A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

I was a teenager when I first watched Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic Psycho – though at the time I’d already picked up much of the plot through cultural osmosis, including that twist. As a result, there was little in Psycho that surprised me, except for this: even with me knowing who’d get killed how, why, and by whom, the film was still supremely tense. And that’s still true now, dozens of years later: as much of a cliché as the shower scene has become, for instance, it still works. It’s still one of the best scenes of its kind, and it’s difficult to top.

Which didn’t keep them from trying, of course. There are a handful of sequels to Hitchcock’s films, though none by the Master himself, and few of them are particularly memorable – but for a while, you could make some money by turning that ur-slasher flick into the ongoing saga of Norman Bates: The Boy Who Really Loved His Mother.

Not too long after I first saw Psycho, they were showing the sequels on TV, so I watched them. Well, I watched Psycho II and Psycho III, and then I was all Psycho-ed out. I realised that I simply wasn’t into slashing for slashing’s sake, and with the best having come first, everything that followed was a disappointment to some extent. Although, that’s not quite true: I remember liking Psycho II. I liked how it didn’t feel like a retread. I liked how it took the character of Norman Bates and took him seriously. Here’s a man trying desperately not to be defined by the trauma of his past, and yet he keeps being pushed into the role everyone wants him to embody. He’s Norman Bates, after all, the byword for, well, psychos everywhere!

Most of all I remember the film’s title music, a melancholy piece by Jerry Goldsmith that very clearly signalled: this is not your mother’s Psycho. This is not shrieking, discordant violins echoing the screams of murder victims. Psycho II aims at something different: it’ll try to scare you, but it wants to evoke compassion for Norman, the little boy lost. And at the time, I was very much receptive for the kind of redemption narrative that Psycho II promised.

The thing is, though: I’ve just filled two paragraphs with my memories of Psycho II – but I honestly don’t remember anything very concrete. I mostly remember the film’s ending, Goldsmith’s title tune, and having something of a crush on Meg Tilly for a while. When I reread the Wikipedia synopsis of the film, it all sounded familiar, but only very faintly. I have a pretty concrete memory of liking the film, but I couldn’t really say what made me like it. Okay, I was a sucker for a good redemption narrative at the time, but I’m not sure that alone would’ve been enough to make me like the film. I don’t really remember the plot, the filmmaking, anything other than how I felt about the film after watching it.

Every now and then I wonder whether I should revisit Psycho II – because, after all, I liked it, didn’t I? But that’s precisely why I hesitate: I don’t want to ruin the one concrete memory I have of the film. What if it turns out that teenage me had a horrible taste in movies? What if I was swayed by the Goldsmith score and Meg Tilly’s eyes and the memory of the better film preceding it? What’s the point of testing that memory if there’s a good chance I’ll find that I was wrong about Psycho II?

As keen listeners of our podcasts will know, we do like a good second chance here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture. I like revisiting films I didn’t particularly enjoy, to see if I like them better the second time around, with adjusted expectations or simply with a few more years of experience. Perhaps that’s a remnant of my yen for a good redemption narrative. The opposite, though? Revisiting a film and finding that it’s less good than I remember, or that it simply doesn’t hold up all that well to repeat viewings? That’s not something I get a kick out of, so unless I’m reasonably certain of my opinion I generally try to avoid it.

So, most likely, Psycho II will always remain that rarest of things for me: the sequel made by different people to cash in on the original’s success… that nonetheless turned out well. The sequel that actually has something to say, that isn’t just what came before, just bigger and louder and more.

And if I’m wrong about that? That’s the beauty of it all: I’ll never know.

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