Silver Bullet is a lesser Stephen King adaptation based on his novella Cycle of the Werewolf. It's set in a small Maine town in the 1970's and is about a sister (Megan Follows), her brother (the late Corey Haim) who rides a supped up wheelchair dubbed 'The Silver Bullet', and their drunkard black sheep uncle (perfectly cast as Gary Busey) who must stop a particularly prolific werewolf who is slowly decimating their town. Kind of an odd film, its B-movie like, fairly violent, rated R and featuring teenagers as the leads (real teenagers, not 20 something pretending to be teenagers), so I'm not sure who the target audience is supposed to be. Also staring Everett McGill and Terry O'Quinn. **
Graveyard Shift is a bottom of the barrel Stephen King flick based on one of his earliest published short stories. In short Graveyard Shift is about a rotting, rat infested old textile mill in Maine which is not only run on the extreme cheap but has a carnivorous monster living beneath it. The movie is not good, its pretty slow, boring, and has some of Stephen Kings least interesting, least complex, and most annoying characters. It also doesn't seem to have a point beyond pure horror, and it's horror is not well executed. I feel like the people who made this film managed it about as well as the characters managed the textile mill. To me the most interesting thing about this movie is that the lead David Andrews looks a lot like a former boss of mine, one who could have run that mill a whole lot better. *
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Ghost (1990)
Ghost was a tremendously successful film when it came out in 1990, so ubiquitous and popular that even at age 10 I was well aware of the film and in broad outline what it was about. Of course the famed "pottery scene" is legendary and I remember seeing it spoofed in one of the Naked Gun movies. Still I made no particular effort to see the film until it came up in a recent conversation with a friend of mine who mentioned that he thought it had some interesting things to say in the realm of metaphysics. So I watched Ghost and thought it was pretty good.
The story is of the unrequired love between a recently murdered banker (Patrick Swayze) and his artist girlfriend (Demi Moore), who now may be in danger from (25 year old spoiler) the bankers best friend (Tony Goldwyn) who was responsible for Swayze's murder. Being a ghost there's not much Swayze can do about this until he discovers the ability to communicate with a con woman psychic (Whoopi Goldberg, who won a supporting actress Oscar for this role) who turns out to be actually a little psychic after all. Sure the plot is cloying but its likable, and with a surprisingly intense climax.
I to liked this movies depiction of the afterlife, it didn't feel dated (as often happens with cinematic portals of the hereafter) but was a rather timeless take, and one fairly compatible with Mormon conceptions of the great beyond, which I think is part of what my friend liked about it. Vincent Schiavelli's "Subway Ghost" is quite the interesting and ambiguous character. I can see how Ghost was so popular, it has a little something for everybody and was smarter and more insightful then I had anticipated. ***1/2
The story is of the unrequired love between a recently murdered banker (Patrick Swayze) and his artist girlfriend (Demi Moore), who now may be in danger from (25 year old spoiler) the bankers best friend (Tony Goldwyn) who was responsible for Swayze's murder. Being a ghost there's not much Swayze can do about this until he discovers the ability to communicate with a con woman psychic (Whoopi Goldberg, who won a supporting actress Oscar for this role) who turns out to be actually a little psychic after all. Sure the plot is cloying but its likable, and with a surprisingly intense climax.
I to liked this movies depiction of the afterlife, it didn't feel dated (as often happens with cinematic portals of the hereafter) but was a rather timeless take, and one fairly compatible with Mormon conceptions of the great beyond, which I think is part of what my friend liked about it. Vincent Schiavelli's "Subway Ghost" is quite the interesting and ambiguous character. I can see how Ghost was so popular, it has a little something for everybody and was smarter and more insightful then I had anticipated. ***1/2
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Specter (2015)
Before last week the last James Bond move I'd seen was The World is Not Enough, in the theater, in 1999. It's not that I don't like James Bond, it just that I'd only seen three of them in their entirety, the first three Brosnan ones. Watching all the Bond films in order has long been on my cinematic bucket list, but I kept not getting around to it. It was the prospect of Christoph Waltz playing the villain that was finally enough to pull me out of Bond movie retirement. So I'm sad to say that I was a little disappointed.
