The Best of the Bad Guys: Norman Bates

Welcome to Best of the Bad Guys! Where we celebrate the best of horror’s worst villains. Today, we’re remember the greatness of Anthony Perkins’ portrayal of the Norman Bates character through the original four Psycho films.

We’re first introduced to Norman as the instantly charismatic proprietor of the off the beaten path motel Marion fatefully pulls into (after just so happening to forget to deposit a never ending douchebag’s forty thousand dollars). Making his appearance nearly twenty eight minutes in, his warm personality a stark contrast to nearly everyone we’ve seen in the film so far. Just a dude on the porch who doesn’t mind the lack of business at his motel, eating a bag of candy corn and happy to share a sandwich. Everyone else we’ve seen so far has been either overstimulated, tense, or invasive. Intentionally or unintentionally, Norman is a welcome relaxing presence.

That nature then melts away effortlessly when he becomes a little needy about those cheese sandwiches. And eventually downright frightening when his mother comes up in conversation. After Marion politely suggests he maybe put her in a home so that he may live his young life, Bates begins to make our awkward skin crawl. To quote another Psycho, it appears his mask of sanity is about to slip.

On one hand, you kind of get it. It’s like, “Hey lady, you barely know me. Why don’t mind your own business?”. On the other hand, he did just divulge a lot of personal information for a toasted cheese sandwich conversation with a stranger. Especially while surrounded by a cluster of dead animal carcasses he’d stuffed and sowed back up for nothing more than a good time.

In the matter of just a few minutes we’re made aware that Norman is a wild card that could go off the hinges at any moment. Almost as quickly as his seeming innocence and frail nature can lure you back in. It’s one of his most unique characteristics, shared by few other horror icons save maybe the underrated Leslie Vernon.

Norman may be the most layered horror icon of all. Which also makes him one of the freakiest.

Freaky enough to make Marion decide to pack up her stolen $40K and go home to apologize. Hopefully reclaiming her old life of normalcy. After all it’d been one day since she headed out on her own. In that time, she’d been chased around by a nosey Police Officer, awakened the nutbag in a candy corn eating hotel manager with mommy issues and even worse had to deal with a try hard car salesman. I’d want to go home, too. Unfortunately, that would be her last toasted cheese sandwich. How many times am I going to say cheese sandwich? Also, what is a toasted cheese sandwich and at what point does it just become a grilled cheese sandwich? When the cheese melts? I’m so confused. Cheese sandwich.

The infamous shower kill

Not only does Norman have such deeply layered issues it’d have psychologists asking, ,”is it cake?” but he’s responsible for one of, if not the most famous slasher kill in all of cinema. Dressed as his mother Bates murders Marion while taking the happiest shower of her life. Complete with one of the most recognizable sounds in movie history, and under the perfect direction of Alfred Hitchcock.

Many of us watching this right now were likely long desensitized to slasher kills before we ever experienced this scene. Though you can still see the genius in modern times, I can only imagine what it was like in 1960 watching it take place. Norman appears in shadow on the other side of the curtain, dressed in a full dress and wig. He rips the curtain open and raises the knife with machine like precision and repeatedly stabs Marion as she screams. He then turns and leaves the room silently with an uncanny precision to his movements. It’s so very clearly the prototype of so many unstoppable slashers that would come after it and there’s a reason for it. The way Norman moves and murders as “mother” has a freaky cold and quick robotic feel to it. Literally as if it is being controlled by another entity and moving forward to complete its task with no thought. Which, in a way, perfectly resembled what was happening in Norman’s broken brain.

This movement would once again be on display in my personal favorite kill of the franchise. As Detective Arbogast goes snooping around Mother’s home, he just about reaches the top of the steps when the music kicks on disrespectfully and Mother Norman turns the corner. This is an unstoppable force that moves with a cold precision that chills me to the bone. Although I never can quite tell where Mother Norman actually stabs him. It looks like the chest but as he floats to his death it looks as if his face has been cut. Either way, it just adds to the surrealness of the entire moment.

