Psycho is one of those series that shouldn’t really be a series, but somehow works. The original had a painful shot-for-shot remake, a very popular television show based on the IP, another made-for-TV movie that was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a completely different TV series, and, of course, sequels that gradually turned the franchise into slashers. Then there’s the fourth movie. And Psycho IV: The Beginning has three major things going for it that make it stand out from the rest.
What was the surprising choice for how the movie would premiere? What famous director has more than a cameo role in the movie? And who was so impressed with the film that they wrote director Mick Garris a letter congratulating him? Let’s head back to the Bates Motel and see what makes Psycho IV so special.
Psycho IV: The Beginning is an early example of what we now call a legacy sequel. It mostly ignores Psycho II and Psycho III while simultaneously serving as both a prequel and a continuation of the original story.
The movie takes place as a popular radio talk show hosts an episode about matricide. Norman Bates himself calls into the program after realizing that the guest is his former psychiatrist. Going by the name “Ed,” Norman tells the story of his life with his mother after his father died when he was six. Norma Bates treated her son terribly. She tried to force him into a female role, put him in dresses, shamed his natural sexual desires, blamed him for her own medical problems and failures, and held him responsible for the declining family business at the Bates Motel.
The movie cuts between the adult Norman and his younger self as his story unfolds.
In the present day, Norman is married to his former therapist, Connie, and the couple is expecting a child. Norman doesn’t want the baby. He’s terrified that he could create another monster like himself.
We see his first murders: his mother and her abusive fiancé. We also see what happens when the guilt of matricide manifests in Norman’s mind as his mother’s personality, pushing him toward killing women who make intimate advances toward him.
Eventually, the radio host throws Norman’s former doctor off the air after he repeatedly antagonizes Norman and tries to convince him not to kill his wife and unborn child.
Unfortunately, Norman’s fear takes over. He meets Connie at the old Bates Motel, intending to make sure there will never be another generation of Norman Bates terrorizing people. But Connie quickly realizes what he’s planning.
Will Norman go through with it, adding another victim to the ghosts haunting the house? Or will he finally realize that he has another option and put his past to bed?
The plot doesn’t really sound like a Psycho movie if you remove the Bates name. And yet, it’s probably closer to Hitchcock’s original than either of the previous sequels. Somehow, it works.
But how did we get here?
The late ’80s were a tough time for the Psycho franchise. After the surprise success of 1983’s Psycho II, which made nearly $35 million on a $5 million budget, the series seemed ready to continue. Then it would pull a Star Trek. No, I don’t mean it would go into space or the future. It would let one of its major stars direct.
Psycho III, directed by Anthony Perkins, was released on July 2, 1986. Although critics liked it well enough and the movie eventually developed minor cult-classic status, it made just over $14 million against an $8.4 million budget. It was considered a failure.
The following year brought another strange turn. Universal Television decided to make an anthology-style Psycho television series. The result was Bates Motel. No, not that Bates Motel.
The planned series starred Bud Cort and Lori Petty and would have featured different guests checking into the titular motel each week for different adventures. Anthony Perkins hated the idea. He not only refused to participate but actively boycotted the project. Since Norman Bates was killed off in the pilot episode, the character was briefly played by Kurt Paul, who had previously served as Perkins’ stunt double in the Psycho movies.
The series was eventually scrapped and transformed into a made-for-TV movie that aired over the Fourth of July holiday in 1987. It was poorly reviewed and drew very low ratings. Jason Bateman appearing in it is at least a cool piece of movie trivia history, but the project was otherwise a dead end.
That failure, combined with the disappointing theatrical performance of Psycho III, led Universal to rethink the franchise. And that’s where Psycho IV begins.
Perkins was excited to get back into a creative role and pitched an idea with Psycho III screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue. The Bates Motel would become a horror weekend attraction. Norman would escape the mental institution with a mute patient and return home. An actor hired to play Norman would quit, and the real Norman Bates would then be hired to play himself.
Perkins and Pogue pitched it to Universal as a black comedy. Universal said no.
Instead, the studio decided that the fourth Psycho would be a made-for-TV movie for the premium cable network Showtime. They also brought in director Mick Garris after an earlier suggestion, Noel Black, was rejected. At this point, Garris wasn’t yet the go-to name for television horror that he would become, but he had already built an impressive résumé. He had written the story for Batteries Not Included, written The Fly II, worked on Freddy’s Nightmares and several episodes of Amazing Stories, and directed Critters 2. More importantly, he had relationships with heavyweights including Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, and John Landis.
