EDITOR’S NOTE: Psycho II was on the CBS Late Movie on April 14, 1989.

Making Psycho II was a thankless task but there’s no reason why this movie is as good as it is.

Author Robert Bloch had already written his sequel, which satirized Hollywood slasher films. Universal didn’t want to film, that, but they did want a sequel. They turned to Road Games director Richard Franklin — a student of Hitchcock — to make this from a script by Tom Holland.

Hilton A. Green, assistant director of the original Psycho, was contacted and asked if he wanted to produce. He wasn’t sure that Hitchcock would have approved the movie, but the director’s daughter Patricia gave her blessing.

As for Anthony Perkins, he turned down the role until he read the script, learning that it was Norman’s story and that he was the hero. Seriously, the entire world is the enemy in this movie, wanting to see Norman become insane again and all he can do is struggle against them.

He just wants to live behind the hotel and work in a diner and allow life to just keep going, finally free from being in a mental institution. But then the calls and notes from mother keep coming and Norman starts lashing out at everyone, thinking that it has to be someone like new hotel clerk Warren Toomey (Dennis Franz) or Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), the sister of the woman he killed so many years ago.

As Norman is locked inside his mother’s room, a female figure keeps killing people throughout town and soon, even in the house. And just how does Mary (Meg Tilly) figure into all of this? Can therapist Dr. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia) figure it out in time?

I waited for years to watch this as I figured there was no way it could compare. Even when others told me I was wrong, I didn’t believe them. I can admit it. I was very wrong.