...And then there was Psycho III. Part of the appeal of the first two films in the franchise was that there was a fair amount of ambiguity to events. There were murders, but it wasn’t at all clear until the end who had been committing them (of course, a person would have to be living under a rock to not have picked up on Psycho’s twist at some point in their lives). Not so in Psycho III. Norman Bates is doubtlessly the bad guy in this one, so it just remains to be seen how he will get his comeuppance.
Directed by Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins, Psycho III takes place shortly after the preceding film. Norman is back to living alone and preparing to reopen the motel. Not far away, a nun who has lost her faith and left the convent, Maureen (Diana Scarwid), meets up with Duke (Jeff Fahey), a young drifter on his way to California. I hate Duke. Have I mentioned in any other reviews how there is no other character in film I despise more than the creepy sexual predator? Not those that are played realistically, mind you, but the sneering, smarmy douchebag that shows up in many bad movies, mostly horror. I hate these characters because they have no redeeming qualities, and they are lazy. It takes no effort from writer, director, or actor to put a one-dimensional ass-hat like Duke to film. Want a quick way to show an audience a character is a bad guy? Have him try to rape a nun in a parked car, then toss her to the curb. That’s Duke. And we as an audience get to spend a significant amount of time with this character. Why? In what way does it make a film, here or in any other, any better to have a supporting character with such despicable traits that have little to nothing to do with the plot? Answer: it doesn’t. Not here, not in Doom, not in Leviathan, not in Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, not in Freddy vs. Jason, nor in any other bad movie I have ever seen. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Psycho III”