10 Famous Movie Characters Ruined By Elaborate Backstories
6. Norman Bates
As we already discussed with Hannibal Lecter, its easy to ruin a horror icon by telling us too much about their past and their motivations. Psychos Norman Bates got this treatment in the disappointing straight-to-TV 1990 prequel/sequel Psycho IV: The Beginning.
The film brought back original star Anthony Perkins, who this time plays Bates as a middle aged man looking for closure once and for all. He calls a radio talk show to discuss his past, which the audience gets to witness as a series of flashbacks in which Henry Thomas plays the young Norman Bates. Although theres nothing wrong with this framing device, per se, the content it enables is fairly woeful. We see an elaborate backstory of a young man whose father gets killed, and whose mother is a schizophrenic of some sort who forces him to dress up in girls clothing as punishment for getting an erection. When his mother eventually remarries, and the abuse towards Norman continues, he snaps and kills his mother and adoptive father. He preserves his mothers corpse and periodically becomes her to suppress his guilt over the murders. Again, the problem here is that the enigma was better than the explanation. We already know how messed up Norman is, but having it spelt out in such detail ruins his mystique somewhat. As with Lecter, Bates origins are better explored on TV.