Norman’s fascinating psyche is also responsible for one of the greatest twist/reveals in movie history. When Marion’s sister Lila eventually uncovers the f*cked up truth that real mother was a dried up corpse propped up in a chair, Norman lets his full freak flag fly. The music once again kicks on as Mother Norman enters the room like a wrestler flying down the ramp to whoop some ass. Previously we had only seen Mother Norman in complete silhouette. This is Mother Norman unhinged. Where Mother Norman stops being polite…..and starts being real. Norman is in full display in wig and gown; butchers knife in tow. His manic face goes from full-on cockle doodle crazy to the look of a man in the most pain you’ve ever seen. Almost as if he’s having one of those dreams where you try scream but nothing comes out of your mouth. One of Norman’s most interesting traits, we’ll discover as we go forward, is that he has the capability of making you constantly feel bad for him. Even when you’re not so sure he isn’t just f*cking with everyone.

As the film ends, more twists are revealed and the psychiatrist delivers an awesome monologue revealing the complex and twisted science behind Norman’s behavior. We learn that Norman had a clingy and overbearing mother who he lived in isolation with most all of his life. When she became romantically involved with another man, he killed them both out of jealousy and rage.

As the franchise so often will remind us “Matricide, is probably the most unbearable crime of all. Most unbearable to the son who commits it”. To deal with the guilt, Bates stole her corpse, stuffed and sowed his mother like all of those freaky little squirrels in his parlor….and pretended she was still alive. At times even thinking for her and himself at the same time and carrying on conversations between the two. Eventually, he would assume she would be just as jealous and possessive over him as he were towards her. So….whenever he became aroused by a woman? Mother would take over his brain completely. And he would in doctors terms “murder the shit” out of them. Before dutiful son Norman woke up and cleaned up her mess. Aside from the fact that this psychiatrist garnered all that information in one conversation with Norman and must be the greatest psychiatrist of all time, we also learn that Norman had killed two other missing women before. Which we’ll learn about later.

Perhaps Norman’s greatest trait throughout Perkins four Psycho films was his ability to put you at ease. It’s such a unique trait most horror icons don’t possess. For example, in Dee Snyder’s Strangeland, a muscle bound, tattooed and pierced from head to toe giant is rehabilitated and set free after multiple kidnappings, tortures, and murders. When released he dressed like an old lady librarian, tattoos covered in makeup, walking around sheepishly to give the appearance he’d changed.

When it comes to Psycho II, Norman never has to do anything like that. He’s effortlessly harmless looking when he’s not stabbing you with a gigantic kitchen knife whilst wearing his mother’s clothes.

After committing five known murders and attempting a sixth and seventh, Norman serves twenty two years and is released from the mental institute. He moves back into his old house and even gets a job at the local diner. It’s genuinely one of the most entertaining parts of the film just watching Norman f*cking Bates learn to run food at a tiny local diner. He’s so damn sweet and courteous, yet awkward and firm in his beliefs….there’s just no one else like him. Perkins’ portrayal left you transfixed in all four films any and every time he was on screen no matter how silly the moment.

Though technically Norman himself wasn’t doing much throughout the events of Psycho II, he kept all possibilities open due to his mysterious nature. While bodies piled up around him including a bear-poking hotel manager and a Karen trying to mess with his head, Norman never let you know what he was truly thinking. He’s either completely naïve, too innocent to understand the way he’s being treated, or manipulating everyone with his politeness while secretly back on the murder wagon. Throughout Psycho II’s running time, I have no idea whether this guy is Bob Saget from Full House or Patrick Bateman from that other psycho movie. And either way, I think I might feel sorry for him. It’s another stroke of genius that could belong to no other horror icon the way it belongs to Bates.

Turns out it’s a little of everything. He was innocent right up until his Aunt showed up claiming to be his real mother. Not the person you want to be when it comes to Norman Bates. That’s like a Twinkie revealing itself to Woody Harrelson in Zombieland. Norman makes her some strict nine tea and ho-hum bashes her over the head with a shovel in a moment even Eminem remembers.