The opining action sequence in Mexico City is as good as anything you've ever seen in a Bond movie. It was remarkably well staged, the scale just massive, it felt like there we tens of thousands of people in it, it alone is worth seeing the movie for and got my expectations for the rest of film fairly high. Sadly the rest of the movie did not live up to that opening. It's not a bad movie, it's quite watchable, for the most part I enjoyed it, but it just felt a little weak, especially given the high marks I've heard accorded to the earlier films in the Daniel Craig cycle. Perhaps this movie would have been more satisfying as the (presumed) conclusion to the Craig cycle (there certainly were a lot of references to the early films that I couldn't get) then as a standalone, but again from what I hear that is not the case.
Craig is a fine Bond, Lea Sydoux, this outings Bond girl is just gorgeous and more then adequately talented, and I liked the new Miss Moneypenny and Q (I can't believe I'm the same age as Q). Christoph Waltz is more then game, but he lacked enough good speeches and his evil plan could have been better, I mean playing as he did the 'he-who-must-not-be-named' villain. Oh yeah, Ralph Fiennes is in this, he's good to. But the story felt tired, we've been here before, it was almost shockingly paint by numbers, none of the big reveals were big reveals. The whole thing seemed very workman like, you got the requisite Bond thrills, but nothing deeper, I was hoping for, and felt that I had been lead to expect, more. Again I enjoyed it, I'd say its worth seeing, but the more I reflect the more I feel a little let down. ***
The opining action sequence in Mexico City is as good as anything you've ever seen in a Bond movie. It was remarkably well staged, the scale just massive, it felt like there we tens of thousands of people in it, it alone is worth seeing the movie for and got my expectations for the rest of film fairly high. Sadly the rest of the movie did not live up to that opening. It's not a bad movie, it's quite watchable, for the most part I enjoyed it, but it just felt a little weak, especially given the high marks I've heard accorded to the earlier films in the Daniel Craig cycle. Perhaps this movie would have been more satisfying as the (presumed) conclusion to the Craig cycle (there certainly were a lot of references to the early films that I couldn't get) then as a standalone, but again from what I hear that is not the case.
Craig is a fine Bond, Lea Sydoux, this outings Bond girl is just gorgeous and more then adequately talented, and I liked the new Miss Moneypenny and Q (I can't believe I'm the same age as Q). Christoph Waltz is more then game, but he lacked enough good speeches and his evil plan could have been better, I mean playing as he did the 'he-who-must-not-be-named' villain. Oh yeah, Ralph Fiennes is in this, he's good to. But the story felt tired, we've been here before, it was almost shockingly paint by numbers, none of the big reveals were big reveals. The whole thing seemed very workman like, you got the requisite Bond thrills, but nothing deeper, I was hoping for, and felt that I had been lead to expect, more. Again I enjoyed it, I'd say its worth seeing, but the more I reflect the more I feel a little let down. ***
Monday, November 16, 2015
Pet Sematary (1989)
Pet Sematary, the 1989 film based on the 1983 Stephen King novel of the same name owes its origins to when "In 1978, King returned to his alma mater, the University of Maine at Orono, to teach for a year as a gesture of gratitude for the education he had received there. During this time his family rented a house on a busy road in Orrington. The road claimed the lives of a number of pets, and the neighborhood children had created a pet cemetery in a field near the Kings' home. King's daughter Naomi buried her cat "Smucky" there after it was hit, and shortly thereafter their son Owen had a close call running toward the road. King wrote the novel based on their experiences, but feeling he had gone too far with the subject matter of the book, he discarded the idea of having it published. However, needing a final book for his contract King reluctantly submitted it to Doubleday on the advice of his wife Tabitha[3] and friend Peter Straub.[4]"-Wikepida
Knowing this backstory you can really see how these various elements feed into the fictional narrative, which is about a young doctor, his wife, two kids and cat who move into a rural Maine home when he takes a job at the local university. The house is on a busy road which has taken the lives of many local pets who for decades the children have buried in a nearby "pet sematary", the misspelling of the name being a nod to the fact that the spot was originally established by children. The story is at its heart about the difficult and unpleasant (though ultimately necessary) task of explaining death to children, and the understandable childlike desire to reject death. The pet sematary itself is ultimately a kind of starting point for exploring these ideas, with the mystical spot in fact being beyond the pet sematary (Beyond the Pet Sematary might have been a more accurate name for this story) in an old Indian burial ground which you find out early in the film, with the help of an affable neighbor played by Fred Gwynee (best known as Herman Munster, whose presence is in my opinion is the best thing about this movie, and I'm not putting the movie down in saying this, I'm putting Fred Gwynee up).
