Trailer of the Moment: Psycho Series Addendum

After finishing up my retrospective on the Death Wish series, I followed the last review with a post embedding the trailer for each film. So I thought I would do the same for the Psycho series, with a few extra Easter eggs.

Since I already did a post on the famous Alfred Hitchcock hosted original trailer a few years ago (link) I will instead focus this on the sequels and remake.

Psycho II Teaser Trailer

"It's 22 years later, and Norman Bates is coming home"



Much like the film itself, the trailer for the first Psycho sequel opens with the shower scene from the original film before the Bates Motel segues from black and white to color, and the poster art of Psycho II is recreated with Anthony Perkins walking up the stairs to his childhood home.

And who is that narrating? Why none other than our good pal Percy Rodrigues!

Psycho II Full Length Theatrical Trailer

"...and he's back in business"



This is the longer, more typical "compilation of greatest hits scenes" trailer for Richard Franklin's 1983 film.

Anthony Perkins interview circa 1983



Here's part one of a five part interview (follow the link for the other parts) with Anthony Perkins while he was promoting Psycho II. In this section he reveals he was in New York on a stage during the shooting of the original film's shower scene.

Psycho III Theatrical Trailer

"But mother's off her rocker again"



This trailer for the Anthony Perkins directed second sequel is pretty much half teaser (with extra footage shot for it) and half typical trailer with scenes from the film. The narrator here is a famous voice (whose name I am not aware) but has none of the gravitas of Mr. Rodrigues!

"Scream of Love" Music Video with introduction from Anthony Perkins



Here we have a music video for Carter Burwell's sax heavy pop song featuring the theme from Psycho III. Shot on the same locations as Psycho III and featuring a Diane Scarwid look-a-like and Perkins himself, as well as footage from the original and 1986 sequel, pay attention to the thin narrative which concludes with an Inception like dream within a dream finale.

Introduced from the MTV studio (back when MTV, you know, showed music video) by Anthony Perkins sporting a gold lame tie, fashionably tucked into his shirt. Rock on, Tony!

Psycho IV: The Beginning Trailer

"How did it all start?"



Since Psycho IV premiered on Showtime, it never had a theatrical trailer, but here's the preview that was placed on VHS tapes by Universal.

Psycho 1998 trailer

"Discover the world of Norman Bates"



And we conclude with the trailer for Gus Van Sant's infamous remake which is full of little lame music video type effects like the film burning and bubbling. Was anyone reminded of the drug PSA featuring the cracked egg after the first two tags "This is the Face of Norman Bates" and "This is the Mind of Norman Bates"? Personally, I was waiting for the final tag to be: "any questions?"

Well that's all for the Psycho series, I have plans for my next two series retrospective, one a low budget exploitation series (of which I've never seen any of the three films) and the other a highly successful but much maligned comedy series. Considering it took about a year for me to complete this, please don't hold your breath.

If you want to read my specific review for any of the film in the Psycho series, below are easy links to those:

Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) (an appreciation)
Psycho II (1983, Richard Franklin)
Psycho III (1986, Anthony Perkins)
Bates Motel (1987, Richard Rothstein)
Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990, Mick Garris)
Psycho (remake) (1998, Gus Van Sant)

Trailer of the Moment: 1980's Anaglyph 3-D: Legacy

Back in 1999 after seeing the forgettable Robert Zemeckis produced remake of William Castle’s cult classic The House on Haunted Hill, I wondered why the filmmakers, probably fully aware of the quality of the endeavor, didn’t try to make the film at least somewhat distinctive by paying homage to the gimmickry of Castle. More specifically, I thought, why not just make it 3-D? At that time it was well over a decade since a widely released American film used the process through the entire film, and heck, in this case at least it would garner some interest in an otherwise direly boring enterprise.

Flash-forward eleven years later and my idle musing turned out to be prophetic. With theatrical exhibition waning Hollywood is choosing to respond not by better quality (silly rabbit) but by embracing the third dimension (and the financial uprise in ticket prices that goes with the process). Today, if you’re releasing a horror film, large scope science fiction or superhero epic and especially a film aimed at children, there’s a 90% chance it will be in 3-D, including several films directed by the aforementioned Robert Zemeckis himself.

While some of these films have grand ambition, call me narrow mindedly old school but the most enjoyable experiences I have had wearing those clunky glasses in the last three years were the throwback horror “throw shit at the screen” stylings of the My Bloody Valentine and Piranha remakes, though even those have some murky cinematography. Screw “immersion” man, I want a detached eyeball flying in my face!

