- Directed by Richard Franklin
- Written by Tom Holland, Robert Bloch
- Stars Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Meg Tilly
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 53 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKprv08HI0s
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a years later sequel to the first “Psycho” movie. Norman is all better and is being released. The Bates Motel and the overlooking house are still there waiting for him. And things get more complicated from there. It’s heavy on mystery and drama, and nicely done. Very entertaining and a worthy sequel.
Synopsis
We open with the famous shower scene from the original “Psycho.” Credits roll.
We come back to a courtroom. Lila Loomis is there, and she’s got a petition with more than 700 people who don’t want Norman Bates released from the mental hospital. The judge asks her to leave and then he releases Norman, who is declared sane and cured. Dr. Raymon declares that Norman is fine now, but Lila isn’t having it.
Norman goes home to the motel, which is still there. Mr. Toomey has been running the motel in Norman’s absence. The doctor warns him that memories are more likely to return with him living here, but he knows how to deal with that now.
Almost immediately, he finds a note from his mother and hears her voice. He’s so afraid that he drops his clothes down the steps.
He goes to a diner in town where he’s gotten a job as a cook’s helper. He meets Myrna and Mary, waitresses and Ralph, the cook. Mrs. Spool is the manager. He hears Mary arguing with her boyfriend on the phone and learns that she doesn’t have anywhere to go. He offers her a room at the motel.
Mr. Toomey comes in and Norman meets him for the first time. Norman finds drugs in the office as well as people having sex in the rooms. Norman’s not pleased. Toomey shrugs, “They stay a few hours, and they leave.” It’s that kind of hotel, and Norman fires him. Toomey’s not nice about any of it.
Norman and Mary have sandwiches, and she hands him a great big shiny knife, and he’s all weird and nervous about it. She’s a little nervous about him and thinks he’s up to something. Mary knows a little of Norman’s history, so he tells her half the story. He then begs her to stay because he’s afraid to stay by himself tonight.
He shows her to her room and leaves her alone. She goes to bed with a chair under the doorknob. Nothing happens.
The next morning, Mary comes to work and tells Norman that she’s going to live in town with a friend. Toomey comes in, and Norman isn’t happy to see him. He’s also rude with Mary, accusing her of spending the night with Norman. He presses the point, and argues with Norman. Norman finds another note from mother, and gets upset. No one else sees the note, and Ralph sends him home.
That evening, Mary comes back to stay at Norman’s again. She goes upstairs and takes a shower. Nothing happens, but we see someone peeping through a hole in the wall. Toomey, obviously drunk, starts yelling outside. Norman gets a phone call from “his mother,” and he thinks it’s Toomey.
Toomey turns around and sees someone in a dress. Someone in a dress with a big knife. Someone who kills Toomey.
Dr. Raymond turns up the next day, wanting to know why Norman quit the diner. Norman says that he fired Toomey and is running the motel himself now. Mary finds the hole in the wall, and it leads to Mother’s room. Raymond goes to see Sheriff Hunt and they talk about Norman. Raymond wants them to tap Norman’s phone and listen for “Mother’s” calls, but Hunt says he can’t do that.
Norman, down at the motel, sees his mother standing in the window up at the house. He runs there, but doesn’t find anyone inside. We cut to some kids breaking into the basement of the house; they’ve done this before. They hear something in the next room— it’s the knife-wielding, dress-wearing person. The girl gets away, but the boy becomes meat.
Mary lets Norman out of the attic; he was locked in. He says it was whoever had been pretending to be his mother. He says there’s a note, but she doesn’t see it. The police come to the door; the girl told them that she saw her boyfriend murdered in Norman’s basement. Norman says he doesn’t know anything, and when they all go down there to look around, there’s nothing to find. In fact, everything is tidy and cleaned up now. Mary lies and says she cleaned up a several days ago. The sheriff tells Mary more about Norman’s past and then leaves. Norman thinks “It’s all starting again.”