Once this ancient cemetery has proven its ability to bring a pet cat back from the dead it opens the question of doing the same with a human, and when our leads youngest child is killed by a truck on the dangerous road in front of their home, well the ground has been lade for a creepy climax. I really liked this movie, it had an excellent and distinctive mood to it, I liked the cast, I liked the story and the ideas behind it, I liked the dark humor of it, like the angel who still sports the disfiguring injuries that resulted in his death as he attempts to influence the Creed family away from messing with the dark powers that lie 'Beyond the Pet Sematary.' There is some great existential dread to this piece of work, yet its also enjoyably watchable. Recommended ***
Knowing this backstory you can really see how these various elements feed into the fictional narrative, which is about a young doctor, his wife, two kids and cat who move into a rural Maine home when he takes a job at the local university. The house is on a busy road which has taken the lives of many local pets who for decades the children have buried in a nearby "pet sematary", the misspelling of the name being a nod to the fact that the spot was originally established by children. The story is at its heart about the difficult and unpleasant (though ultimately necessary) task of explaining death to children, and the understandable childlike desire to reject death. The pet sematary itself is ultimately a kind of starting point for exploring these ideas, with the mystical spot in fact being beyond the pet sematary (Beyond the Pet Sematary might have been a more accurate name for this story) in an old Indian burial ground which you find out early in the film, with the help of an affable neighbor played by Fred Gwynee (best known as Herman Munster, whose presence is in my opinion is the best thing about this movie, and I'm not putting the movie down in saying this, I'm putting Fred Gwynee up).
Once this ancient cemetery has proven its ability to bring a pet cat back from the dead it opens the question of doing the same with a human, and when our leads youngest child is killed by a truck on the dangerous road in front of their home, well the ground has been lade for a creepy climax. I really liked this movie, it had an excellent and distinctive mood to it, I liked the cast, I liked the story and the ideas behind it, I liked the dark humor of it, like the angel who still sports the disfiguring injuries that resulted in his death as he attempts to influence the Creed family away from messing with the dark powers that lie 'Beyond the Pet Sematary.' There is some great existential dread to this piece of work, yet its also enjoyably watchable. Recommended ***
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
I've wanted to see Koyaanisqatsi for many years now, so when an opportunity to see it on the big screen at BYU's International Cinema came up I took it. Koyaanisqatis is a very original, very unusual movie, it lacks any traditional narrative, I suppose you'd call it a documentary but perhaps a better description would be a film collage. Images without narration take us from the pristine desert of the American South West (all the footage in this film appears to have been shot in the U.S.) to nuclear explosions there, to industrial and commercial buildings, traffic jams and dirty streets in New York and Los Angeles, snippets of radio and television, people filling through train stations, the mass production of everything from automobiles to snack cakes, the pace of the images, of life and the world going increasingly faster and faster. As I watched these images in their relentnless procession I knew the film was making me feel something, and feel it strongly, but I couldn't quite tell what that feeling was, that is until the end when in text on the screen they tell you what Koyaanisqatsi means, its a Hopi language word that translates loosely as "unbalanced life", which is what the films presents, our ultimately unsustainable economic and human order of the modern world. One element of the film which I found fascinating, and which by its nature wouldn't have been part of the viewing experience for its original audiances was a weird sense of nostalgia. The world presented in the film is the world of the very early 1980's, the world of my first dawning of conciseness , the outfits the cars etc are of a past, but that past is just a forerunner of our present, everything we see in the film is still happening today, only even faster. Koyaanisqatsi is a film to be experienced, to be in a way soaked in, and seeing it on a big screen only helps that experience. The soundtrack by Philip Glass is probably his best and most iconic work. Koyaanisqatsi is really a great work of both art and commentary. ****
Saturday, November 14, 2015
No Escape (2015)
When I first saw the previews for No Escape I thought of some friends of mine who are currently living in Thailand with their family, it looked to be the closet thing I'd ever see to an action film staring Jackson and Lisa, unless you count Red Eye, which is an action film staring characters named Jackson and Lisa. Anyway No Escape stars Owen Wilson and Lake Bell as parents who move their family to a never named south-east Asian country that boarders Vietnam so Wilson can take a new job after the company he worked for in Texas has gone out of business. Well the day they arrive there is a coup, the corrupt prime minister is murdered, and many armed locals go about the city killing any foreigners or collaborators they can get their machetes on. Wilson and Bell then must do everything in their power to protect their two young daughters and stay a step ahead of the mob, but is there No Escape? Maybe.
