Opening scene, a black-and-white sunrise over the Bates Motel, is a good, atmospheric touch, until we realise the footage was lifted from Psycho II, getting things off to a cheap, tacky start.
Some good set designs are about all this turkey has going for it, as Bates' former asylum roommate is willed the Bates Motel, by the now deceased (in this film, anyway) Norman Bates. What could possibly go wrong with an ex-mental patient returning to the scene of a very violent crime? And I'm sorry to keep repeating myself and bringing this up, however, the Bates Motel should have been demolished decades earlier, not only because of the murders which occurred there, but also because the highway built in the 1950s (mentioned by Norman Bates in the original Psycho) routed traffic away from that road.
Wide eyed, boyish looking Bud Cort is awful, and the screen writing in this Psycho meets wannabe Twilight Zone was as bland as could be. I don't have a problem with there being no murder, and no act of on- screen violence committed, what I do have a problem with was the inept screen writing, killing off Bates for the sake of a proposed weekly television series, and for what? So we can watch Cort's character mundanely and uneventfully running to motel? Or watch as he slowly goes mad, and is driven to kill, in extremely predictable fashion?
Some good set designs are about all this turkey has going for it, as Bates' former asylum roommate is willed the Bates Motel, by the now deceased (in this film, anyway) Norman Bates. What could possibly go wrong with an ex-mental patient returning to the scene of a very violent crime? And I'm sorry to keep repeating myself and bringing this up, however, the Bates Motel should have been demolished decades earlier, not only because of the murders which occurred there, but also because the highway built in the 1950s (mentioned by Norman Bates in the original Psycho) routed traffic away from that road.
Wide eyed, boyish looking Bud Cort is awful, and the screen writing in this Psycho meets wannabe Twilight Zone was as bland as could be. I don't have a problem with there being no murder, and no act of on- screen violence committed, what I do have a problem with was the inept screen writing, killing off Bates for the sake of a proposed weekly television series, and for what? So we can watch Cort's character mundanely and uneventfully running to motel? Or watch as he slowly goes mad, and is driven to kill, in extremely predictable fashion?