Lila comes to town and talks to the sheriff. She wants to know why he hasn’t been arrested for the murder of the boy. Sheriff Hunt says Mary was with Norman at the time, and there’s no body or any kind of evidence. She wants to know if he’s dragged the swamp.
Mary goes down to the motel office, and she runs into Lila, who is her mother. Mary tells Lila that there’s no way Norman killed the boy in the cellar. “He couldn’t have done it.” “What difference does it make? We want him re-committed. Mary, people don’t change.” Mary says she thinks there’s someone else in the house, and that she thinks Norman is trying really hard to be sane now. Lila is less than supportive.
Mary knows there’s someone in the house, and she pulls out a pistol. She calls Lila, but she hasn’t gone back to her hotel. Norman swears his mother is in the house, but Mary tries to talk sense into him.
Dr. Raymond comes by for another visit the next morning, and he brings up Lila Loomis. He warns Norman that she’s Mary’s mother. He says they’re trying to undermine Norman’s sense of reality. That’s the least of Norman’s worries now that his mother is back from the dead. Raymond says that Mary or Lila has been dressing up and calling and sending notes. Norman is doubtful.
In town, Mary accuses Lila of those same things, but Lila denies it all. Mary doesn’t believe Lila’s story; she thinks her mother is behind all this.
Dr. Raymond has Mrs. Bates’s body exhumed to prove to Norman that she’s really dead. Norman goes home and tells Mary what Raymond said. Norman gets a phone call from his mother, and Mary says there’s no one there. Has he really gone crazy this time?
Norman comes to the conclusion that Mrs. Bates isn’t the one calling him, it’s his real mother. Mary comes clean about Lila and their plan.
The deputy comes to take Norman to the swamp. The sheriff has found Mr. Toomey’s car in the swamp. Mary asks the sheriff if he knows if Norman was adopted.
In town, Raymond starts to follow Lila. She goes into the Bates’s house and puts on a dress and wig. Except someone else in a dress and wig comes up behind her and kills her. Raymond goes inside after her and Norman finds him down there. Norman tells Raymond about his real mother, someone completely different from Mrs. Bates; she told him that on the phone.
Mary comes to Norman, and she wants them both to leave town before they get connected to Toomey’s body and car. Norman talks about his real mother to her as well.
Dr. Raymond calls from the motel and says that the calls to him have come from the motel office. Norman has a long talk with “mother” after Raymond hangs up.
Mary runs to the basement and grabs the dress and the wig. She comes up stairs dressed as Mrs. Bates. She orders him to hang up the phone, but it looks like he’s gone completely mental this time. Dr. Raymond grabs Mary thinking to catch her in the act, and she stabs him to death, mostly by accident.
Norman says he’ll cover up for his mother, and she stabs him a couple of times. They find Lila in the cellar, and she blames him. The police come in, see Mary in the wig brandishing the knife, and shoot her.
The sheriff tells what happened. Mary and Lila Loomis killed Toomey, Raymond, and that boy in the basement, and Mary killed Lila. He says, “Right to the end it, she was saying it was Norman who was crazy.”
The sheriff drives Norman home; he was the victim in all this.
Night falls, and Norman’s mother walks up to the front door. No, it’s Ms. Spool, the manager of the diner in town. He says he was expecting someone, he just wasn’t sure when. He makes her tea, and we see that he pulls down the box of poison. She’s Mrs. Bates’s sister and his real mother.
She gave the baby to her sister to raise since she was going through some mental issues herself. By the time she got out of the hospital, Norman had already been locked away. The poison is kicking in, but he whacks her over the head with a shovel to hurry things along. He carries her body upstairs to Mother’s bedroom. She wants to sit in her chair and watch out the window.
Commentary
It’s multiple levels of plots and schemes.
The sheriff is surprisingly reasonable and handles everything exceptionally well, which is surprising for a portrayal of a small-town sheriff. Dr. Raymond seems way more hands-on than any psychiatrist I’ve seen in movies.
It’s definitely more of a whodunnit or did-he-do-it than a pure horror film, but it’s really good. The ending is perfect. “Only your mother truly loves you.”