FRANCHISE ME: PSYCHO III

Another nice write-up, and I'm flattered by the quote. Anyhoo, a bit of trivia: Juliette Cummins, the fetching redhead who bared witness to Fahey's improptu light show and who gets mudered in the telephone booth, is a slasher movie also ran who appeared in Friday the 13th V: A New Beginning (she's the one who gets impaled by a machete while lying in bed, topless, naturally) and Slumber Party Massacre II (where she looks especially smashable). Seems that she developed something a habit of getting shanked in inferior sequels. I would say that she has the disctinction of getting killed by by two of cinema's foremost murderous icons, but then I'd have to ignore the Scooby Doo reveal of F13 pt. 5. For an unappreciated scholar of slasher films such as myself, her presence adds to Psycho 3's slasher movie ambiance.

You bring it up in your article, but Maureen's "There is no God!!!" line that opens the film immediately tells you that this is going to be one seriously silly ride. Pogue is such a ham. Other than that, yeah, Norman-Mother adjusting the picture as he stalks Tracy is a great bit of character from Perkins. Bits like that really help keep the film afloat while it's creating all sorts of contrived circumstances to put beautiful female victims in Norman's path.

I love poor Norman just trying to paint that goddamn motel a cheerful yellow and be normal. And the garish lighting here, compared to Cundey's comparatively reserved stuff in II.

It's easy to imagine Perkins being uneasy about making II and having that work for the character. You can see him really enjoying himself in III.

You're right in that it pairs nicely with II. I still have this one sheet!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phil 

You can see him really enjoying himself in III.

Yeah, the whole movie feels like everyone had a blast.

There's just some kind of special takeaway lesson in watching Perkins fully embrace the role which more or less ruined his career, and I see that more in III than II.

You're correct about its shortcomings, but the movie doesn't seem to give a crap how it measures up to anything. It knows what it is, and the heat is off.

The third one is my favorite of the sequels. Love this write-up, and that gif! The first time I saw Psycho III was on cable way back when I was a kid. I hadn't even seen II yet, so it was a little strange to jump to this odd sex scene with a blurred out background featuring a greasy guy waving two lamps over his dick. I was like "is this what all R rated movies are like?" Unfortunately not.

Thought they were trying to shove in a sequel to 'Vertigo' with Maureen's opening scenes in the convent bell-tower...also, she has the most AMAZING powers of recuperation/ flesh-regeneration; from Norman finding her in the bath with slit-wrists, to her in the hospital with inch-thick bandages, to Norman dancing with her in the 'ballroom' is less than 48-hours, yet all she wears across her cuts are two small band-aids (and in some shots I don't even think THEY are there...).

...and as Phil mentioned...the colored filters...THE GODDAMNED COLORED FILTERS!

Because Psycho II was a commercial success, I think everyone was at ease with III. Making a sequel to Psycho was a shot in the dark if anyone would even want to pay to go see it without Hitchcock and it paid off. They waited too long to release the third film which is why I think it tanked at the box office leaving the fourth to TV.

100% agreed.

Anyway, I finally got around to catching up with this one again.  It's only the second time I've seen it (last year was the first) and I still really like it.  Bates Motel aside, this is a pretty damn solid franchise.

BTW, I liked the fact that they brought most of the actors from the second one back.  That doesn't happen too often, especially in slasher sequels.