Census Flashback: Afterthoughts

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

This week, the last week of Census Flashback, we’re anticipating the dregs of the summer season: Logan Lucky and The Hitman’s Bodyguard. In honor of this last gasp of the project, we’ll be reviewing a movie that isn’t even an 80’s slasher, but completes the mini-marathon we’ve been running within this very segment: the 1990 sequel Psycho IV: The Beginning.

Year: 1990

Director: Mick Garris

Cast: Anthony Perkins, CCH Pounder, Henry Thomas

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

And so goes the mighty slasher franchise. Norman Bates, the granddaddy of the genre whose crimes have spanned decades and been helmed by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitch’s foremost Aussie acolyte, and then eventually Bates himself, finds his fourth and final outing to be a TV movie. It’s nauseating. Mind you, this wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to Norman Bates in the 90’s, and the TV movie is actually quite good, but still. How undignified.

Mother would be furious.

The movie joins late night radio host Fran Ambrose (CCH Pounder) in the middle of her call-in criminal psychology show “The Mother Killers: Boys Who Kill Their Mothers.” In a moment of serendipity so perfect it’s almost like some screenwriter wrote it that way. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is the next caller. He wants to tell his story so people will understand why he killed his mother… and why he’ll kill again tonight. While Fran and her producers scramble to figure out where he is and who he’s targeting, Norman tells the story of the events leading up to his matricide.

As a young man, Norman (played as a teen by Henry Thomas and in one scene as a child by Ryan Finnegan) lives alone with his mother (Olivia Hussey), with whom he has a tempestuous relationship. His burgeoning sexuality is twisted by his needy mother, who alternately eggs him on and punishes him for his lust. When his mother starts dating local bartender Chet (Tom Schuster), Norman’s complex about his libido ignites in the face of his pious mother’s lustful hypocrisy.

Also, young Norman wanders around shirtless for like 90% of the movie.

I don’t like prequels, for the most part. There’s something intrinsically stagnant about the way that the character arc dumps you in a place you’re already intimately familiar with. But Psycho IV, for the most part, does it right. The only reason the “present day” angle is there is to squeeze in a few more moments with Tony Perkins without taxing him too much, but tying Norman’s past with his current condition allows the story a bit of freedom to go unexpected places and further flesh out the character.

And even if the flashback segments don’t provide much new insight, Mick Garris directs them with a flair that’s of a piece with the other two sequels. I’m especially fond of the transitions between past and present that use matching elements – sometimes including Norman himself – to create a distinct visual fluidity. And those scenes in the past have a palette to die for, with soaring candy colors emphasizing Norman’s youth and vitality.

And shirtlessness.

Plus, while I wouldn’t call the casting “brilliant,” it’s at least deeply weird – which it needs to be. Henry Thomas is a compelling presence, capturing Tony Perkins' entrancing all-American charm, with more than a hint of tumultuous eccentricity surging beneath the surface. And while Olivia Hussey in no way matches the version of Norman’s mother the other films have presented, her dubiously-accented rendition is pitched right over the top in a deliriously effective way, providing the feeling of Norman’s relationship with his mother more than the look or sound of any previous actress.

Hussey is perhaps even more unpredictable than her already unstable character, turning even the simple act of drinking iced tea into a three-minute odyssey of bizarre psychosexual mania. She commands the screen, demanding every last ounce of your attention through pure weirdness.

But soft, what light through yonder lunatic breaks?

It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than a made-for-TV third sequel really has any right to be. Mind you, this was made-for-Showtime, so some of the limitations of TV horror are avoided. There aren’t boobs and blood galore, but there’s enough to remind you that the spirit of the 80’s hadn’t quite died yet.

Really, nothing in Psycho IV is bad. There’s a hell of a lot that’s underwhelming, but there’s a distinct difference. For one thing, there’s no conclusion to the CCH Pounder storyline. Personally, I found it the most compelling part of the movie: a lazy night shift is suddenly plunged into chaos by the introduction of a deadly mystery. That’s exactly what I want to stumble across on TV at 2 in the morning. The efforts of the radio crew to keep Norman on the line and eke out details of his plan are essentially the driving force behind whatever narrative this loose collection of vignettes has, but they vanish as soon as he finishes his story, revealing themselves as the cheap framing device they truly were.

Psycho IV deflates like an unknotted balloon, forgetting everything that made it interesting and contorting the final ten minutes into an effects showcase that quite conspicuously avoids actually damaging the Psycho house in any way (Universal Studios would have had a fit), despite that being the only possible conclusion to this particular narrative.

It tiptoes to the finale of a story that has until that point been pretty fearlessly nutty. The disappointing ending isn’t enough to deflate a startlingly solid film, but it does show its hand as the weakest of the Psycho entries. But it’s hard to complain. Four films deep, it should’ve been impossible to make a movie this ultimately satisfying, but they did it against all odds.

Killer: Young Norman Bates (Henry Thomas)

Final Girl: Connie Bates (Donna Mitchell)

Best Kill: The only brutal kill here is CCH Pounder’s plotline, which is ruthlessly murdered.

Sign of the Times: People still listened to the radio.