This weekend’s release of Tron: Legacy with its Digital 3-D effects and the inevitable recollection of seeing the original theatrically back in 1982 when the momentary 80’s 3-D boom was in full effect has me in a particularly nostalgic mood. So let’s put on those cardboard glass with the red and blue anaglyph lenses and remember a day when 3-D didn’t mean blue people plugging themselves into trees but rather Star Wars rip-offs, third entries in horror franchises, and, of course, lots and lots of stuff being pointed directly at the camera!

The film that kick started the 80's trend was the Italian western Comin' At Ya, which as a spaghetti western in 1981 and in 3-D, was a double anomaly, but ended up garnering a strong 12 million dollar cume in the US, which is a cool $40 mill when adjusted for inflation. Sadly, I could not locate a trailer online, so enjoy this poster:

About five months after Comin' At Ya's American release, the Charles Band directed horror film Parasite, featuring effects by Stan Winston, hit theatres. Featuring an ensemble cast with future star Demi Moore, Tom Villard (of Popcorn fame) and The Runaways' Cherie Curie, Parasite was able to ride the uniqueness of 3-D and garner $7 million dollars from a $800,00 budget.

Here's the trailer for Parasite which begins with our narrator explicitly promoting the 3-D process and then displays a bunch of parasites jumping out at you, the audience member.

"Be assured Parasite is the most gripping and frightening movie you will ever see...and in 3-D you will be part of the terror!":

You then had your wave of Part 3's.

Friday the 13th part 3 (in 3-D)

"Jason. You can't fight him, you can't stop him, and now you can't even keep him on the screen!"

The next two feature our good pal, Percy Rodrigues, as narrator.

Jaws 3-D, the trailer of which contains a grand total of zero seconds of actual footage from the film (perhaps for the best).

"And for the first time the terror of Jaws won't stop at the edge of the screen"

Amityville 3-D, this explosive trailer also relies more on Rodrigues' sonorous voice as a selling point rather than actual footage of the film

"A new dimension in the technology of terror!"

Unfortunately, I was deemed too young to watch either of those films at the time by my parents, even though both the Jaws and Amityville sequels were rated PG, so I never had the opportunity to experience them theatrically (I did catch a revival screening of Jaws 3-D in 2002), however, I did see the two fantasy/sci-fi Star Wars rip-off films with really long titles that utilized the process.

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, which was produced by Ivan Reitman and featured a pre-John Hughes collaboration appearance by Molly Ringwald, was not a success upon it's release, probably due to the not so brilliant decision of having it open five days before Return of the Jedi. The film, which I have absolutely no recollection of, has been released on DVD, however no trailer (or very much footage of any sort for that matter) turned up in my searches, so enjoy the poster that tried to entice people away from the concluding chapter of the Star Wars saga, it's the first movie that puts you in outer space!

Released later that year, August 1983, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn features a poster that should be instantly familiar to anyone who either read comic books that year or frequented the science fiction aisle of the video store during the decade. Directed by Charles Band, the James Cameron of the 1981-83 3-D craze, Metalstorm would gross a mere $5 million dollars that year, less than Parasite, and by 1984, it seemed the trend was officially dead.

Here's the trailer for Metalstorm featuring lots of items being thrown towards the camera ("...and they will do all of this for you in 3-D!"):

In 1991, New Line Pictures decided the only way to send off the franchise character that built the studio was to take things up a notch, dimensionally speaking. So Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare featured the character's onscreen demise (there would be two more sequels and a remake), which basically was a ten minute sequence, in 3-D, so you had to wait until prompted on screen. Being a teenaged horror fanatic at the time, I saw it opening day, and it was a bit of a let down, cluing me in that my affection for those previously discussed films were merely a factor of nostalgia.

Oddly, while the trailer shows the scene in which the 3-D glasses magically materializes on the protagonist's face, it makes no mention of the gimmick:

In 27 years (which judging from the gap between the original Tron and the sequel is when we can expect the release of the third film, Tron: Trinity) will the current trend have gone obsolete and returned? Will the likes of the Clash of the Titans remake and that owl movie be an obscure footnote comparable to Spacehunter and Metalstorm today? Who knows, look me up and we can discuss it then, I'll be the one with the cardboard glasses.

Trailer of the Moment: Videodrome

Remember in my Trailer of the Moment entry on Suspiria, how I mentioned that when presented with the difficult task of presenting to the audiences a completely original vision in trailer format that studios tend to either a.) de-emphasize the originality by editing the footage in a way that makes the viewer think they are about to watch something within a genre they are already comfortable with? or b.) embrace the new concepts. Well, Videodrome went all the way to option C.) fuck y'all, you will submit to the powers of our film whether you like it or not, fucker!


Any footage from the film itself is relegated to still images as the trailer for Videodrome, produced by Universal Studios by the way, is a minute plus of pop art imagery featuring state of the art (for 1983) computer graphics.

