies trying to enter Mother's bedroom and we don't get to go inside that room til the end -- Psycho II stages many scenes in and around the house, converting it into a mystery-free fixer upper.

Its "all those scenes" in Psycho II, a jumbled, not terribly exciting assemblage of mystery moments and silly plot twists -- that further disrespect the perfect and precise structure of the original. And we get Meg Tilly as a young woman who becomes increasingly sympathetic to Norman even as(we learn) she HAS to know she is sharing a house -- and sometimes a room-- with the man who stabbed her aunt to death -- and multiple others -- back in 1960.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

One scene I kinda/sorta liked -- and I've just seen it again, is Norman's confrontation with the "new" motel manager -- a fat, scuzzy sleazeball played by Dennis Franz...a Brian DePalma player(The Fury, Dressed to Kill) soon to be immortalized on Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. A good actor, with a dese-dem-and-dose style that would fit just fine in a Scorsese movie.

The scene is lit well for blue-and-yellow tinted color -- in the motel office, its raining outside behind Norman in the doorway(shades of when Marion Crane met him first) , Franz is behind the desk where Norman used to work -- and confrontation:

Norman: What are these? (Spills pills in the ashtray.)
Franz: I'd say they're drugs.
Norman: What kind of motel are you running here?
Franz: The kind that makes money. People just come in here for a coupla hours then leave.

This scene is in some ways a satisfying re-do of "Norman versus Arbogast" in the office in the original except Norman is known quantity(released psycho killer) and things move to conflict pretty immediately:

Norman: You're FIRED.
Franz: You can't fire me! The hospital board hired me!
Norman: The hospital has no legal rights on me or my property, anymore.

The scene is fine as it goes. It isn't BADLY written, and Franz is certainly a good actor. But one watches it thinking: "Wait a second. What's with this aggressive and confrontational tough guy Norman Bates? Why are we in THIS story? What, really, does this scene do to honor the original?

And then it gets worse. Franz -- a good actor trying to say bad lines -- gets about two more scenes where he keeps yelling "ya psycho!" at Norman -- thereby trivializing one of the great titles (and logos) in movie history.

Franz confronts Norman in the diner the next day in a banal scene, etc. (And yeah, soon thereafter , Franz gets slashed and killed by Mother -- but its not much of a scene, and the Great Jerry Goldsmith's music HERE isn't Herrmann's famous murder music.)

NEXT

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

Once Dennis Franz exits the movie(he's kinda/sorta Arbogast in this one)...things go further downhill. The next killing -- of a nameless male teenager trying to grope his girlfriend in the fruit cellar -- is a re-do of a similar teenager killing in Jaws 2. And the final deaths are simply ridiculous --including the ultra-gory dispatch of Vera Miles' Lila in the same fruit celalr where she escaped murder 23 years earlier(OK, I thought THAT was a nice narrative touch.)

By the very, very, VERY end of Psycho II, the world of Psycho has been restored: A "new" Dead Mother is up in her rocking chair in her room; Norman will live in the house and run the motel. Indeed this set up the marginally better "Psycho III" which had more direct references to Psycho and let us go "backstage with Norman and mother" but still wasn't that good a movie.

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

Psycho II has its fans -- Tarantino - - some folks around here but in the end, it is a classic example of Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman's definitions of movie sequels.

Movie sequels, wrote Goldman "are whore movies." In it for the money only, trying to live off glories past.

The exceptions are very few. Godfather II at the top of the list -- it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1974 just as The Godfather won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1972. But II barely made half of what The Godfather made -- I was there in 1974 and II simply wasn't the same lines-around-the-block big deal as the original. II basically mixes one unfilmed -- and boring -- part of the novel(Young Don Vito) and adds in a sequel story for Michael. Brando and Caan are gone and sorely missed.

AlienS is the best sequel to date IMHO. James Cameron converting Ridley Scott's horror movie into a "horror war movie" with a TOP budget got the job done.

I just saw Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice -- a giant hit for Tim Burton late in his career -- and though I loved seeing and hearing Michael Keaton's famous character again(its rather like Psycho II in that same-guy-decades-later vibe) it, too, in the final analysis is...a whore movie. "Old" characters spend most of the movie explaining the plot of the original movie to "new" characters and the movie just keeps checking off things that were NEW the first time around(giant sandworms, mouths sealed shut, a shrunken head man) but feel worn out now.

Still, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (with a few "Psycho" homages of its own) was given much more respect by its studio, namely: a really big budget.

Oh, well.

Psycho and Psycho II on Netflix. Also The Birds. For Halloween. Even as Psycho is still available(to my knowledge) on Amazon Prime.

Hitchcock's most iconic blockbuster hit lives on...

