Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 203

Francie Noves on movies Norman is back, Jack makes his entrance I rains a lot at the Bates Motel. i J1 gtpi 1. 1 I Ml I I i) I if 3 ft, Aft A.IMi2-,:SLf'fx especially for a place set in the middle of the desert. The ground is dust and dirt, the few bushes pretty straggly and yet, every night, when Norman Bates is stalking someone, it's pouring rain. Don't ask why.

If you are a fan of horror and particularly if you are a fan of black comedy, Psycho III is a well done sequel. It is not a contender for the title of landmark film, however, as was the Hitchcock original 25 years ago. The strongest element in Psycho III is Tony Perkins' performance as Norman Bates. While today's audiences can see slicing and dicing on any given day, Norman is still a fascinating character. He is not a crazed loony, he is a plain man desperately trying to control his demons.

Audiences are not so much afraid of Norman as sympathetic. He pads around that big, empty house, keeping himself busy with his bizarre hobbies. He doesn't want any attention and he is as surprised as we are when violence explodes. When we seeing him hurriedly cleaning up after one of his mother's rampages, we actually feel sorry for him. Psycho III repeats the mandatory elements of the original story but does offer a few creative twists on it.

The story begins not with Norman, but with Maureen (Diana Scarwid), a former nun who has left the convent in disgrace. Maureen is struggling with her own guilt and neurosis. When she stops at the Bates Motel, the audience knows Norman has found a friend. Norman is attracted to Maureen, who, with her short blonde hair, looks much like Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), his victim in the original film. Marion was a criminal on the run, Maureen is a tormented soul, also guilty and also on 1 Star-director Anthony Perkins and the infamous Psycho house.

the run. The Catholic sense of sin and punishment, so strong in Hitchcock, is still strong in this version. But Psycho III, Perkins' first directorial effort, is not a rip-off of the master. It plays homage to him (oddly, the best tribute is to Vertigo) but Perkins creates an appropriate tone for his horror film. He sees Psycho as Norman's tragedy and he creates a tone that tells us so.

It is stylized, suggestive (and reminiscent of early Hitchcock) with its angle shots and schizophrenic lighting. The slashing are handled carefully, meant to show the depths of madness, not arbitrary violence. The script is satisfying in one sense and disappointing in another. The dialogue is full of black humor and double meanings. When Maureen apologizes for making a mess in her motel bathroom, Norman says "I've seen it worse." Almost every scene has at least one reference to the original movie, and while they are funny, they turn into in-jokes.

We're not laughing at this movie, we're laughing at how clever we are to get the allusion. But the biggest problem comes in the resolution of the piot. There is a mechanical feeling as Norman takes care of each character, one by one. The preliminary horror scenes, when Mother Bates takes her first victims early in the film, are scarier than the long, drawn-out resolution. It is still fun to watch Perkins slowly reveal Norman's overwhelming compulsions and he remains the central reason' for seeing the film.

As Maureen, Scarwid starts off at least as interesting and neurotic as Norman, but her character starts to drift in the second half of the movie. There is little feeling when she meets her predictable end. Of the remaining characters, only Jeff Fahey as Duke, a sleazy rock musician who takes a job at the Bates Motel, creates much interest. We don't know which way he is going to go, with Norman or against and this uncertainity keeps us watching. This week's favorite adventure hero is definitely Jack Burton, played by Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China.

Burton is your basic, good-ole-boy truckdriver who gets sucked a bizarre, otherworldly adventure in San Francisco's Chinatown. Throughout it all, Burton is solid as a rock and funny as can be. He is a genuine hero and a comic take-off at the same time. Jack is the practical, down-to-earth, slightly dumb hero. Most of the time he doesn't have the slightest idea what is going on, but he keeps blundering on, strong and ridiculous at the same time.

Russell, who has been making movies for years and who almost became a pro baseball player, turns in a fabulous performance. He looks like a grubby truckdriver but his vocal inflections have just a touch of John Wayne; making Jack a hero and a parody at the same This movie, however, doesn't bear too much analysis. It is meant to be visual, fast and fun, and it is. Mindless adventure is mindless, but at least Big Trouble does it no holes barred. No measly little snakes and Nazis in this movie this movie goes all out with Chinese black magic and thousand-year-old demons for its bad guys.

After an all-night card game in Chinatown, Jack goes with his buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) to pick up his financee at the airport. A gang of punks abduct her, however, and Jack and Wang set off to get her back. They find themselves in the middle of what looks like a gang war, until it turns into a magic show. From then it's showtime. Anything goes.

Along the line, Jack and Wang pick up two accomplices, in the form of activist lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cantrell) and tourist bus driver Egg Shen (Victor Wong). As the adventure progresses, everybody turns out to be more than they seem Wang is a martial arts expert, Gracie becomes the intended bride of evil Lo Pan, the bus driver is a magician, and Jack, well, Jack becomes the fearless leader and legendary hero. In most of the recent derring-do adventures, the stunts have been grounded in reality. Indiana Jones may leap from a horse to a truck, but he never flies away. In Big Trouble, the separating reality from fantasy is imaginatively breached.

People do fly, monsters appear from nowhere, beautiful maidens float in mid-air. It's fun. Big Trouble has sequel written all over it, but if Russell and director John Carpenter maintain the pace they hit tiere, it would be a 1 1 jgN. "'3? Psycho III Starring Anthony Perkins, Diana Scarwid and Jeff Fahey. Rated playing Vafleywide.

Dig Trouble In Little China Starring Kurt Russell. Rated PG-13. playing Valleywide. Kurt Russell stars in Big Trouble in Little China. WEDNESDAY, JLH.Y 9, 1986 CITY LIFE PAGE 21.