Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990)
George Zaloom and Les Mayfield, assistants to producer Hilton Green on the set of Psycho II, came up with an idea for another potential sequel. It was a riff on Hitchcock’s Spellbound except with an amnesiac Norman Bates in a mental institution who takes on the role of a doctor there. Meanwhile, there’s a serial killer on the loose copycatting Norman’s murders. Green felt there was potential there and advised them to pitch it to MCA president Sid Sheinberg.
There were other Psycho IV sequel scripts proposed before, including one by Anthony Perkins and Charles Edward Pogue that was nixed after their Psycho III fizzled at the box office. But the timing seemed right for the Zaloom/Mayfield pitch, not so much because Sheinberg was excited by their story as he’d been actively looking for a high-profile project to promote the opening of Universal’s new theme park in Orlando, Florida.
Over the next eighteen months, Zaloom and Mayfield constructed several drafts but none were approved. Green conceded that not much more could be done with the Norman Bates character moving forward. The only interesting parts of their drafts involved flashbacks to Norman’s childhood that the first Psycho, written by Joseph Stefano, could only hint at. This gave them a new idea. They should approach Stefano and see if he’d help write the screenplay.
During the making of Psycho, Stefano developed a backstory of Norman’s boyhood and teenage years with his domineering and sexually repressive mother. Norman was in love with his mother and fancied being her lover, but she repeatedly teased him into a reaction and then scolded him cruelly. Ultimately, jealousy and humiliation overwhelmed him when she took on a lover. Incest allusions were taboo to explore in the 1960 movie but always remained in his mind. Mother entices Norman, then punishes him for his reactions. She feminizes him by calling him as punishment, forcing him to wear a dress, and calling him “Norma”. He makes the association that desire must be punished. After Norman’s murder of his mother and her paramour, he continues to punish women who dare arouse the mother figure within him to kill them too.
Despite many accolades for his work, Stefano felt pigeonholed in his career after Psycho. Studios viewed him only as a writer of macabre horror and suspense. As Stefano put it, they never stopped praising him for Psycho but they also never forgave him for it. Stefano stayed clear of participating in writing any Psycho sequels, which he thought were misguided, and leaned on camp too much for the purpose of recycling elements of the original film purely for commercial purposes without the intention of social value. They viewed therapy as useless, with Norman reverting to his psychopathic ways within days. Stefano, a firm believer in herapy, felt it was vile to suggest that ‘once a psycho, always a psycho’. If that were true, they might as well not bother to rehabilitate anyone, because they’d only kill again.
In addition, once Psycho established that Norman is a schizophrenic, cross-dressing killer, future stories held no surprise. More interesting was to explore the root of what made him that way in a prequel, Stefano surmised. We’ve never seen a living, breathing version of Norman’s mother or what she did to raise a monster. We only knew her as a mummified corpse and the interpretation from Norman’s deranged mind.
Universal, however, wasn’t keen on a pure prequel because it had no part for Anthony Perkins. Stefano came up with a compromise. The story could employ a framing device of modern-day Norman talking about his younger days. As long as seventy percent of the script was Norman’s backstory, he’d agree to script.
Stefano’s original pitch was to open the film in the present day on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”. Oprah’s topic that episode was, “Those Who Killed Their Mother”. Someone calls in – it’s Norman Bates. Bates relates the story of his early murders and the upbringing with his schizophrenic, manipulative, sexually and emotionally repressive mother that preceded them. The execs were so impressed with the idea, they had Stefano pitch it to Perkins.
In the three days between the pitch meeting and visiting Perkins’s house to sell him on it, he’d come up with more story elements. After years of intense therapy, Norman was happily married, had a stepson that he adored, and was seemingly well adjusted in life. However, reminiscing about his past on the talk show triggers him, putting his new family in mortal danger that would leave audiences in suspense what he might do to them.
Perkins loved the idea. He’d have to stretch in the role to play a Norman we’d not seen before, one that loved a woman and had something to lose. We would also see his relationship with his mother, see how she truly was, and realize what turned Norman Bates to murder when she takes on a new lover. We learn what triggered Norman to put on his mother’s dress and wig and kill women who aroused him or men who threatened to come between them.
Stefano set to write his first draft, completely ignoring the sequels. However, Hilton Green said that series fans would be confused because Psycho II revealed Norma Bates wasn’t his real mother, and Psycho III had him going to a mental institution for life. Stefano dismissed Psycho II‘s alternate mother twist as a lie and injected some dialogue that mentioned Norman’s last murder was four years in the past. He’d undergone hard therapy in an experimental institution that achieved amazing results, followed by a re-entry into society under constant supervision by his wife, a psychiatrist he fell in love with at the hospital.
After Psycho III‘s poor performance, Universal felt a theatrical release wasn’t financially viable, which Stefano was unhappy with, thinking history would be embraced by fans of the first film whether or not they enjoyed the sequels. Universal passed the project to the new division run by Ned Nalle, MCA Television Entertainment (MTE), which made shows and movies for cable television. MTE made a deal with Showtime to debut Psycho IV on their pay-TV network where it would exclusively run for three years. Hilton Green stepped in as executive producer. Zaloom and Mayfield became the line producers.