Universal had found its director. Now it wanted to make the movie feel like a genuine Psycho film.
The first major decision was bringing back original Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano. That was a big deal. Stefano had written the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s original 1960 classic and had spent much of the following decades away from the franchise. His other notable work included twelve episodes of the original The Outer Limits and the 1972 made-for-TV horror movie Home for the Holidays.
Bringing him back gave Psycho IV an immediate connection to the original. Then Universal made another smart decision.
Psycho IV is the only sequel to bring back Bernard Herrmann’s famous opening score. That immediately makes the movie feel like a Psycho movie, particularly after Garris felt that the previous two sequels had drifted too far into slasher territory.
The movie was deliberately going back to the beginning. And that extended to the production design.
The first three Psycho movies were filmed on the Universal backlot in Los Angeles. Psycho IV was filmed on the other coast, where the Bates mansion and motel had been recreated for a theme park. Originally, the production was supposed to shoot before the park opened. Delays changed those plans. Instead, Psycho IV became a high-profile attraction while the park was open. Tourists could actually watch the production happening.
The Hard Rock Café was even asked to turn down its lights and music so the crew could complete night shoots.
The movie was filmed over just 24 days, from June 4 through July 1. And the cast was stacked.
Perkins returned as Norman Bates, while CCH Pounder played the radio host. Olivia Hussey played Norma Bates, the only time we really get to see Norman’s mother alive.
Neither Perkins nor Hussey had to audition for their roles. Hussey, who died in 2024, had already appeared in films including Romeo and Juliet, Black Christmas, Turkey Shoot, Ice Cream Man, and the It miniseries. She is fantastic here. Norma is psychosexual, abusive, damaged, and deeply troubled, and Hussey makes all of those qualities believable.
Normally, I’m not a huge fan of movies going back and explaining why the bad guy became the way they did. Here, though, it works.
Hussey’s performance is one of three that make Psycho IV work. The second is Perkins. The third is Henry Thomas.
Thomas was already a known quantity thanks to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Cloak & Dagger, but Psycho IV gave him the opportunity to play Norman Bates. That’s not an easy role to step into. Perkins had become synonymous with Norman. Thomas later said that he tried to talk to Perkins about taking over the role, but it was clear that Perkins didn’t really want to pass the baton.
Still, Thomas nailed it. His young Norman is meek and frightened, even when he’s killing people. You can see the sadness and confusion when Norma tries to turn him into something he’s not. And when he commits his first murders, he fumbles through them like an inexperienced serial killer trying to figure out what he’s doing. That’s what makes it scary.
Thomas is the perfect match for Perkins, even mimicking some of the facial expressions and deep sadness that made the character iconic.
There’s a lot going on behind Perkins’ performance.
Anthony Perkins was much more than Norman Bates. He was an Oscar-nominated actor who worked extensively outside the horror genre, appearing in westerns such as Tin Star and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, dramas including The Trial and Catch-22, and comedies like The Matchmaker. He also appeared in genre films including Destroyer, Edge of Sanity, Daughter of Darkness, and Disney’s dark sci-fi movie The Black Hole. But Psycho IV was particularly difficult for him. His own Psycho III had been considered a failure, and now his character was being played by another actor in a follow-up project.
Behind the scenes, though, there was something far more serious happening. During production, Perkins was diagnosed with HIV and began receiving treatment.
Mick Garris would later describe Perkins as the most difficult and challenging actor he ever worked with. Perkins argued with Garris in front of the cast and crew, improvised things such as ripping an apple in half rather than cutting it, and refused to perform certain actions he believed were inconsistent with Norman. Yet Perkins also respected good direction and was ultimately pleased with his performance and the finished movie.
It shows. His performance is arguably his best as Norman since the original Psycho. There’s fear in his performance, but also an awareness of exactly who Norman is and why he committed these murders. And because the entire story is being told by Norman himself, there’s always a question about how much of what we’re seeing is actually true.
Perkins communicates that beautifully through his facial expressions. His final confrontation with the ghosts of the Bates house gives him a chance to emotionally and psychologically fight his way out of the cycle his mother started.
Perkins died just two years later from AIDS-related pneumonia. He only appeared in three more projects. That makes Psycho IV a fitting final chapter for both the character and the actor.
The decision to largely ignore Psycho II and Psycho III was another smart one. It allowed the prequel sections to breathe and, more importantly, gave the movie room to explore Norman’s relationship with his mother.
