Alfred Hitchcock, arguably, created the slasher genre in the 60’s with his sublime film Psycho based on Robert Bloch’s shocking (for the time) book of the same name. You would need to be a psycho yourself to try to make a sequel 23 years later.
Well, Richard Franklin didn’t know any better. He made Psycho II anyway.
Richard who? I had to look him up, too. His only other notable film, to my mind, was F/X 2, a criminally underseen action movie of the greatest action movie decade ever. You would have to have nothing to lose to try something like this.
Now, it wasn’t like he did it alone. Somehow, he was able to entice Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles from the original cast to return. Great character actor Robert Loggia and ingénue Meg Tilly round out the cast. Armed with a script from Tom Holland, who has serious horror credits like Fright Night and Child’s Play to his credit, they were ready to take on the classic. (By the way, Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho II is nothing like the film and a little meta. I often think it was the blueprint to some of the 90’s slashers that followed Scream.)
Except they weren’t. At least not completely. While Franklin mimics some of Hitchcock’s most flashy shots from the original, it feels like imitation…not homage. The Jerry Goldsmith score, while perfectly serviceable, can’t replace the rip-roaring theme by Bernard Herrmann. The project, though, is well produced and the script is solid in amping up Norman from a seemingly weak goof at the beginning of the flick to the deranged mad man we all know and love as the film progresses.
So, the movie doesn’t quite stack up to what is considered one of the greatest directors of all time’s top five films…but what can??? They did a good job with this film and it is a fun little fear machine. Enjoy it for what it is and try not to compare it to the original so much that you lose this movie’s merits in the process.
