Psycho II

Psycho II. Richard Franklin. 1983. ⚃

The odd thing about a sequel to Psycho is that it took over two decades for it to happen. Hitchcock died in 1980, though, so perhaps they couldn’t get any traction for it before that?

I did see this one on VHS back in the 80s, and I remember it being… a better than average 80s horror movie? The reason I’m watching it now isn’t because of any great nostalgia towards it or anything, but I somehow bought a Psycho box set (with all the five? six? movies).

And since there’s nothing horrifying going on in the world, I might as well start watching now. (I skipped the first one, because I re-watched that some months back.)

[forty minutes pass]

Hey, this isn’t bad. I mean… it’s no Psycho, but few movies are. This is pretty tense and well made. I mean, they managed to make a scene where Perkins I mean Norman no I mean Perkins was chopping some iceberg lettuce exciting. That’s good editing.

[forty minutes pass]

Uhm… it’s OK, I guess? But some of these scenes are getting pretty tedious. They had a good thing going, but then there was a couple of boring scenes, and then I lost interest. That’s the problem with movies of this ilk (what species of deer is that, anyway?) that it doesn’t take much to spike the interest.

With just a bit of editing… just dropping, say, ten minutes… this would have been a really fun little movie: It’s got a pretty interesting plot, as a slasher movie goes, performances that are just the right side of scenery chewing, and doesn’t annoy in any way.

[the end]

That was a good twist at the end there, I think? I mean, the many twists.