In my opinion there have already been too many experiments in terror. Come on scientists, I'm sure there are other areas worth exploring sometimes besides just terror.

Link is the biggest, he’s a former circus ape who wears clothes and smokes cigars. When Jane first shows up he pretends to be the butler and shows her to her room.

Oh, I get it. Jane like Tarzan and Jane. It’s all coming together now.

I don’t want to explain the plot in too much detail. It’s just kind of an unfolding of weird events and circumstances with this poor girl never being instructed what she’s expected to do. I don’t think anybody is evil here, but they’re not trustworthy either. The professor doesn’t mean bad but he’s a shitty boss and host, never really explaining to her what he’s up to, so when he disappears she (and we) can’t be totally sure if he just took off or if something happened to him. I mean, we got an idea. But by not giving us the definitive answer it keeps us on our toes.

Remember when I reviewed FROZEN recently I complained about the wolves being more like monsters than just animals? That’s pretty common in horror movies and often a mistake because it seems dishonest. We in the audience know that’s not a normal animal behavior so we feel like we’re being bullshitted a little and that makes it less scary. I like that LINK doesn’t do that. Link is a potential threat but he’s also as much of a goofball as Clyde in ANY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE. He does as many funny things as threatening things. Luckily he doesn’t talk so he’s not going around making wisecracks and puns.

So he’s not a monster, but he is a brat. Jane can’t even take a bath because he comes in and stares at her and refuses to leave. He locks Imp in a well. He gets jealous. He cooks the phone in the microwave. We also know he’s ten times as strong as a man, so all the little things he does have an implicit threat to them. But also he becomes protective of her and that’s a threat in its own way because she doesn’t want him hurting somebody on her behalf. All this is why Michael Jackson had to give away Bubbles. He probly saw this movie, actually.

When Shue is (sort of) being told what the job entails she says she can handle it because “I used to babysit.” I thought that was a little joke about her starring in ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, but then I found out this came first. So I guess ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING is a prequel meant to show what she went through that made her strong enough to handle Link.

At first I thought Shue was a little stiff in the role, a little too goodie-goodie to be likable. Early on there’s some banter with the professor that seems like it was written as funny but not performed that way. But she’s so good interacting with the apes that she really grew on me. You might expect this to be the kind of girl who’s gonna do alot of running around screaming, but actually she stays pretty in control. It had to be a tough role for Shue because about half of it is just interacting with apes, no people. And she picks them up and talks to them like kids, scolds them, reasons with them. I mean, just doing the movie must’ve been in some ways like having the job her character has. She coulda had her face eaten off if she pissed them off somehow.

The apes in the movie have been trained to communicate by pushing buttons that represent a small selection of words. One creepy part is when Imp writes “LINK DIRTY BUG.” You get the basic idea of what he’s trying to say (”Link is a fuckin asshole”, maybe), but what exactly is he trying to say? What does he know about Link to make him dislike him so much? And what does it mean to him to call an ape a bug? In my opinion LINK is in the upper echelon of movies that exploit the mystery of how well apes comprehend metaphor.

It’s these little ambiguities that make me really like the movie. There are hints that Dr. Phillip is using experimental drugs on the apes that could be the cause of anything bad they do. But I feel like most of this could happen without any mad science being involved, so I like that they don’t push it on you too hard. And there are unanswered questions at the end. For example the opening scene – when you go back and think about it it’s probly not what you assumed at the time. And how much did Dr. Phillip know? Does he know one of his apes is sneaking out into civilization, killing birds, etc.?

The story is credited to Lee David Zlotoff (creator of MACGUYVER) and Tom Ackermann, script credited to Everett De Roche (RAZORBACK, THE LONG WEEKEND, ROAD GAMES). Richard Franklin is the director. He was the Hitchcock-obsessed Australian who gave us the excellent PSYCHO 2 and even better ROAD GAMES. LINK is looser and weirder than those two but Franklin still has a strong sense of suspense and a cleverness about setting up the pieces and moving them around: the property is out in the middle of nowhere, there are attack dogs over here, the phone doesn’t work, her boyfriend is worried, the doctor called a guy about meeting him, Link likes to play with matches, etc. Our brains try to store away these various pieces of information and they slowly move toward and weave through each other until they all plug in.

During all this Jane doesn’t react like she knows she’s in a horror movie. She doesn’t panic. She just tries to do her job. We’re more scared than she is. In fact, if she needs this for a letter of recommendation I give her permission to use it. She deserves a better job.

It’s 22 years after the events of PSYCHO. Norman Bates has been in an institution, having been found not guilty by reason of insanity, but is now considered fully rehabilitated. Against the petitioning of Lila Loomis (formerly Crane, and still played by Vera Miles) Norman is released. His doctor (Robert Loggia) seems to truly care about and believe in his mental stability, but regrets that cutbacks prevent society from having more social workers to look after him. For Norman’s sake and for ours.

So Norman returns to the scene of the crime, the Bates Motel still in operation, run by Dennis Franz and mostly used by prostitutes and junkies. To stay in touch with humanity or something Norman is set up with a job at a small nearby diner, where he meets young Mary Samuels (Meg Tilly). When she gets in a fight with her boyfriend and has no place to stay Norman tells her about how he owns this motel with plenty of vacancies.

