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Psycho IV: The Beginning

Psycho IV. Mick Garris. 1990.

Oh, the soundtrack is by Graeme Revell? I’ve got a couple of SPK albums… they’re… uhm… well, I don’t listen to them a lot.

Still, perhaps that means that the soundtrack isn’t the same boring stuff as usual.

[half an hour passes]

Well, the soundtracks seems… OK? Not very special: The normal dramatic violins all over the place. (And violas.)

The structure of this movie is pretty interesting: It’s based around a radio talk show, and Norman Bates calls in and spills all the beans to CCH Pounder, the host of the show. So we get the backstory told in flashbacks, and we’re wondering how this is going to tie up to the present (because it really has to): Is the psycho CCH Pounder has in the studio going to turn violent and kill the psychiatric experts? Is Norman just killing time until he’s gonna stab somebody? What?

So it’s a good idea, I think, but… it’s pretty boring. The guy who plays Young Norman is OK, but the things that happen to him are pretty tedious.

Spoiler: It turns out to be the mother’s fault.

[forty-five minutes pass]

So this movie is just an excuse for watching Young Norman inexpertly kill a bunch of women at length? I’d worry about Mick Garris after watching this.

[the end]

OK, this is really a movie, but it’s a modest made-for-video movie, and you have to give these things some leeway. For what it is, it’s not as bad as it could be. CCH Pounder is good, and so is Perkins, and … it’s not a good movie by a long shot, but it certainly could have been worse.

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