And, I am not sure if my ears are working properly, but that sure sounds like our pal Percy Rodrigues narrating, if so, it's a somewhat subdued voice-over for him. Though there is the wonderful line "Television can change your mind, Videodrome will change your body!"

Trailer of the Moment (The Percy Rodrigues Files): Cat's Eye

The week of April 12th, 1985, held three significant events for myself:

1.) April 12th was my ninth birthday.

2.) My parent's divorce became official on April 15th.

3.) The Lewis Teague directed, Stephen King anthology film Cat's Eye opened.

The first two require no explanation I imagine, so let me explain the importance of number three. It was the first "horror" film I was ever permitted to see theatrically, which probably was allowed due to the first two factors.

As I have described a few years ago on another blog, my first experience with a horror film came when I snuck out of my room late one night whilst my father watched Friday the 13th part III on Beta and caught a few minutes. Needless to say, I was instantly fascinated! As my father learned of my taste for horror, he started to tell me the plots of films whose video boxes tantalized me, but proved forbidden fruit because of my age (a discrimination that continues unabated to this day!), as ghost stories, these included Halloween and Psycho.

Flash forward to Spring 1985, my father or mother won tickets to a pre-release screening of Cat's Eye from a radio station contest [side note: this was a strangely prevalent occurrence in 1985, I got to see Back to the Future a few days before it opened wide, and my dad went to a pre-release screening of Porky's Revenge, which netted me a super cool extra large t-shirt with the film's logo on it, both via radio station call-in promotions], after an intense bargaining session where I promised my mother that my homework would be finished first, and I would have no nightmares, I was allowed to accompany my dad, thus becoming the first of many horror films I would see theatrically, a large portion with my dad.

To those who have seen it, obviously Cat's Eye is no great shakes in the annals of horror filmmaking. A triptych of short stories penned for the screen by King himself, two of the three stories would be more apropos of a Twilight Zone episode than say Tales From the Crypt. But the last vignette, featuring poor little Drew Barrymore being stalked by a nasty, wall dwelling, soul sucking goblin, actually was very effective to this nine year old child, and alas, I did have a nightmare that night (though I never told my parents) when I woke up and my poodle Sammy was breathing close to me, very similar to the tactics employed by Mr. Goblin.

To commemorate my twenty-five plus year appreciation of horror cinema, let's look at the trailer for Cat's Eye, which is heavy on King references (Cujo, Christine, The Shining and The Dead Zone all net a reference within the first thirty seconds) and lo and behold, who's that narrating, none other than our good pal, Percy Rodrigues.



If you can remember, I'd be interested in your first horror film theatrical experience, please share in the comments or if you have a blog, your own post.

The Percy Rodrigues Files: "If You Scream, You're Dead!"

When I was linking back to past articles from this blog that covered Jaws for my 35th Anniversary post on Sunday, I forgot one that covered a very vital component concerning the marketing of Jaws in 1975 (as well as it's first sequel), this one, dedicated to one of the all-time great trailer voice-over artists, Percy Rodrigues.

As a mea culpa, let's watch and listen to Mr. Rodrigues' narration in the trailer of Fred Dekker's 1986 cult favorite, Night of the Creeps, which finally made it's debut on DVD and Blu-Ray in a wonderful, extra feature leaden set last year (I got it for my birthday from my brother, thanks Sean!).


But before we get to the trailer, let's lament the short lived career, though he's still alive and working hard to get projects off the ground, of Mr. Dekker. Creeps, his directorial debut and his follow-up The Monster Squad, came out within a year of each other, while Dekker was still in his mid-20's. While neither set the box office on fire, they became favorites discovered on VHS and cable airings in subsequent years (I remember seeing Squad theatrically a few times as a 12 year old). Both films are loving and respectful homages to horror and sci-fi perennials while being utterly their own thing, and both are truly the work of a singular vision. The humor and care for the characters coupled with Dekker's impressive visual compositions make what seemed like pleasant enough larks in the mid 80's appear to be masterful breaths of fresh airs today when compared to the tone deaf modern genre filmmakers. While Dekker may have been a tier below the likes of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Joe Dante on their best days, he's several hundred tiers ahead of the likes of contemporary directors like Marcus Nispel, Rob Zombie and Eli Roth.

After Squad, he wrote and directed a few episodes of Tales From the Crypt before being offered what probably seemed at the time like a surefire hit, Robocop 3. Of course, that experience was disastrous (I still have not seen it), the original script by Frank Miller was rewritten several times, Peter Weller dropped out of the role, the film was cut for a more family friendly PG-13 rating, and the studio, Orion, went bankrupt mid-production, causing the film to sit on the shelves from it's intended summer 1992 release to a early November 1993 one, where it made no impression.

