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Author | Robert Bloch |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Thriller, horror |
Publisher | Whispers Press |
Publication date | 1982 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
ISBN | 0-918372-08-9 |
OCLC | 8926424 |
Preceded by | Psycho |
Followed by | Psycho House |
Psycho II is a 1982 horror novel by American writer Robert Bloch. It is a sequel to his 1959 novel Psycho . The novel was completed before the screenplay was written for the unrelated 1983 film Psycho II . According to Bloch, Universal Studios loathed the novel, which was intended to critique Hollywood splatter films. A different story was created for the film and Bloch was not invited to any screenings. [1] Universal suggested that Bloch abandon his novel, which he declined and released anyway to good sales. [2]
In a mental asylum, psychiatrist Dr. Adam Claiborne has spent the last two decades working with patient Norman Bates [a] and has hopes of one day becoming famous by curing him. His plans come crashing down after Norman strangles a visiting nun with her rosary beads, steals her outfit and walks out. Norman gets in the van with another visiting nun, kills her with a tire iron, and rapes her dead body. While driving away, Norman spots a hitchhiker and picks him up with plans to kill him and use his body to fake his death.
Later that night, the police find the van on fire with the charred remains of the nun and an unidentified man presumed to be Norman. Since this happened at the same time as a massive car pile up, they are exhausting their resources trying to identify the victims to notify their next of kin and cannot get around to positively identifying Norman's remains.
Across town, Sam and Lila Loomis are murdered by an assailant with a knife. Claiborne is convinced that Norman faked his death and proceeded to kill them, but the police are skeptical. While surveying the crime scene, they see a news article talking about a movie being made based on Norman's life. Claiborne thinks that Norman is going to Hollywood to kill everybody involved in production, and heads out there to stop him.
To keep an eye on everything, Claiborne gets a job as a technical consultant on the film. He gets introduced to the cast and crew, including director Santo Vizzini, who is the spitting image of Norman twenty years before. Claiborne keeps thinking that something bad is going to happen, but nobody believes him until the movie's producer gets killed with a meat cleaver.
At the scene of the crime, Claiborne and screenwriter Roy Ames find out about Vizzini's past: his mother was raped and murdered when he was a child. Meanwhile, Vizzini calls the actress playing Marion Crane to the studio where the shower scene is going to be shot under the guise of rehearsing the scene, but he is really planning on raping and murdering her. It turns out that his childhood trauma has affected his sexual morality.
Claiborne gets a bad feeling about Vizzini and heads over to the studio to try to stop him. Moments after he leaves, the phone rings and Ames answers it only to be in touch with the officer investigating Norman's disappearance. They have conclusively identified the charred remains in the van as Norman's. It turns out while Norman planned on killing the hitchhiker to fake his death, the hitchhiker actually overpowered Norman and killed him in self-defense. He had a criminal record and was worried about returning to jail, so he burned the van to hide the evidence and went into hiding. However, the hitchhiker really thought he was killing a nun instead of a disguised Norman. The thought of killing a nun weighed on his conscience and he eventually turned himself in. Ames concludes that if Norman is dead, Vizzini must be the murderer and he requests officers to go to the studio.
Meanwhile, Vizzini tries to rape the actress. However, she fights him off and kicks him hard enough to send him into the prop shower behind the curtain. Vizzini screams and emerges with a stab wound before dropping dead. The assailant then takes the knife and approaches the actress. However, before he can stab her, the police show up and shoot him. As he falls, he is revealed to be none other than Dr. Claiborne. He survives the shooting and ends up committed to the very asylum that Norman spent twenty years in.
Claiborne's colleague deduces that he put so much time and energy into Norman Bates, that when Norman died, Claiborne realized he would never get the fame he wished for and the trauma of this reality gave him Norman's split personality. This split personality killed Sam and Lila, Vizzini, and the producer. Now, his colleague is hoping that he will one day be cured, but he is not very optimistic.
Dave Pringle reviewed Psycho II for Imagine magazine, and stated that "Psycho 2 is in the same genre as Red Dragon (psychological/murder/horror), but it is much cruder and much less believable". [3]
Psycho is a 1960 American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay, written by Joseph Stefano, was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The film stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Martin Balsam. The plot centers on an encounter between on-the-run embezzler Marion Crane (Leigh) and shy motel proprietor Norman Bates (Perkins) and its aftermath, in which a private investigator (Balsam), Marion's lover Sam Loomis (Gavin) and her sister Lila (Miles) investigate her disappearance.
Robert Albert Bloch was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized for radio, cinema and television. He also wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction. His writing career lasted 60 years, including more than 30 years in television and film. He began his professional writing career immediately after graduation from high school, aged 17. Best known as the writer of Psycho (1959), the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. He was a protégé of H. P. Lovecraft, who was the first to seriously encourage his talent. However, while he started emulating Lovecraft and his brand of cosmic horror, he later specialized in crime and horror stories working with a more psychological approach.