In Psycho III, the town gets nervous when Norman’s shovel victim remains missing for over a month. Spoiler alert: She’s been stuffed with sawdust and propped up in the Psycho house. Hey, if you want to be Norman’s mom so bad, you can be Norman’s mom. Be careful what you wish for you nosey old lady. Meanwhile a wacky ex-nun with more issues than Sports Illustrated shows up at the hotel looking just like Marion. His romantic arousal for Maureen along with hilarious scum bag Jeff Fahey pushing his buttons, wakes up all the darkness in him.

Fahey’s devil may care unless you touch my guitar character Duane was the antithesis to everything Norman loved about the polite side of life. Meanwhile, in Maureen he’d met his match. She might have been even more tweaked out mentally than he was. We watch as Norman tries to break free of his nutbaggery only to make things worse.

While Psycho III might not do much in a serious way to move the character forward, we are treated to the more comedic side of our horror icon. We also see a return to Mother Norman getting her murder on, with a pretty great kill scene in a phone booth and the stabbing of woman on the toilet. Not to mention a hilarious take on the whole ‘cleaning up after mother’ scenario.

Norman himself has to get his hands dirty. Fittingly against the nemesis to his mannered side, Duane. You can’t help but laugh or at least be entertained in that “Jesus, this guy is off the map” type of way watching Norman fumble through a murder as himself. But our guy isn’t just looney tunes. He’s determined.

Another character trait of Bates’ often overlooked is that he’s an extremely positive human being. You’d have to be to be him. Even as he’s being taken away in the back of the cop car, he maintains a good outlook on it all. But then again, is this dude just f*cking with us all? Because in the next scene guy is petting Mother Spool’s dead hand and smiling. Also, these cops suck at their jobs. At least pat the guy down for Christ’s sake!

We return to Norman for one final go of it all, two years before Perkins death in 1992 with Mick Garris’ Psycho IV. A TV movie with a damn cool premise. The best part of which is the fact that we open up with Norman Bates standing in the kitchen of a beautiful home, free as a bird, making dinner and calling up radio talk shows with his shirt tucked neatly into his khakis. Like a retired suburban dad piddling around the house all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Psycho IV is a prequel mostly about Norman’s childhood. Which could be an annoying step for a franchise to take. But here it’s given massive weight, given the fact the story is told by Perkins himself, the world’s foremost expert on the character.

As far as the prequel side goes, we watch the late Olivia Hussey give a visual representation to the awful torture Norman’s mother put him through. She purposefully aroused him and then shamed him for it. She scarred him deeply in a multitude of ways. We’re truly given a deeper look into how his psyche became so broken when it came to women.

If you get a chance, I recommend looking up the story of Anthony Perkins’ young life. It’s not what we’re here to do today, but some of the parallels to what this poor soul went through are shockingly similar and it’s a crazy coincidence that really adds weight to his performances as Norman Bates. While Psycho IV paints a clearer picture for Norman’s behaviors and even makes us further sympathetic to him. It also reminds us yet again how smart, how tricky the character is.

Norman manipulates his way through this phone call with the radio DJ, finally revealing he plans to kill his current wife and her unborn child. She’d gotten pregnant against his wishes, and he didn’t want a seed as evil as himself to be born into the world again. Only this time, it wouldn’t be as Mother Norman, but as himself. Like the first time.

While this premise is wacky (what about this franchise isn’t, in the best of ways?) it works because Norman Bates is never endingly interesting. An absolute wild card of a character that could be the victim, hero, or villain of your story at any moment. He can make you laugh. He can make you feel awful for him. He can freak you the hell out. There’s no horror icon out there quite like one Norman Bates. Which coincidentally made for a shockingly watchable four movie franchise and of course spawned a remake and entire series based on the characters childhood. A series that honestly just left us all wondering episode after episode….is today the day that he makes out with his mom?

On that note, thanks for watching! If you enjoyed this be sure to check out our other Best of the Bad Guys videos including deep dives into the best of Freddy Krueger, Art the Clown, The Strangers, and more! A couple of the previous episodes can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

The post The Best of the Bad Guys: Norman Bates appeared first on JoBlo.