BATES MOTEL

I knew going into 'Bates Motel' that it would be shit... but it's a movie that's always been in my consciousness and I remember seeing it in my local video store when I was a kid. In fact it's cover may have even been my first entry point to the whole Psycho legacy. I was no older than 8 and the video cover was creepy. So finally, some 25 years later, I bothered to sit down and watch it. Of course now I have a comprehensive knowledge of all things Psycho and an extremely low expectation. Bates Motel was made in 1987, shortly after the third Psycho film was released. It was an attempt to kick-start an anthology tv show in the fashion of The Twilight Zone or even Alfred Hitchcock Presents... the airing bombed catastrophically and the series ended right there and then. The result is a 90 minute piece of shit that ignores the Psycho timeline and kills off Norman Bates in the first 5 minutes. He leaves the Bates motel to his friend from the psychiatric hospital and the movie shows this new character renovating the motel. Wedged in-between his story is a weird subplot about a visiting guest who has a run in with a bunch of ghosts from the 1950s. I guess that was their attempt at a "weekly story". Anyway, there are no murders and the main character is not a killer as the poster art implies. A teenage Jason Bateman and Lori Petty also star in the movie which hardly compensates for this bona-fide butchering of a beloved legacy. The whole thing is on Youtube if you're curious to see what type of stink this is.

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