One of the biggest surprises comes right at the beginning. The first flashback dives headfirst into Norma’s body and then shows Norman killing a woman who is interested in him. The movie then subverts expectations by revealing that Norma is still alive, before jumping through different periods of Norman’s childhood and eventually arriving at the murder of his mother and her lover.
The sequence even provided a memorable behind-the-scenes moment. Actress Sharen Camille, covered in blood during one of the murder scenes, went to wash it off and found herself looking down at the famous Psycho shower drain. It was the only nude scene of her career. For her, it was worth it. She felt like she was living the Psycho dream.
The movie does make occasional references to events that could only have happened in the previous sequels, but the major thing it ignores is the mother storyline introduced later in the franchise. That was the right decision. Garris had already recognized that the series was drifting into slasher territory. Psycho IV pulled it back.
And that brings us to one of the most important things about Psycho IV: it was a television movie, but it wasn’t a basic-cable television movie. It was made for Showtime. That distinction mattered. Premium cable meant the filmmakers could use harsher language, gorier violence, and nudity. And Psycho IV takes advantage of all three.
But the most effective benefit isn’t necessarily the nudity or gore. It’s the way the movie handles violence.
One of the most disturbing sequences involves Norman killing a woman who makes advances toward him while he is under his mother’s influence. He strangles her. She doesn’t die. He tries again. He’s clumsy. She’s still alive. Eventually, she drowns when the car sinks into the water behind the motel.
It’s difficult to watch because it feels painfully real. There’s nothing glamorous about it. No stylish knife. No clean gunshot. It’s raw, messy, and frightening.
Then there’s the murder of Norma and her fiancé with strychnine. It’s slow, angry, and ugly. The victims are terrible people, but the movie doesn’t turn their deaths into clean, satisfying slasher kills. They vomit. They struggle. They fight for their lives. Norma even vomits through Norman’s fingers. It’s one of the simplest special effects in the movie, and one of the most disturbing.
Norman watches his mother die while barely able to look away.
Some reviewers argued that Psycho IV wasn’t Hitchcockian enough. I’d argue the opposite. Norma’s death is more Hitchcockian than anything in Psycho II or Psycho III. And the movie wouldn’t have been able to do it in quite the same way without Showtime.
Psycho IV: The Beginning premiered on Showtime on November 10, 1990, as part of a Psycho retrospective hosted by Janet Leigh. Critics were divided. Audiences were much kinder. The movie drew more than 10 million viewers, and at least a couple of extremely influential people liked what they saw.
Steven Spielberg sent Mick Garris a letter congratulating him on the movie and expressing his admiration for it. Garris still has that letter framed in his office.
Stephen King was also a fan of the movie, which may have helped Garris land the major Stephen King adaptations and miniseries that followed throughout the 1990s.
There was even some old-school publicity trickery. Janet Leigh claimed during the original broadcast that multiple endings had been filmed. Garris later revealed that this was a studio publicity stunt.
At the end of the day, Psycho is a much smaller franchise than almost any other major horror series. There are five actual movies, a television series, and a rightfully forgotten attempted backdoor pilot. That’s nothing compared with Friday the 13th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But I’d argue that Psycho is pound-for-pound better than more than a few of those franchises. And Psycho IV is a big reason why.
Psycho IV brought Norman Bates back to where he belonged, restored the connection to Hitchcock’s original, brought back Joseph Stefano and Bernard Herrmann’s music, gave us Anthony Perkins’ final performance as Norman, introduced Henry Thomas as a young version of the character, gave Olivia Hussey a chance to finally show us the woman behind the voice, and used the freedom of premium cable to tell a darker, more uncomfortable story than the previous sequels.
Universal could have sent Psycho into space. It could have gone 3D. It could have turned Norman into another slasher villain. Instead, Psycho IV went back to the beginning. That makes it stand out from almost every other fourth installment in horror.
Unfortunately, the franchise would squander that momentum with Gus Van Sant’s infamous shot-for-shot remake before finding another life through the five-season television series Bates Motel.
But as a potential final chapter, Psycho IV works remarkably well. Even its final moments leave the door open to a darker legacy, with the possibility that Norman’s unborn child could carry the Bates family’s darkness into another generation.
Maybe that’s why Psycho IV: The Beginning feels so special. It isn’t simply another Psycho sequel. It’s the Psycho sequel that finally understood what made the original so unsettling.