Alex West, who roomed with the late Norman Bates at the state lunatic asylum, inherits the infamous Bates Motel after Norman Bates dies, and tries to fix it up to make it a respectable busin... Read allAlex West, who roomed with the late Norman Bates at the state lunatic asylum, inherits the infamous Bates Motel after Norman Bates dies, and tries to fix it up to make it a respectable business. But soon, strange events occur.Alex West, who roomed with the late Norman Bates at the state lunatic asylum, inherits the infamous Bates Motel after Norman Bates dies, and tries to fix it up to make it a respectable business. But soon, strange events occur.
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDespite popular belief, Anthony Perkins never boycotted the film. At a 1988 horror convention, Perkins stated that he had no involvement in the film and that he watched it when it originally aired. He called the film: "just terrible".
- GoofsThis production features the motel in a town called Fairville. The Bates motel was located just outside of Fairvale.
- Quotes
[last lines]
Alex West: Nobody ever said life was easy. Then nothing ever worth it ever is. But you know, I think with a little luck, we're gonna do okay here. I think Norman would have liked that. Oh, by the way, if you ever need a room, come on by. Can't say for sure what you'll find, but that is what makes the world go round.
- ConnectionsEdited from Psycho III (1986)
- SoundtracksWhere or When
Written by Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart
Performed by Dion DiMucci (as Dion) & The Belmonts
I'd like to say this film is awful. But I can't really say that, since I've seen so much worse. But as an attachment to the Psycho films, it IS awful. It ignores the two sequels that had been made and even makes mistakes based on information from the original. Bud Cort gives a mind-numbingly dumb performance as the friend of Norman's who inherits the motel after his death. You never really have sympathy for him 'cause he just plays it so dumb. Lori Petti, who I usually love, is rather annoying as the squatter that befriends him. She does an okay job with her part, but the problem is that all the main parts were poorly written. We get more than half of the way through the movie, focusing on Cort and Petti trying to get the motel running again, and then we enter the first of the Twilight-Zone-ish stories: a woman who wants to kill herself is befriended by some strange teens. The writing and acting in this segment isn't bad, but after sitting through the Cort/Petti story, it hardly seems worth it.
There's really only one creepy segment in the film -- the presence of the woman in black at Mrs. Bates funeral (but the discovery of her corpse is nonsense, since they found her body in the basement in the original film). The whole Jake Bates story seemed like it was jammed in so they could add a few more scares, though the scares fell flat. And the black-and-white segment at the film's climax could have been great -- if they hadn't went the Scooby-Doo unmask-the-villain route -- but as another reviewer wrote, it seemed to be the inspiration for "Scream 3" (which I love, by the way).
Though the film is a piece of Psycho history, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone, except maybe fans of the actors -- even then it wouldn't get a strong recommendation....
- TelevisionJunkie
- May 12, 2002
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Details
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1