Hopefully the long wait for the excellent special editions DVD releases of Monster Squad (debuted in 2007) and Night of the Creeps which lead to renewed discussion and appreciation of Dekker's career have reignited interest in this talented writer-director and he will get another project made and out of a very long stint in director jail.

And now, here's the trailer for Night of the Creeps:

Trailer of the Moment/The Percy Rodrigues Files: Shivers aka They Came from Within (1975, David Cronenberg)

Shivers, released in the United States with the more titillating title They Came From Within, may technically not be David Cronenberg's debut film, however, it is the first to have, to paraphrase the Coen Brothers, "that certain David Cronenberg feel". While his 1986 remake of The Fly is often regarded as an AIDS parable in its depiction of the desecration of the body, had it not predated the first noted case of the disease by a good half decade, Shivers could share a similar reading as it depicts the transference of a parasite through sexual interaction.

The film has similar stakes with George Romero's Dawn of the Dead; they both find characters fighting off zombified throngs in a confined space that represents luxurious excess, a mall in Dawn, an upscale high rise multi-use condominium on an island near Montreal here, and it's interesting to note that Shivers predated the Romero film by three years. Though Dawn may be the more accomplished film, only Shivers is brazen enough to end (SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, obviously) in a zombie orgy!

Due to it's low budget (the film was financed in part from a Canadian tax incentive) the film is a little rough around the edges, but Cronenberg's commanding skills of special effects incorporation and creating tension and unease along with the driving thematic element of "body horror" that would drive a number of his most celebrated works including The Fly, Dead Ringers, Crash and Videodrome, are all already on display. Future Ghostbusters director and fellow Canuck Ivan Reitman produces and Black Sunday's Barbara Steele co-stars.

The US trailer features a familiar narrator, Mr. Percy Rodrigues, who makes yet another one of his patented bold proclamations, this time it's: "If this picture doesn't make you scream and squirm, you better see a psychiatrist!"

He's right.

Trailer of the Moment/The Percy Rodrigues Files: Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)

The combination of purchasing a cheaply priced copy of Bernard Herrmann's score to Taxi Driver on CD and the constant barrage of advertising for director Martin Scorsese's latest film Shutter Island (as of this writing, still unseen by me) prompted me to revisit Driver for the first time in, yikes, over a decade.

Incidentially, Taxi Driver was the third film I ever purchased on DVD way back in 1999, just after Boogie Nights (the original version, which I have since upgraded) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a $5 public domain copy that went missing (note to self: pick up Metropolis when it hits Blu-Ray).

After my viewing of the film (still great yada yada yada), I watched the trailer and who's icy vocal intonations did I hear? None other than Percy Rodrigues, aka the only person who could make Scorsese's chilling masterpiece sound even more sinister!

"Now, Robert DeNiro creates a terrifying portrait of life on the edge of madness"



For more on Percy Rodrigues, here is my article on him from back in May 2009.

Trailer (s) of the Week: The Percy Rodrigues Edition

In the pantheon of great trailer narration, my favorite has always been the Jaws narrator who gravely intones this choice simile: "It's as if God created the Devil and gave him...JAWS!" After hearing his voice in another trailer posted on another blog, I decided to seek out a little more about the person behind the voice.

The narrator is Percy Rodrigues, a character actor of mixed African and Portuguese decent whose most famous role is as Commodore Stone on the Star Trek season one episode "Court Martial". His great deep voice provided him a long career in voice over work throughout several decades before he passed away in 2007.

Here are some Percy Rodrigues narrated trailers that I have tracked down.

The original Jaws trailer


Universal was smart enough to rehire him to voice the 1979 sequel, Jaws 2, where Rodrigues would make another intense proclamation, one that would long out live the repetitive mediocrity of the film: "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water"


Universal also hired him to narrate the trailer to John Badham's 1979 remake of Dracula starring Frank Langella as the titular bloodsucker. Surprisingly, I've never seen the film, but let's give credit to Rodrigues for giving dignity to the trailer's awkward claims of being "the story of the greatest lover who ever lived, died and lived again"


In 1979, after the success of Star Wars, Disney tried to get into the sci-fiction game, the underwhelming result was The Black Hole. I've haven't watched the film in about ten years, but remember being bored both times I tried to get through it, but damn if the trailer with it's retro graphics and yes, Rodrigues narration, piqued my interest in "the journey that begins where everything ends"


And finally, for the time being at least, Rodrigues was asked to narrate the trailer to the interminably delayed (delayed as in three people who were interviewed for the film: Rodrigues, Peter Benchley and Roy Schieder have since past away) documentary about the Jaws phenomena, The Shark is Still Working. The trailer is in itself a homage to the original.


That's all for now, hopefully I can hunt down more to share with you soon.