[–] roger1 (4026) 3 months ago

October 2024:

My glimpse at Psycho: Netfllix has the SAME shrunken-square-ratio, slightly scratchy print of Psycho that they had a couple of years ago. Meanwhile over on Prime Video, they have a nice "somewhat widescreen" crystal clear 4K version. What's the deal? Netflix has to take "sloppy seconds" for contract reasons?

November 2024:

Netflix is still running Psycho (it is Thanksgiving Day as I post this) BUT...the print is NOW that
nice, somewhat widescreen crystal clear 4K version.

I dropped by to check the print on some point about the movie, and I was surprised to see the much better print "filling the TV screen."

Consequently, I daresay -- maybe? -- somebody out there reads this board. It wouldn't be the first time something mentioned here has turned up "out there."

Happy Thanksgiving to those who care about it...and here's hoping that Netflix will keep showing Psycho right up through December 11 -- the day upon which the story of Psycho begins.

[–] david80848688 (331) 4 months ago

I think streaming services should have all the Psycho films (1-4). Of course, 2-4 aren't as classic and as good as the first one, which you can see in the discussions on their own boards. Some people may want to see some extra story or different twists for the character Norman Bates, which happens in 2-4. Psycho II has some names of quality like you mentioned, Jerry Goldsmith and also the screenplay by Tom Holland, who did the now classic 1980's vampire movie, Fright Night (he was probably allowed to make that movie due to the success of Psycho II). Of course, if 1-4 are on the streaming services you can always just watch the original Psycho and ignore 2-4.

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

I think streaming services should have all the Psycho films (1-4). Of course, 2-4 aren't as classic and as good as the first one, which you can see in the discussions on their own boards.

---

I'm of an age to be in a rare place: I lived in 60s and 70s when there was only ONE Psycho and the very IDEA that it would get a sequel was just...an impossibility. (Hitchcock scholar Robin Wood saw Norman facing "eternal damnation" at the end of Psycho and even in the movie the psychiatrist says that Norman will be mother "probably for all time.")

The sequels -- which came rapid-fire 2, 3 and 4 across the 80's and 1990 -- just aren't in the same league. I prefer 3 to 4, but 3 STILL isn't as good as the original.

---

Some people may want to see some extra story or different twists for the character Norman Bates, which happens in 2-4.

--

I would say that this is the "what if?" and "fan fiction" aspect of using Psycho as the base for sequels. So often now, movies are considered "part of a series" rather than as sequels. (Like TV series!) But Psycho -- the original -- was just too landmark and groundbreaking and classic for ANY sequel to match it -- though here's a "what if?": what if ALFRED HITCHCOCK had directed Psycho II?

---

Psycho II has some names of quality like you mentioned, Jerry Goldsmith

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Goldsmith is the big deal. He was "A all the way" and actually beat Bernard Herrmann at the 1976 Oscars for Best Score(his "Omen" score beat the Herrman scores for BOTH Taxi Driver and Obsession -- of course, Herrmann had recently died.)

Still, since half the atmosphere of Psycho is HERRMANN's historic score for it(and the murder scenes), Goldsmith couldn't match THAT.

--

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 4 months ago

and also the screenplay by Tom Holland, who did the now classic 1980's vampire movie, Fright Night (he was probably allowed to make that movie due to the success of Psycho II).

---

Yes -- we must remember that Psycho II WAS a hit of some size in the summer of 1983 -- a few levels below Return of the Jedi that summer but big enough. And both Richard Franklin and Tom Holland got other projects because of it.

Didn't Tom Holland write the original "Child's Play"? Did he invent Chucky?

Its funny. Psycho has a truly great screenplay(insanely not nominated for the 1960 Oscar) by a screenwriter who really didn't go on to make much more of a name for himself: Joseph Stefano. (The Outer Limits TV series was his one other claim to fame.) Stefano's script for Psycho(written under Hitchcock's supervision) is far better than Holland's script for Psycho II..but Holland found employment in "80's horror." It is so HARD for screenwriters to make a name for themselves. Usually they have to direct as well (Tarantino, the Coens.)

--

-Of course, if 1-4 are on the streaming services you can always just watch the original Psycho and ignore 2-4.

---

That's right. In a perfect world, Psychos 2, 3, and 4 simply would not have been made. The story of Psycho ENDED, perfectly "and for all time" in 1960. But the sequels exist. Its our choice: to watch or not to watch.

PS. I've noted that Netflix is showing Psycho and The Birds(both produced/directed by Alfred Hitchcock) and Psycho II this month in October 2024. But Netflix is NOT showing Hitchcock's Frenzy. That was the only psycho killer movie he made after Psycho -- 12 years later in 1972 -- and it got great reviews at the time. But it is a very "hard-R" rated movie with one particular and lingering rape-murder scene -- unlike Psycho and The Birds(made in the censored late Hays Code era), Frenzy is simply considered "too sick to be screened" alongside Psycho and The Birds.