This was a very intense movie, it takes 20 minutes or so for the action to really start but once it does it is relentless and often terrifying, truly a horror movie. Our lead couple eventually gets some help from a mildly drunk, womanizing British business man they first met on the plan, he is played by Pierce Brosnan so I don't think its a big spoiler to say that he is more then a mere mildly drunk, womanizing British business man. My experience with Wilson in 'serious' films is limited but I hated Behind Enemy Lines, though I don't mind him in this film and am also happy to see that Lake Bell is getting more work. There's not many films of this type, at least that I have seen, so I found No Escape refreshingly original in premise, and as I said quite intense. I'd recommend it, but know what you are getting into. ***
This was a very intense movie, it takes 20 minutes or so for the action to really start but once it does it is relentless and often terrifying, truly a horror movie. Our lead couple eventually gets some help from a mildly drunk, womanizing British business man they first met on the plan, he is played by Pierce Brosnan so I don't think its a big spoiler to say that he is more then a mere mildly drunk, womanizing British business man. My experience with Wilson in 'serious' films is limited but I hated Behind Enemy Lines, though I don't mind him in this film and am also happy to see that Lake Bell is getting more work. There's not many films of this type, at least that I have seen, so I found No Escape refreshingly original in premise, and as I said quite intense. I'd recommend it, but know what you are getting into. ***
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986), Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), Bates Motel (1987)
So a couple of weekends ago I decided to go through the various Psycho sequels, having purchased a 4 DVD pack thereof at Wal-Mart a short time prior (only five dollars). Now I've seen the original 1960 Hitchcock Psycho probably around a half dozen times or so, and while I've known about these Psycho sequels for a couple of decades it was a friend of mine expressing his fondness for them that actually got me to watch. On the whole they are better then I had expected.
The first Psycho sequel, the economically titled Psycho II came out in 1983. At the start of the film Norman Bates (played of course by Anthony Perkins, because there would be no point in making these films without Anthony Perkins) "is released from a mental institution after spending 22 years in confinement. Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), sister of Marion Crane, vehemently protests with a petition that she has been circulating with signatures of 743 people, including the relatives of the seven people Norman killed prior to his incarceration, but her plea is dismissed. Norman is taken to his old home behind the Bates Motel by Dr. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia), who assures him everything will be fine.
Norman is introduced to the motel's new manager, Warren Toomey (Dennis Franz). The following day, Norman reports to a prearranged job as a dishwasher and busboy at a nearby diner, run by a kindly old lady named Emma Spool (Claudia Bryar). One of his co-workers there is Mary Samuels (Meg Tilly [sister of Jennifer]) a young waitress. After work, Mary claims she has been thrown out of her boyfriend's place and needs a place to stay. Norman offers to let her stay at the motel, then extends the offer to his home when he discovers that Toomey has turned what had been a shabby but respectable establishment before Norman was committed into a sleazy adult motel.
Norman's adjustment back into society appears to be going along well until "Mother" begins to make her presence known. Norman gets mysterious notes from "Mother" at the house and diner. Phone calls come from someone claiming to be Norman's mother. The next day, a drunk Toomey picks a fight at the diner after Norman fires him. Later, a figure in a black dress stabs Toomey to death with a kitchen knife as he is packing to leave the motel. As Norman begins to reconstruct his motel, he begins to doubt his sanity when he begins hearing voices in the house. He enters his mother's bedroom to find it looks exactly as it did 22 years ago." - (from Wikipedia). And so it goes.
While kind of slow at first this film improves as it goes along and does a really good job of making you unsure what's going on. You don't know, for the longest time, if Norman is going back to his old ways, if he's hallucinating, if someone is killing in Norman's name, and that is a lot of what makes the movie satisfying. So I'll limit my spoilers to one that is basically unavoidable considering that there are two more 'canonical' sequels in this franchise, so whatever Norman may or may not have done murder wise through the bulk of the film, by the end he's a killer once more.
