Bates Motel

This used to play every Fourth of July on t.v... EVERY Fourth of July! NBC's tagline: This 4th of July...Make it a scream! ( or something like that )

Saw this when it was first produced for NBC back in 1987. After a few reruns on that network it was picked up by Lifetime Cable and is now in Encore Mystery Channel's listings. NOWHERE near a classic but passable "stalker" fare if you have really, really low expectations for homogenized tele-terror.

Ironically, when I went to see Scream 3, I couldn't help but think about The Bates Motel ( And it's been years since I've seen this film! ). The similarities are shocking: Big, creepy manse as catalyst in final third of both films, extended chase scenes on staircases, Mrs. Bates' fright mask of skull and black mack ( nearly a decade before the first Scream ) and the eventual unmasking of the "killer" in both films.

It's probably crazy but I couldn't shake the comparisons. Strange. Also, though the movie was lensed way before Psycho IV: The Beginning, storywise, it easily could've been a fourth sequel.

Tame terror, with bizarre casting, but odd enough to give it a look

There was an interesting idea in this non-conventional sequel to the popular Psycho movie series by connecting ghost stories to Norman's family members and victims, but using the motel as a setting to a Twilight Zone/Fantasy Island series was so out of left field that it just couldn't have worked for more than less a season. Bud Cort plays a guy who Norman had alledgedly befriended in the sanitarium. After his death, he inherits the hotel and the property, but the ghost of old Mother Bates won't sit still for the mockery. Lori Petty, still a relative unknown, plays his pretty female friend, and unforgettable Moses Gunn becomes his benefactor in this alternate reality to the movie series. The movie bogs down on the suicidal guest sub-plot, an idea later used in the third movie installment, but it should have stuck to the ghost stories than to try and create a series.

I was a fan of Tony Perkins and the original "Psycho". And I loved Bud Cort from the time I saw him in "Harold & Maude" on. What I came away thinking about when I saw "Bates Motel" though was, boy would this have made a great series. Also, who is Lori Petty? This was really one of her very first jobs. I followed her to the "Booker" TV series and I've been a fan ever since. Who would've thought that a Tennessee-born Pentecostal preacher's daughter would go on to be "Tank Girl"? I will always love this goofy little TV movie for keeping the But Cort flame alive and introducing me to Lori Petty. A note of trivia: Kurt Paul, who played Norman in this movie went on to stunt double for Tony Perkins in the big screen "Psycho" sequels and to guest star as the serial killer being interviewed by CCH Pounder in the "Psycho IV" cable movie.

I saw this just once on TV years ago. I wish I could find it somewhere on DVD, even if it didn't have extras, just so I could see it again. I can't even find it on tape to transfer to DVD on a borrowed machine.

I liked that it tied up the end of the story of Norman Bates, who died and left it in his will to fellow inmate Alex in the asylum. Would be very nice to have this to add to the entire Psycho movie collection I have.

The performances of the actors was good, especially Bud Cort and Moses Gunn. The hotel itself was recreated beautifully for this, complete with cobwebs, rundown, house, and all sorts of damage you'd expect for an abandoned building that hasn't been occupied in years. You just have to suspend the knowledge that the original house was burned down at the end of the fourth Psycho movie (they never did explain why the house was still standing in this one--did they put the fire out?).

I've been getting bugged for years for copies of this film -- since it hardly ever got played after it bombed on TV back in '87. As a piece of Psycho history, I taped it in '87 and foolishly let people know that I had a copy.... I'm so glad Sci-fi is airing it so I don't have to sit through it anymore. Made as a potential pilot for an anthology series, the movie flopped badly and a show never materialized. Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates himself) boycotted the production. Not that he really needed to, since the public hated it as much as he did....

I'd like to say this film is awful. But I can't really say that, since I've seen so much worse. But as an attachment to the Psycho films, it IS awful. It ignores the two sequels that had been made and even makes mistakes based on information from the original. Bud Cort gives a mind-numbingly dumb performance as the friend of Norman's who inherits the motel after his death. You never really have sympathy for him 'cause he just plays it so dumb. Lori Petti, who I usually love, is rather annoying as the squatter that befriends him. She does an okay job with her part, but the problem is that all the main parts were poorly written. We get more than half of the way through the movie, focusing on Cort and Petti trying to get the motel running again, and then we enter the first of the Twilight-Zone-ish stories: a woman who wants to kill herself is befriended by some strange teens. The writing and acting in this segment isn't bad, but after sitting through the Cort/Petti story, it hardly seems worth it.

There's really only one creepy segment in the film -- the presence of the woman in black at Mrs. Bates funeral (but the discovery of her corpse is nonsense, since they found her body in the basement in the original film). The whole Jake Bates story seemed like it was jammed in so they could add a few more scares, though the scares fell flat. And the black-and-white segment at the film's climax could have been great -- if they hadn't went the Scooby-Doo unmask-the-villain route -- but as another reviewer wrote, it seemed to be the inspiration for "Scream 3" (which I love, by the way).

Though the film is a piece of Psycho history, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone, except maybe fans of the actors -- even then it wouldn't get a strong recommendation....