A new “Psycho House” and Bates Motel, identical to the one at Universal Studios Hollywood, were constructed in Orlando as part of its studio tour. Exterior edifices and interior sets were painstakingly recreated using blueprints from the original 1960 Psycho film, along with props from the Universal archives. Production was slated for late 1988, but script elements deemed too expensive, as well as a writers’ strike, resulted in several delays. Not only was Oprah Winfrey unlikely to appear in a made-for-Showtime movie in the Psycho series, but even a fictional TV show with a live audience was expensive to replicate, Oprah or not. Stefano reluctantly changed the nature of the show to a late-night radio call-in program that Norman happens to be listening to, even though he felt it was less visually interesting.
It’s Norman’s birthday and he is waiting for his wife, a psychiatrist who helped him in the mental institution, to come home from work to celebrate. He listens to Fran Ambrose, the late-night radio talk show covering a topic Norman is an expert in – matricide – and the guest is Dr. Richmond, the psychiatrist who treated Norman in Psycho. Ambrose draws out Norman, using the pseudonym of “Ed” (in honor of Ed Gein, the serial killer who inspired Robert Bloch to write the “Psycho” novel) to talk about his adolescence. Norman relates how his mother’s severe mood swings, psychological abuse, and sexual repression drove him to commit murder. Ambrose has to keep him on the line, hoping to prevent him from following through on his threat of killing again.
Stefano explores themes of how parents can destroy children without meaning to. Before giving it a chance, Norman assumes that the Bates psychosis is hereditary. When his wife announces her pregnancy after secretly stopping the birth control Norman insisted upon, he resorts to familiar ways of dealing with conflicts – violence – aiming to kill the woman he loves to stop her from having the world’s next psychopath.
One potential hiccup occurred in March of 1990, when the tabloid rag, “The National Enquirer”, published a story that Perkins was HIV positive, putting the insurance on the film in jeopardy. Perkins denied the story as pure fabrication. Hilton Green accepted his word and didn’t force a physical examination. Perkins’s wife, Berry Berenson, later claimed that the story came about when Perkins was being treated for facial palsy. One of the nurses took his blood sample and discovered he was positive for HIV. Rather than inform Perkins, she sold the scoop to the National Enquirer. After the story broke, Perkins took a test and found it was true, but hid it from the public until a few weeks prior to his death in 1992.
Director Mick Garris was working on a TV project for MCA/Universal called, “She-Wolf of London” when he was approached by Nalle if he’d be interested in taking the reins of Psycho IV. Garris was disinclined, having directed Critters 2 and writing a draft of The Fly II, wanting to distance himself from more properties with numbers in their titles. However, after reading the script, Garris thought a prequel was a brilliant idea, and it offered an appealing concept that he might be able to imbue with many interesting visual techniques. Because there were already two sequels, the pressure was off to live up to Psycho, and being made for Showtime, people who liked it would see it to the end, and those that didn’t could flip the channel.
Garris’s friend, John Landis, put in a good word and took Perkins and the producers to lunch to tell them why Garris was the right choice. Perkins gave his blessing to the MCA brass. Garris gave Landis the radio station manager role in the film as a thank you, while Perkins asked, as a favor, to include a part for his best friend and frequent stand-in, Kurt Paul.
Garris agreed with Stefano’s script taking a more somber, serious approach than the campier Psycho sequels. He initially wanted the flashback scenes shot in black-and-white to match Psycho, but Universal opposed this choice. Garris then went the opposite direction, reasoning that one’s memories were not only in color, but were more dreamlike and colorful than real life, like a film by Dario Argento or Mario Bava. Flashback scenes should radiate with bold, exaggerated primary colors and harder contrasts while contemporary scenes are hazy, with soft, muted colors.
A key casting decision was who could play a young Norman Bates. In addition to the list of teenage actors matching the description of a young Tony Perkins, Zaloom and Mayfield encouraged looking at Henry Thomas, who they’d worked with as production assistants on Richard Franklin’s 1984 family thriller, Cloak & Dagger. Garris and the production team flew out to meet Thomas in San Antonio. When Thomas walked into the restaurant, Garris knew immediately he was the one. Thomas remembered Mayfield and Zaloom as a great deal of fun, and the chance to spend time in a new amusement park was enticing, so he took the part.
Thomas only watched the original Psycho only because his Norman was closest in age to that portrayal. He grew apprehensive about Perkins being on the set, fearing he’d be criticized for not doing it right. Thomas sought Perkins for advice, but Perkins wanted Thomas to make it his own, so long as he stayed true to the character by asking himself what Norman would do before each scene.
For the role of Norman’s mother, they negotiated with a well-known actress who eventually declined. They cycled through other actresses before extending a late offer to Olivia Hussey without auditioning. The initial actress decided to accept once she read the script but Hussey had already accepted. Stefano didn’t think Hussey right for the role, too limited in range to convincingly alternate between seductress and evil bitch.