Psycho III is probably the weakest entry in this series, not bad per say but not great, though interestingly it was actually directed by Perkins. This film attempts to give Norman a legitimate love interest, but what kind of legitimate love interest would Norman have? Well in this case a shy young nun who has just renounced her vows after accidently causing the death of a sister. Said ex-nun is named Maureen Coyle, same M. C. initials as Norman's most famous victim Marion Crane, this girl even looks like Crane, down to build and short blond hair. Maureen Coyle is played by Diana Scarwid, the same actress who played Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest, thus on a subtle level enhancing the "mommy fixation" aspect of the Psycho franchise. By the end of this film Norman is again to be committed to a mental institution, which makes it a bit surprising to find him out of the hospital at the start of Psycho IV.
Psycho IV: The Beginning has an interesting structure, most of the film is presented as conversations Norman has with a talk radio host (C. C. H. Pounder) accompanied by flash back depictions of Normans difficult childhood in which he is played by Henry Thomas (Elliott from E.T.) and his mother Norma by Olivia Hussey (best known as Juliet in the classic 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet). Hussey's characterization in this is so sensual that you can understand why Norman would be so messed up when it comes to sex. So this film explores a lot of the same territory that I image the A&E series Bates Motel does, I haven't seen that series but I want to more now that I've seen this. This final canonical movies gives some good closure, but also opens the way for more possible sequels, which of course never happened in large part due to actor Anthony Perkins death from AIDS in 1992.
The final entry in this Psycho four pack is Bates Motel, not canonical with the other Psycho movies in this set Bates Motel is a 1987 TV movie intended as the pilot for a proposed but never produced spin off Psycho TV series also to have been titled Bates Motel. In all my decades of watching movies I don't know if I've ever encountered one that got the source material more wrong then did this film. The story "is about Alex West, a mentally disturbed youth who was admitted to an asylum after killing his abusive stepfather. There he befriends Norman Bates and ends up inheriting the infamous Bates Motel."- Wikipedia.
Alex West is played by Bud Cort, an odd fellow who is best known for playing Harold in the cult hit 1971 Hal Ashby comedy Harold and Maude. After spending the bulk of his life in a mental institution, where he is mentored by Norman Bates no less, Alex is let free to go a run the Bates Motel by himself, this seems like a bad idea not least of all because Alex has basically no real world experience, how is he supposed to run a motel by himself? The movie doesn't even go in the expected direction of Alex picking up were Bates left off as a serial murder, but rather purses a strangely lite and awkwardly goofy tone, with Alex befriending a number of misfit characters including a Jersey run away (Lori Petty) and black handy-man who once worked for the Bates (Moses Gunn), and they proceeded to run the motel together, after having it significantly remodeled through a loan they were able to get because the Bates Motel land has significantly appreciated in value over the years.
It is apparent from this pilot that the proposed series was not even to have been primarily about Alex and his staff, but rather about the guests in the motel in a kind of quirky Highway to Heaven or Fantasy Island sort of way. This movie/pilot even features a woman saved from suicide by the ghosts of dead teenagers! What on earth does this have to do with Psycho? This is nothing like Psycho! In fact it feels more like this was supposed to be just a quirky show about a motel that got the Psycho tie in grafted onto it as a way to secure funding, it is basically a betrayal of its supposed source marital. Difficult to watch, no wonder it wasn't picked up.
Psycho II (1983): ***
Psycho III (1986): **
Psycho IV (1990): ***
Bates Motel (1987): *
The first Psycho sequel, the economically titled Psycho II came out in 1983. At the start of the film Norman Bates (played of course by Anthony Perkins, because there would be no point in making these films without Anthony Perkins) "is released from a mental institution after spending 22 years in confinement. Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), sister of Marion Crane, vehemently protests with a petition that she has been circulating with signatures of 743 people, including the relatives of the seven people Norman killed prior to his incarceration, but her plea is dismissed. Norman is taken to his old home behind the Bates Motel by Dr. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia), who assures him everything will be fine.
Norman is introduced to the motel's new manager, Warren Toomey (Dennis Franz). The following day, Norman reports to a prearranged job as a dishwasher and busboy at a nearby diner, run by a kindly old lady named Emma Spool (Claudia Bryar). One of his co-workers there is Mary Samuels (Meg Tilly [sister of Jennifer]) a young waitress. After work, Mary claims she has been thrown out of her boyfriend's place and needs a place to stay. Norman offers to let her stay at the motel, then extends the offer to his home when he discovers that Toomey has turned what had been a shabby but respectable establishment before Norman was committed into a sleazy adult motel.
