Director: Richard Rothstein
Written by: Richard Rothstein
Starring: Bud Cort, Lori Petty, Jason Bateman, Robert Picardo
Taglines: “Under new management”
“Norman may be gone, but the hotel lives on!”
STORY
Alex West is released from a mental asylum shortly after the death of his cellmate and best friend, Norman Bates, who leaves him the Bates Motel in his will. Despite its history, West is determined to re-open the motel to paying customers. However, unhappy locals and strange goings-on threaten to scupper his plans.
OPINION
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was a revolutionary film back in 1960. Its twisting storyline and effective murder sequences were ground-breaking and helped define conventions that would be followed by Italian giallo movies for a decade, before those movies were imitated to create the American slasher movie. Despite this, it took 23 years to receive the sequel treatment. Psycho 2 must have seemed as ill-advised and pointless as all the remakes we’re seeing today, with one important difference – it was very good! The return of Norman Bates and his ongoing “is he cured or not?” story generated enough interest for Anthony Perkins himself to direct Psycho 3 in 1986. Though not a resounding commercial nor critical success, it kept the Bates “brand” alive long enough for this unsuccessful TV pilot to be produced.
The story essentially happens in two halves. We open with West receiving his legacy from Bates (this movie ignores the existence of the other sequels), and then follow his early problems in getting the townsfolk to accept him and his plans. In between spotting what appears to be the ghost of Norman’s mother, and subsequent doubts of his own sanity, West hooks up with a spunky young girl named Willie (an early if fairly typical role for Lori Petty), who helps him get everything up to scratch. About halfway through, the focus switches to the first group of new guests in the motel, and their experiences there. From the look of things, it’s this second half that would have constituted the bulk of each episode, with West and Willie taking a back seat to more supernatural occurrences each week.
For a mid-80s TV pilot, this isn’t too bad. Which is to say it’s got nothing on the first 3 movies, nor the 1990 made-for-TV Psycho 4 – The Beginning. However, it’s not a bad way to spend 90 minutes. Bud Cort is excellent in the lead, and appearances from now-familiar faces like Petty, Robert Picardo and Jason Bateman don’t hurt. There’s not a great deal of actual horror, with the whole thing being pretty light and fluffy for its network TV audience. That’s the problem of course – along with the ill-fitting supernatural elements that get revealed at the end, light and fluffy isn’t what this series should be about, nor should the owner of the Bates Motel be essentially passive. It’s no wonder this wasn’t successful in that sense, but it’s not terrible.
Rating: 
