Good Joke

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

PSYCHO II

Directed by Richard Franklin Screenplay by Tom Holland

You smell good," Norman Bates murmurs softly to Mary, the pretty young woman with whom he is chastely sharing the old family mansion -- the one just above and beyond the old family motel of blessedly spooky memory. What is the secret of her success in eliciting a near-normal sexual response out of Norman? A new Parisian scent? A wristlet of wild flowers? A walk in the spring rain?

Not quite. It is the redolence of toasted cheese sandwiches, just like the ones his mother used to make.

Until that point, veterans of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) may entertain some hope for Norman, a wan faith in the restorative powers of a 22-year course of state-sponsored psychotherapy from which he has just graduated. Thereafter one knows it is only a matter of time before he reverts to the sharp practices of his youth.

That is especially true because Lila, the once sweet sister of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh in the original), has been nursing a need for vengeance all this time.

Played again by Vera Miles, Lila has be come positively shrewish on the subject of society's permissiveness regarding the criminally insane. She scuttles busily about making things go bump in the night, hoping to loosen Norman's new and tentative grip on his sanity and send him back to the asylum.

Her plottings are too tortuous to be entirely per suasive. To accommodate them, and set up its own Mama's boy twist ending, the movie of ten slows to a crawl as it tries to explain it self. On the other hand, that ending is genuinely surprising and, like much of the rest of Psycho II, it has a certain sly wit about it. Indeed, there is a rather good-na tured air about this not overly scary pic ture, which pays homage to Hitchcock's most famous (but not best) work without trying either to rip it off or knock it off.

Director Franklin even plays on the audience's worst expectations about sequels and gets his best laughs by not quite ful filling them. As Norman, Anthony Perkins is knowing, in on the joke, but decently wary about going too far. Meg Tilly, as his young friend, plays the reality principle with winning spunk. Given just a bit more style and drive, Psycho II might have entirely overcome its doubt less cynical origins. But even as it stands, it is a modest, surprisingly agreeable entertainment.

-- By Richard Schickel This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.