Norman's adjustment back into society appears to be going along well until "Mother" begins to make her presence known. Norman gets mysterious notes from "Mother" at the house and diner. Phone calls come from someone claiming to be Norman's mother. The next day, a drunk Toomey picks a fight at the diner after Norman fires him. Later, a figure in a black dress stabs Toomey to death with a kitchen knife as he is packing to leave the motel. As Norman begins to reconstruct his motel, he begins to doubt his sanity when he begins hearing voices in the house. He enters his mother's bedroom to find it looks exactly as it did 22 years ago." - (from Wikipedia). And so it goes.
While kind of slow at first this film improves as it goes along and does a really good job of making you unsure what's going on. You don't know, for the longest time, if Norman is going back to his old ways, if he's hallucinating, if someone is killing in Norman's name, and that is a lot of what makes the movie satisfying. So I'll limit my spoilers to one that is basically unavoidable considering that there are two more 'canonical' sequels in this franchise, so whatever Norman may or may not have done murder wise through the bulk of the film, by the end he's a killer once more.
Psycho III is probably the weakest entry in this series, not bad per say but not great, though interestingly it was actually directed by Perkins. This film attempts to give Norman a legitimate love interest, but what kind of legitimate love interest would Norman have? Well in this case a shy young nun who has just renounced her vows after accidently causing the death of a sister. Said ex-nun is named Maureen Coyle, same M. C. initials as Norman's most famous victim Marion Crane, this girl even looks like Crane, down to build and short blond hair. Maureen Coyle is played by Diana Scarwid, the same actress who played Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest, thus on a subtle level enhancing the "mommy fixation" aspect of the Psycho franchise. By the end of this film Norman is again to be committed to a mental institution, which makes it a bit surprising to find him out of the hospital at the start of Psycho IV.
Psycho IV: The Beginning has an interesting structure, most of the film is presented as conversations Norman has with a talk radio host (C. C. H. Pounder) accompanied by flash back depictions of Normans difficult childhood in which he is played by Henry Thomas (Elliott from E.T.) and his mother Norma by Olivia Hussey (best known as Juliet in the classic 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet). Hussey's characterization in this is so sensual that you can understand why Norman would be so messed up when it comes to sex. So this film explores a lot of the same territory that I image the A&E series Bates Motel does, I haven't seen that series but I want to more now that I've seen this. This final canonical movies gives some good closure, but also opens the way for more possible sequels, which of course never happened in large part due to actor Anthony Perkins death from AIDS in 1992.
The final entry in this Psycho four pack is Bates Motel, not canonical with the other Psycho movies in this set Bates Motel is a 1987 TV movie intended as the pilot for a proposed but never produced spin off Psycho TV series also to have been titled Bates Motel. In all my decades of watching movies I don't know if I've ever encountered one that got the source material more wrong then did this film. The story "is about Alex West, a mentally disturbed youth who was admitted to an asylum after killing his abusive stepfather. There he befriends Norman Bates and ends up inheriting the infamous Bates Motel."- Wikipedia.
Alex West is played by Bud Cort, an odd fellow who is best known for playing Harold in the cult hit 1971 Hal Ashby comedy Harold and Maude. After spending the bulk of his life in a mental institution, where he is mentored by Norman Bates no less, Alex is let free to go a run the Bates Motel by himself, this seems like a bad idea not least of all because Alex has basically no real world experience, how is he supposed to run a motel by himself? The movie doesn't even go in the expected direction of Alex picking up were Bates left off as a serial murder, but rather purses a strangely lite and awkwardly goofy tone, with Alex befriending a number of misfit characters including a Jersey run away (Lori Petty) and black handy-man who once worked for the Bates (Moses Gunn), and they proceeded to run the motel together, after having it significantly remodeled through a loan they were able to get because the Bates Motel land has significantly appreciated in value over the years.
It is apparent from this pilot that the proposed series was not even to have been primarily about Alex and his staff, but rather about the guests in the motel in a kind of quirky Highway to Heaven or Fantasy Island sort of way. This movie/pilot even features a woman saved from suicide by the ghosts of dead teenagers! What on earth does this have to do with Psycho? This is nothing like Psycho! In fact it feels more like this was supposed to be just a quirky show about a motel that got the Psycho tie in grafted onto it as a way to secure funding, it is basically a betrayal of its supposed source marital. Difficult to watch, no wonder it wasn't picked up.
Psycho II (1983): ***
Psycho III (1986): **
Psycho IV (1990): ***
Bates Motel (1987): *
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