Psycho II (film)

Psycho II is a 1983 sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. It stars Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Robert Loggia and Meg Tilly. The film was directed by Richard Franklin). The original music score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler Norman Bates (Perkins) has been finally been judged mentally sound and released from the mental institution where he has been for 22 years. Lila Loomis (Miles), the sister of Marion Crane who was murdered in the shower 22 years before, protests fiercely over his release. Then Norman sees his mother in the window of the Bates mansion and the murders start happening again. But this time it isn't Norman... or is it?

When Norman Bates is released from prison because of being found of sound mind, Lila Loomis vehemently protests this and vows to see him returned to there to pay for his crimes. Norman is then taken to his old home, the Bates Motel and that house behind it on the hill, by his Doctor (Loggia) who informs him that it will be alright and that Norman is to report to work at a diner down the road later that day. He is also introduced to the new "manager", Warren Toomey, of the Motel a shady guy played by Dennis Franz.

Norman reports to the diner and starts his job as a cook/dishwasher. It's there that he meets Mary, a waitress who's less then stellar at her job, but the two become friends and it's not long before she staying with Norman.

Just when it seems that Norman's life is going along great, "Mother" starts to make herself known in a lot of ways: notes at the diner, bloody rags stuffed down toilets, phone calls and missing motel managers. Are these things real or just part of a desperate plan to get Norman to go crazy and re-institutionalize himself?

Well as things go we find out that Lila hasn't given up the ghost. She has been calling Norman saying she's his Mother, even going so far as to dress up as her and allowing him to see her in the window, before disappering and adding to his frail mental state. One of the big twists though is that Mary is really Lila's daughter and has been helping her, but Mary's growing feelings for Norman have been causing her to reconsider her actions. (But Mary herself has also been experiencing strange things in the house. Hmmmm. Could it be Mother...?)

Just before the big finale, Mary and Lila have a big fight that's overheard by a hotel bartender and Mary storms out. Lila, convinced that she's winning the "good" fight, hurries over the Motel for one final push over the edge for Norman but is confronted by a familar figure in a black dress and is killed with a butcher knife through the mouth. Mary returns to the Motel with Norman who tries to get Mary to confess to what she's been doing to him. The phone rings at the house and Norman answers and starts to speak to his "Mother" Mary convinced that it's Lila and waiting to come clean dresses up as Mother and goes to confront Norman. She over hears him say that he "Can't kill her Mother" and defends herself when Norman comes for her. Norman backs Mary into the fruit cellar and falls onto a pile of coal knocking it lose and revealing a killed Lila, Mary, convinced that it was Norman, attacks him and is killed when the police enter and shoot her.

At the police station we find out the whole story that both women were trying to get Norman to go crazy so he could he put away again, but that they had a falling out. The bartender states that Mary told Lila to stay away or she would be sorry. This statement allows the police to view Lila Loomis's death as a murder done by Mary and that all the other murders were her as well. (The statement and the fact that she was dressed up as Norman's Mother when she was killed.)

The movie then goes on to it's epilogue and final twists. It is night and a woman walks up the steps to the Bates home. Norman has put on some water to boil and set a place for a meal when there is a knock, he answers the door to find Emma Spool, a waitress who works with Norman at the diner, he asks her to come in and she does. Ms. Spool sits at the table and begins to tell Norman a tale, as he fixes her a cup of tea laced with rat poison. She tells him that she is his actual Mother and that Norma Bates was her sister and his aunt. "I was too young to have a baby, besides I had problems of my own," she tells him, alluding to the fact that she as well was institutionalized. "You had already been put away by the time I got out. So I waited for you and when all those people started to say and do those nasty things about my boy...I killed them."

Norman then brings her her tea and asks her if she'd like a sandwich. Ms. Spool starts to reply and gags on the poisoned tea before being killed by Norman by a blow to the head with a shovel. As she lays dying Norman closes the curtains to the kitchen and then picks up her body and carries her upstairs to her room where we hear the familiar voice of Mother and the lights to the Motel go on.

External links

• Psycho II at IMDb
• Psycho II at The Psycho Movies website