Ah shit, Norman! Not this again. I know you mean well. I know you’re genuinely trying to help this girl. But what the fuck, man. If you’re an alcoholic you shouldn’t hang out at bars, if you’re on a diet you shouldn’t go to the all you can eat buffet, and if you’re Norman Bates you shouldn’t invite pretty young girls to stay in cabin 1. That’s just how it is, man. Don’t tempt yourself.

Of course he starts thinking about mother, he starts seeing things. Is he losing it already? Is someone trying to make him lose it? If so will he actually lose it? There’s plenty of things to be tense about in this movie.

Tarantino has infamously said he likes it better than the original, but he’s just showing off. He’s allowed to do that because he directed a bunch of great movies, but I haven’t done that so I’m not gonna go that far. I do think you could argue that it holds up better as a suspense-creating-machine, just because of the particular mysteries it holds and the less iconic status it has in pop culture. I always remember what happens to Marion and what you find out about Norman at the end of PSYCHO, but somehow this is the third time I watched part 2 and I couldn’t remember the details. So it kept me guessing until the end. And it’s a great ending.

What makes it great though is this time you know from viewing #1 that he’s a psycho, and you root for him anyway. According to some people (both critics and fans) ’80s horror was all about cheering for Jason to kill stupid characters you didn’t like. But here’s one that’s all about rehabilitation and second chances. You want Norman to prove people wrong by staying sane and not killing anybody. Come to think of it that would be pretty cool if there was a Jason movie where he had gone through years of therapy and now he’s just working as a landscaper or something and trying to keep his urges in check. That’s a freebie, Platinum Dunes, I’m sure you can do something with that.

The only messed up part is that poor Vera Miles comes across as a bad guy. That’s not really fair, I mean the guy did murder her sister. It is kind of weird though that she married her sister’s boyfriend after bonding with him over trying to find her when she was missing with the money. And that she apparently (SPOILER) gave her daughter the same fake name that Marion used to register at the motel with when she was murdered. But I’m not gonna judge her. She’s been through alot.

I’m so glad they didn’t just give PSYCHO II to some chump. Instead they got Richard Franklin, the great Australian director who was more obsessed with Hitchcock than even Brian De Palma. If you haven’t seen it yet you really should see his “what if REAR WINDOW and DUEL fell in love and had a baby?” movie ROAD GAMES. That was the best of many gems I saw during my recent Australian film marathon. Franklin apparently pushed writer Tom Holland (director of CHILD’S PLAY) really hard. He talks a little bit about it in this interview Mr. Beaks did for The Ain’t It Cool News.

PSYCHO II is an honest to God great sequel, because this really is a character you want to find out more about, and it makes perfect sense for it to take place all this time later when he returns to society. It’s completely respectful of the original while having a very different feel just from being made in a different era, on color film, and with the audience already knowing Norman’s story. It goes to show that you can’t be a purist about everything. You can imagine the fury that would go on in talkbacks if somebody proposed making a sequel to a Hitchcock classic now. But here’s a case where they would’ve been wrong.

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Anyway I decided to watch this one by Richard Franklin, best known in the states for the surprisingly decent PSYCHO II. He did that one because he was obsessed with Hitchcock, studied all his movies, even got him to come speak at his film school. Can you believe that shit? “Good evening kids, I’m Alfred Hitchcock. Questions?” I wonder if he hung out in the dorms at all.

Anyway ROAD GAMES is definitely a Hitchcock homage, specifically it’s REAR WINDOW but crossed with Spielberg’s DUEL. Stacy Keach plays a truck driver who spends most of the movie talking to himself, or at least to his pet dingo. He makes up names for the people he sees on the road, and imagines what they’re up to. He has to play these “road games” to survive the long drives.

But then he sees a guy in a van pick up a hitchhiker, and then the same guy digging a hole. He decides this guy is the killer they’ve been talking about on the radio. Of course he tries to find out more and ends up getting into trouble. In one scene an old man seems to think he’s the killer, and there’s a very destructive vehicle chase with boat in tow. Jamie Lee Curtis shows up as a hitchhiker who’s as interested in following the guy as he is. Her name is Pamela but he just calls her “Hitch.” It could be called DINGO AND HITCH but luckily it’s called ROAD GAMES.

It’s a good story and it’s extremely well directed, with an old fashioned score by Brian May, the guy who did MAD MAX and who it turns out is not in Queen. There are 3 or more scenes that are almost unbearably suspenseful. Franklin knows how to build and then give you enough information to scare you but not enough that you can be positive what’s going on. You’re not even 100% sure this is the killer. But you know there’s danger and then he leaves you just… sitting… there… waiting… to see… what will… AAAAHH!

I mean it, this is a movie worth seeking out. I recommend alot of movies, but this is a red alert, everybody should watch this one. It has the visual appeal of the Australian open road, the precise mechanics of the best thrillers, a couple intense action scenes, even a dollop of the ol’ horror movie gore (apparently forced on Franklin by Avco). Maybe most importantly it has Keach in an appealing lead role. I never really thought about it but it’s nice to see him as the guy you’re rooting for to be happy and not die and all that.

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