Although Hussey’s Argentinean-British accent didn’t sound like that of Mother in Psycho, she couldn’t perform a good American accent. Garris rationalized that Mrs. Bates was already voiced as much older than when Norman killed her, so it followed that Norma’s persona was altered greatly in Norman’s mind after her death. Hussey prepared for the role by drawing from her own experience with Christopher Jones, her schizophrenic ex-boyfriend in the late 1960s who was prone to suddenly attack her for no reason, physically and sexually abusing her. Hussey, the mother of two boys, found her intimate scenes with her on-screen son difficult and ended each take apologizing to Thomas for what she did with him.
Production began in June 1990, just days prior to the park’s official opening. Garris enjoyed the new soundstages in Orlando, but not the backlot due to the noise of the establishments nearby, the cleaning equipment, and the nearby highway. He also found it hard to maintain focus while directing emotional scenes outdoors while in view of hundred of gawking tourists.
Early in the shoot, Thomas had a mishap that resulted in a hospital visit. Norman is to murder a young and sexually adventurous classmate attempting to carouse with Norman. Garris envisioned the scene as a violent metaphor for Norman’s view of sex. Norman’s knife is a replacement for the penis Mother admonished him from using, while the spurts of blood were like semen. Fireworks exploded in the sky, an ironic occurrence often substituting for sexual climax in films. Although both Thomas and Perkins were left-handed, Norman, as Mother, stabbed his victims with his right hand. For the scene, Thomas had to use a real butcher knife to stab a small receptacle filled with movie blood covered by a thin sheet of balsa wood. At some point, he became over-enthused and stabbed toward the hard bottom of the receptacle; the knife stopped but his hand didn’t, gashing open the meat of his hand, leaving him with stitches and nerve damage for the remainder of the shoot.
Although they went over the entire script together beforehand, Garris found working with Perkins challenging. One of their early conflicts came when Garris mentioned to Perkins that he wanted to avoid Norman seeming as campy as he was in prior sequels. As he felt he knew Norman more than anyone, Perkins bristled anytime Garris told him to remove the camp in his performance. Garris got the feeling that Perkins was frequently testing him, bordering on bullying, to see if he fully thought out each scene. When Garris gave direction, Perkins would often voice going in the opposite direction. Though Garris continued to call Perkins the least enjoyable actor he’d worked with, he was gratified when Perkins praised him after seeing the finished film, calling it the best of the sequels.
The cast was sworn to secrecy. Universal claimed that there were multiple endings that were shot to further shroud the end results. Television critics were sent a preview with the climax removed.
Post-production was done at Universal in Southern California. Graeme Revell composed the music, using mostly cues taken from the original Bernard Herrmann score. Garris thought one of the oversights of the other sequels was not using Herrmann’s brilliant score.
Trailers for this TV film played in theaters and a five-minute promotional featurette played on airline flights. A 900 number offered a trivia contest with the grand prize being a trip to Universal Studios Florida. Perkins’s treatments, his desire to avoid media scrutiny about his illness, and his fatigue after performing several days of all-night shoots caused him to decline interviews,, as well as miss the wrap party.
Psycho IV premiered on Showtime on November 10, 1990, as the first part of Showtime’s “Psycho Night”, hosted by Janet Leigh, the second part was a newly remastered showing of Hitchcock’s original, which was the first time the film had ever been shown on television uncut without commercials.
While Stefano’s screenplay sheds insights into Norman’s past, it can’t overcome the pedestrian nature of witnessing events building toward an outcome we already know. Plus, it’s disingenuous in its view that Norman is redeemed. He’s obviously far from rehabilitated if he’s contemplating murdering the woman he loves for carrying his child.
Mick Garris offers a modestly styled sense of direction, though his effort to keep everything grounded removes the deliciously dark comic edge of the original, rendering it the least exciting in the series in execution. Suspense is rarely generated, playing more like a drama than a thriller or horror movie. It’s the least gory, least funny, and least viscerally engaging of the films, despite some nudity and incestuous theme.
Olivia Hussey’s casting serves as an homage; she appeared in the prototypical slasher flick genre that Psycho inspired, Black Christmas. Henry Thomas, so wholesome in Steven Spielberg’s E.T., gives Norman the right mix of pathos, inner confusion, and torment. We never loathe young Norman despite his reprehensible acts.
There’s a feeling that Perkins viewed this film as his swan song to the character of Norman Bates. There is a suggestion that the story might continue on without him from the final fade to black. Universal contemplated a follow-up involving Norman’s son, but it was thankfully abandoned, as few would want to see that Norman is right about the cycle of violence continuing in his family
Psycho IV isn’t passionate filmmaking and likely won’t appeal to non-fans, but it is respectful and, thanks to the nuanced portrayal of Perkins, retains a shred of conflicted and tragic humanity underneath.
Qwipster’s rating: C
MPAA Rated: R for violence, some nudity, and sensuality
Running Time: 96 min.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Henry Thomas, Olivia Hussey, CCH Pounder, Warren Frost, Donna Mitchell, Tom Schuster, Sharen Camille, Bobbi Evors, John Landis
Director: Mick Garris
Screenplay: Joseph Stefano