Norman Bates is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch as the main protagonist in his 1959 horror novel Psycho. He has an alter, Mother, who takes from the form of his abusive mother, and later victim, Norma, who in his daily life runs the Bates Motel.
Rose Madder is a horror/fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1995. It deals with the effects of domestic violence and, unusually for a King novel, relies for its fantastic element on Greek mythology. In his memoir, On Writing, King states that Rose Madder and Insomnia are "stiff, trying-too-hard novels."
Psycho IV: The Beginning is a 1990 American made-for-television slasher film directed by Mick Garris, and starring Anthony Perkins, Henry Thomas, Olivia Hussey, Warren Frost, Donna Mitchell, and CCH Pounder. It serves as both the third sequel and a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, focusing on the early life of Norman Bates and the flashbacks that took place prior to the events of the original film. It is the fourth and final film in the original Psycho franchise, and Perkins' final appearance in the series before his death in 1992.
Psycho II is a 1983 American psychological slasher film directed by Richard Franklin, written by Tom Holland, and starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Robert Loggia, and Meg Tilly. It is the first sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho and the second film in the Psycho franchise. Set 22 years after the first film, it follows Norman Bates after he is released from the mental institution and returns to the house and Bates Motel to continue a normal life. However, his troubled past continues to haunt him as someone begins to murder the people around him. The film is unrelated to the 1982 novel Psycho II by Robert Bloch, which he wrote as a sequel to his original 1959 novel Psycho.
Psycho III is a 1986 American slasher film, and the third film in the Psycho franchise. It stars Anthony Perkins, who also directs the film, reprising the role of Norman Bates. It co-stars Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey, and Roberta Maxwell. The screenplay is written by Charles Edward Pogue. The original electronic music score is composed and performed by Carter Burwell in one of his earliest projects. Psycho III is unrelated to Robert Bloch's third Psycho novel, Psycho House, which was released in 1990.
Bates Motel is a 1987 American made-for-television supernatural horror film and a spin-off of the Psycho franchise written and directed by Richard Rothstein, starring Bud Cort, Lori Petty, Moses Gunn, Gregg Henry, Jason Bateman, and Kerrie Keane. Outside of the 1998 remake, this is the only installment not to feature Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates as Kurt Paul portrays the character. The film premiered on July 5, 1987. It is a direct sequel to Psycho, ignoring the other sequels.
The Werewolf of Paris (1933) is a horror novel as well as a work of historical fiction by American writer Guy Endore. The novel follows Bertrand Caillet, the eponymous werewolf, throughout the tumultuous events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune of 1870–71. Some literature experts have compared this book with Dracula of Bram Stoker and they have identified it as the Dracula of Werewolves.
Psycho is a 1998 American psychological horror film produced and directed by Gus Van Sant, and starring Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, and Anne Heche. It is a modern remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film of the same name, in which an embezzler arrives at an old motel run by a mysterious man named Norman Bates; both films are adapted from Robert Bloch's 1959 novel.
American Psycho is a 2000 satirical psychological horror film directed by Mary Harron, who co-wrote the screenplay with Guinevere Turner. Based on the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis, it stars Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, a New York City investment banker who leads a double life as a serial killer. Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Chloë Sevigny, Samantha Mathis, Cara Seymour, Justin Theroux, and Reese Witherspoon appear in supporting roles. The film blends horror and black comedy to satirize 1980s yuppie culture and consumerism, exemplified by Bateman.
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Torture Garden is a 1967 British horror film directed by Freddie Francis and starring Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Michael Ripper, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Ursula Howells, Michael Bryant and Barbara Ewing. The score was a collaboration between Hammer horror regulars James Bernard and Don Banks.
Psycho is a 1959 horror novel by American writer Robert Bloch. The novel tells the story of Norman Bates, a caretaker at an isolated motel who struggles under his domineering mother and becomes embroiled in a series of murders. The novel is considered Bloch's most enduring work and one of the most influential horror novels of the 20th century.
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Norma Bates is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch in his 1959 thriller novel Psycho. She is the deceased mother and victim of serial killer Norman Bates, who had recreated her in his mind as a murderous alternate personality.
Marion Crane is a fictional character of Robert Bloch's 1959 thriller novel Psycho and portrayed by Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film adaptation. She was later played by Anne Heche in the 1998 remake and Rihanna in the television series Bates Motel (2017).
Lila Loomis is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch in his 1959 thriller novel Psycho; she is the sister of Norman Bates's victim Marion Crane. She is revealed as the real protagonist of the novel in the final chapters, after several false protagonists, including her sister, who gets murdered. Lila is portrayed by Vera Miles in the 1960 film version and by Julianne Moore in the 1998 version. Additionally, Lila appears in Bloch's 1982 sequel novel Psycho II, and the unrelated 1983 sequel film of the same name, in which she serves as an antagonist.
The Couch is a 1962 American psychological horror film directed by Owen Crump from a screenplay by Robert Bloch and a story by Blake Edwards and Owen Crump. The film stars Grant Williams, Shirley Knight, and Onslow Stevens. The film was released by Warner Bros. on February 21, 1962.