Having been made sane by Robert Loggia, Norman Bates is set loose again in 1983's Psycho II. It's a pulpier film than the original, concerned more with plot, heroes, and villains. On the other hand, Anthony Perkins gives a spellbinding performance and the film's complicated plot functions as a portrait of overwhelming paranoia.
Bates is set up with a job at diner in addition to resuming ownership of the Bates motel. Dennis Franz plays the sleazy motel manager who deeply offends Norman. Perkins plays Norman like the boy scout who never grew up which, in a sense, he is. He brings home a beautiful young woman, Mary (Meg Tilly), from the diner. Mary says her boyfriend's thrown her out and at first it seems like an awful convenient setup for a pretty young woman to end up staying with Norman. But all is not as it seems.
Perkins' performance is so vulnerable and honest, you really feel for him as he tries his damnedest to stay sane. Various forces conspire against him and then some of those forces conspire against each other. The little more information the audience is let in on than Norman gives us just enough insight to see how impossibly tangled is the web he's caught in. While the first film is about the troubling, blurred line between victim and perpetrator, the second has rendered Norman entirely a victim, though in a very interesting way. Perkins' performance has a lot to do with it. I don't think the film would've been half as effective with someone else. With all the deception swirling around him, it's the truth of Perkins' performance that anchors the film.
Mary's relationship with him gets complicated though there's only one moment that suggests a possibility of romance between the two and I loved Perkins' performance when the idea occurs to him. The look of pain, fear, and hope mingling on his face makes human vulnerability in itself seem like a threat. No wonder Mary's frightened.
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