Scariest Moment: The sound overlay just before the end credits. No spoilers, but it’s a brutal gut punch of an implication.

Weirdest Moment: Norman’s mom tickles him at his dad’s funeral.

Champion Dialogue: “You’ve got a tongue like an elephant’s memory.”

Body Count: 4

1. Holly is stabbed to death.
2. Gloria is garroted and drowned.
3. Chet is poisoned.
4. Norma Bates is poisoned.

TL;DR: Psycho IV: The Beginning is as good as a TV movie Psycho prequel could ever hope to be.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1116

Reviews In This Series

Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)

Psycho II (Franklin, 1983)

Psycho III (Perkins, 1986)

Psycho IV: The Beginning (Garris, 1990)

Board To Tears

For our Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.

Year: 2016

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Annalise Basso

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Sequels are tricky things, especially horror sequels. Recapturing the magic that tingled spines across the nation is a Sisyphean task, and explains the well-meaning but egregious failures of flicks like Exorcist II: The Heretic or Poltergeist II: The Other Side. Ouija: Origin of Evil didn’t have to worry about that, because the original Ouija wasn’t very good at all. But that puts it in a strange position. Should it carry over the elements of the original and be a true sequel, or just scrap everything but the name and start again? The title indicates that they went with the latter, with its scrupulous avoidance of the number 2.

Throw in director Mike Flanagan, who has made a habit of producing solid but not-quite-there 7/10 films, and you have a recipe for a move that could either be an unequivocal nightmare or the Empire Strikes Back of the horror genre. As it turns out, it’s neither. It runs straight down the middle, but what else would you hire Mike Flanagan for?

You’ve done it again, you rascal.

In Ouija: Origin of Evil (which hews oddly closely to the mystery uncovered in the original film, though you don’t need to have seen it to understand the plot), it’s the 1960’s and the Zander family runs a fortune telling business out of their house, as mother Alice (Elizabeth Reaser) fakes contact with the spirit world with the help of her daughters; rebellious teen Lina (Annalise Basso) and 9-year-old Doris (Lulu Wilson).

When Alice decides to add a Ouija board prop to her show, Doris attempts to use it to contact her dead father, accidentally opening a channel to the spirit world. As an evil presence slowly begins to possess her, Alice at first thinks she’s made contact with her late husband, but Lina has her doubts. She enlists her Catholic school principal Father Tom (Henry Thomas) to help her uncover the mystery.

And he seems weirdly OK with the occult, because Blumhouse movies STILL can’t tell the difference between ghosts and demons.

Well, Mike Flanagan has done it again. And by that I mean he has made 2/3 of a good movie. For the vast majority of its run time, Origin of Evil is an admittedly cliché but engaging paranormal horror film until which point it decides to pound a 4Loco and run in circles screaming for 20 minutes, just like Flanagan’s 2013 effort Oculus. The man doesn’t know where to stop, and while that’s not always a drawback in the horror genre, it can also lead to some excruciatingly silly moments.

Origin of Evil reaches that point and hurtles right past it with an indefinitely extended denouement that disgorges layer upon layer of nonsense like an out-of-control frozen yogurt machine. I suppose, as a prequel, there was a limit to how much new material they could add to the plot, leading to this inarticulate fright gag navel gazing. But there’s no denying that the film actively undoes a lot of the good it develops in the first hour.

Luckily, there’s a lot of good in there, even if it’s not particularly innovative. The slow boil of the thrills provides for a good long stretch of subtle gags that use character and tangible practical effects that really nail their mood before they apply the CGI lacquer required by all modern haunting movies. And the reason they can use characters for scares is because they actually have them!

Who knew humans were important in horror movies?

Origin of Evil makes the most of its leads, allowing each and every one of them to develop naturally and explore their own regrets about the past and reaction to the paranormal findings of the present. Even Henry Thomas’ priest is given an unreal amount of attention, giving us a compelling insight into his complex personal motivations before shoving him into an obligatory Exorcist shot and tossing all emotional resonance to the wolves of its bonkers finale. It helps that Flanagan has assembled a solid cast that works hard to earn Ouija’s more dramatic beats, especially Oculus alum Annalise Basso, who has certainly become a young actress to watch out for.

The most fresh, fun element for which I would recommend Ouija: Origin of Evil is its sense of humor, which provides solid, necessary comic relief without undermining either the scares or the reality of the story. Probably the best purveyor of this particular angle is Lina’s friend Betty, played by Alexis G. Zall (boy does this film make great use of its young actors, across the board) who only appears in one scene but steals the film so well she should join the next Ocean’s 11 movie.

While none of these good elements can’t be found elsewhere, there’s no denying that they work. Ouija: Origin of Evil throttles the bland teen horror of Ouija and twists it into an emotional family nightmare cum funhouse thrill ride. That’s a resounding success in my book, even if there’s perhaps no real reason to seek it out for anything other than an in-theaters Halloween sugar rush.

TL;DR: Ouija: Origin of Evil is a decently rewarding, if cliché paranormal picture.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 882
Reviews In This Series
Ouija (White, 2014)
Ouija: Origin of Evil (Flanagan, 2016)