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Strong words to open a film of this stature, and they are cried out in utter spiritual defeat by one Maureen Coyle (Diana Scarwid), a young nun who has lost her faith. She is preparing to jump from the top of the church tower to her death forty feet below when an elderly nun attempts to persuade her back to the faith. Maureen is inconsolable in her disbelief, and the intervening nun accidentally falls down the bell tower to her own death instead. Disgraced, Maureen leaves the convent and walks off into the desert alone.
This isn't exactly the premise one would imagine for Psycho III, which hit screens in late summer 1986. But it is exactly that. Maureen trudges along a dusty desert highway until would-be rock singer Duane Duke (Jeff Fahey) picks her up in his rickety pussywagon. Duke, who's into putting the moves on the ladies, quickly makes a pass at Maureen, though he's incensed when she bumps his guitar in the backseat. "Watch the guitar!" this sex fiend implores. "It's my bread and butter." And after a near-rape attempt in a pouring rain leaves her on-foot again, Maureen proceeds on through the night.
The Bates Motel still operates, as we see when the next morning comes. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is still the owner/manager, though from the sign in his window, he could use some hired help. And none other than Duane Duke happens upon the site and is hired by Norman. Meanwhile, Maureen Coyle also lands at the Bates Motel, renting a room and reminding the haunted Norman of his one-time victim Marion Crane. Throw in the element of reporter Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxwell) investigating the recent disappearance of local resident Mrs. Spool (you'll have to watch Psycho II for background on that), and the stage is nicely set for what amounts to a horrifically black comedy.
Yes, Norman Bates is off his rocker, but by now, we're all in on the joke. Yes, the "voice of Mother" he hears is really his own, just talking to himself in an alternate personality. And yes, actress Virginia Gregg, who had performed the Mother voice-over since the original, sadly passed away in late 1986; in a Fangoria article from earlier in the year, Ms. Gregg talked about her work in Psycho III and noted, "She's still the same old bitch she was in the other two."
Perkins himself directed this entry into what was clearly not designed to be a series. Hitchcock's original Psycho was a stand-alone, and Richard Franklin's 1983 sequel Psycho II was considered by many to be intrusive. Armed with a witty Charles Pogue script for this second sequel, Perkins was able to explore a little more of the darkly comedic aspect which audiences failed to perceive in Hitchcock's film, and which Franklin couldn't be bothered to include in his straight-slasher approach three years prior.
Norman finally finds true love in the form of Maureen Coyle, and she finds reason to believe in her own religious faith again. All would be well, except for one thing....."Mother" is extremely aggravated by these new developments. And as a result, more by-standers die, including the sleazy Duke, who has found out about Norman's backstory and wants to blackmail him. Indeed, Duke's actions make him the least sympathetic of all Norman Bates' victims.
Maureen's final embrace with Norman is filled with horrible contradiction, unintentional accident and ultimate descent lunacy, as the well-researched Tracy Venable stumbles onto the scene and rattles on to Norman about the truth of his past. It reads like a soap opera, but it succeeds in bringing Norman to his senses.....for this installment, anyway. At least it brings some closure to the harebrained exposition the late Mrs. Spool was feeding him at the end of Psycho II.
This would seem to be the end of the Psycho cycle. But four years later, some big brains would figure out how to make a prequel entitled Psycho IV: The Beginning. In the meantime, Perkins' oddball little movie serves to show how the 1980's sequelization tradition could extract a quirky and endearing--if a bit contrived--backstory out of seemingly the most bulletproof of classic films.
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