10 Best Movie Sequels That Took Decades To Arrive - Ranked

6. Psycho II (1983)

Psycho 2
Universal Pictures

The Previous Film: Psycho (1960)

Psycho II is one of those sequels that most people don't even know exists. Alfred Hitchcock's masterful original is so famous, so dominant, that it completely overshadows its surprisingly solid followup, directed by Richard Franklin in 1983.

Picking up 22 years after the first film, Psycho II follows the unhinged Norman Bates as he becomes, uh, hinged, after accepting the death of his mother and being released from a mental institution.

And shockingly - considering how rubbish horror sequels tend to be - it's actually quite good.

This is a much more flashy, safe movie than its predecessor - there's a lot of gory action and enough twists to make M. Night Shyamalan proud - and as a result, it lacks that slower burn that made Hitchcock's effort unbearably tense.

But Psycho II is much easier to enjoy for this same reason. There's always something happening - a death, a plot turn, a new mystery - and this blistering pace allows the sequel to distinguish itself from the much calmer original, in a good way.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!