Psycho III (1986) Psycho 3.jpg
Anthony Perkins sits his boney back side in the directors chair for this third outing,about nutty Norman Bates and the Bates Motel.With what seems to be a Vertigo homage,the film starts out with Diana Scarwid accidentally causing the death of a nun and then doing a runner,sort of nuns on the run,she then gets a lift from sleaze Dwayne Duke,only to end running again and ending up at the Bates Motel.Perkins direction of the third film is pretty solid and although he has none of Hitchcocks skills of suspense,its a competent effort and he certainly had some skill as a director.The film pretty much kicks off straight after the second film,where he kills Mrs Spoole,and its nice to see a few of the same characters from the last film appear again.There are some nice moments especially when Norman is doing his favourite past time of taxidermy,where he poisons the local birds to fulfils his hobby. Anthony Perkins looks as always youthful as ever,and seems to relish his part as nutty Norman,with all the twiches and side ways smirks he can muster. There is no real suspense to be had as we all know the story,so the film revels in Norman's voyeurism and occasional cross dressing.And in a nice twist when Mother Bates goes a calling on Scarwid to recreate a certain scene from the first film only to find Scarwids character has beaten her to it and has slashed her wrists in act of religious rebellion. I really enjoyed Psycho 3,it has some nice touches (the scene where the sheriff is scoffing down bloody ice cubes) and a few rather well directed scenes that im sure Mr Hitchcock would be proud of.Story wise there no great surprises,it pretty much keeps to the themes that Richard Franklin introduced in the second film.
Dead and Buried, (1981) dead_and_buried_poster_01.jpg
Gary Sherman's film is such a darkly strange film,it comes no surprise that its was originally intended more as a black comedy,but was later decided to concentrate more on the horror angle.And it is a pretty brutal film,the scene where the photographer is tied up and set fire to,while the perpetrators stand and watch is very chilling and reminds me of the trend where people now a days film some tragedy or horror on there phones rather than actually do something about it,at least in the film they have an excuse.Also the mortuary scenes have that cold atmospheric feeling,that really do not want to experience at first hand ,and the scene where the girl hitch hiker has her face restored is amazingly effective and gruesome at the same time.Sherman shows great skill at portraying a dank and wet environment that has atmosphere dripping from the scene,his early film Raw Meat (Death Line) has that scene where it pans over the dead and decaying corpses in the underground,its grim and yet weirdly amusing and has a real EC comics feel to it.It should also be said that there are some marvellous performances amongst all the dread and fear,James Farentino and Jack Albertson are both great one the dogged cop the other an eccentric mortician,with Melody Anderson as local school teacher.I remember seeing the TV adverts when it first came out in the cinema,and the film has been a favourite since the days of rental video tapes.