Tom Holland Talks With Macabre Daily About His New Book: "Oh Mother What Have You Done?: The Making of Psycho 2!"
Holland’s new book contains a ton of storyboards, behind-the-scenes photos, and much more.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of “Psycho 2,” one of the most underrated sequels of all time. Written by Tom Holland and directed by Richard Franklin, the very idea of a sequel to Hitchcock’s classic was a major gamble, but it paid off in a major way. Due to the film’s success, Holland went on to write and direct seminal horror classics like “Child’s Play” and “Fright Night,” as well as continue collaborating with Franklin on “Cloak & Dagger.” His latest venture is “Oh Mother, What Have You Done?: The Making of Psycho 2,” which chronicles Holland, Franklin, and editor Andrew London as they set out to make a film Hitch would be proud of.
Plans for the book coalesced when documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley (“Not Quite Hollywood,” “Electric Boogaloo”) found out that Franklin had completed his memoirs before passing away back in 2007. Holland was inspired to intercut his passages on “Psycho 2” with his and London’s recollections. The result is a fascinating look at the film, which reads like a great round-table discussion. Holland spoke with us about discovering Franklin’s memoirs, studying the suspense of Hitchcock, and having a project go from a TV movie to one of the most successful hits of 1983.
Macabre Daily: So you didn’t know that Richard Franklin wrote his memoirs until Mark Hartley told you?
Tom Holland: Yes. When he gave me the 4K of “Cloak & Dagger,” he told me that Richard had written his memoirs as he was dying of prostate cancer. Richard was a great friend, but I had no idea he’d written them. So I’m reading them, and the first few chapters were about growing up and his love of movies, but each subsequent chapter was about making movies. The biggest chapter was about “Psycho 2,” and as I’m reading, it was like stepping back 40 years in time. I thought it was an extraordinary opportunity to put a book together about the creation, not just the making, but the creation of “Psycho 2.” Last summer was the 40th anniversary of the film, and the explosion of love for it made me realize there would be an audience that wanted to read this book. I put it together and got hold of Andrew London, who was the editor of the film and a dear friend of Richard’s from USC film school. Andrew kept us honest, and the book read like the 3 of us were sitting at a table, talking to an audience.
MD: That’s exactly how it comes across. It’s like a great special feature on a blu-ray.
TH: Yeah, and with someone who passed away in 2007! You learn how he got the idea from attending a symposium with Robert Bloch, the author of the original novel of “Psycho.” Bloch told him he was writing a sequel set 22 years later, and Richard thought that was a brilliant idea for a movie. The rights were with Universal, so he gave up on it, until Bernie Schwartz, who produced Richard’s previous film, “Road Games” and who worked at Universal, was approached about making a sequel for cable TV.
MD: It was going to be a TV movie?
TH: Universal had no idea how iconic “Psycho” was to the burgeoning horror community. I thought [writing the book] was a way to memorialize “Psycho 2” and Richard Franklin. I asked his widow for permission, and she gave it, so I brought Andrew London in. I also got Richard’s shooting script, which I included, along with storyboards and diagrams. If you like “Psycho 2,” it’s a killer book.
MD: Would you consider writing a book about another film by Richard Franklin?
TH: I’d love to do “Cloak & Dagger,” but my son says it’s not as popular [Laughs]. Anyone who watched cable TV growing up would recognize it. We did a screening of it at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema and the audience was all in their early 30’s. I think there’s an audience there.
Robert Loggia (left) on set with Holland (right) between takes (we hope).
MD: You mentioned in the book that you were able to write the script because you had “nothing to lose,” but you’re writing a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” Weren’t you terrified?
TH: Yes, and I had to abandon my fear. I don’t know how I did it. I learned more about writing suspense from working with Richard than anyone else. He was a student of Hitchcock par excellence, and working with him was like going to THE graduate seminar on Hitchcock. This was before VHS, so you really had to search to find old movies. We had access to Universal, so we were able to watch every Hitchcock film, including the silent films. We’d watch 2 or 3 in a week. Richard studied what [Hitchcock] was doing visually and I studied how he established suspense. You can see all of that with the birth of Chucky in “Child’s Play.”
Everyone said “Psycho 2” would ruin our careers. Richard and I thought we’d be savaged for having the temerity to do it, but if you look at the reviews of “Psycho,” they were horrible! You’d think Hitchcock sold his soul to the devil. I don’t know if I’ve worked harder on a script. I knew the critics were all expecting a cheap slasher film. I was elevating the genre by going to character, which I was forced to do because at the time, we were making a cable movie. We thought if we could get Tony Perkins back to play Norman, maybe Universal would understand the value of “Psycho.” Tony was very ambivalent because he thought Norman Bates had ruined his career.
Anthony Perkins (left) and Richard Franklin (right) on the set of “Psycho 2.”
MD: That’s kind of hilarious in retrospect.
TH: I was an actor before I started writing scripts, and I knew a character arc was everything [to Tony]. I knew I had to get in Norman’s head by creating a backstory about why he became a murderer, and I did that by making him sympathetic, which hooked Tony to say “yes.” Then Universal put out a press release saying Anthony Perkins was coming back to play Norman Bates, and the world went crazy. All of a sudden, they thought about making the film a theatrical release. Not that they gave us more money [Laughs]. We made it for just under $5 million. Just like with the original, we shot with a television crew on the Universal back lot, with the incredible Dean Cundey as our cinematographer. We picked out visual set-pieces from Hitchcock’s oeuvre that we referenced in the film. Richard knew the emotional import of every scene and the relationship between Norman and Mary (Meg Tilly). Miracle of miracles, everything worked!
MD: There’s a common theme through your films of “the man nobody believes.” From Davey in “Cloak & Dagger,” Andy in “Child’s Play” and later Charlie in “Fright Night,” you’re always writing about people who can’t convince anyone of the danger they encounter. “Psycho 2” is your first script with that archetype in Norman Bates. Is that fair to say that script informed the rest of your career?
TH: Oh yeah, I learned so much. “The Beast Within” was the first script I had produced, but it got buried. It made money, but it was the last film United Artists released before “Heaven’s Gate” bankrupted the studio. I got my first movie made after 5 years of starving to death, then I was unemployed for a year before I got offered “Psycho 2.” It was a dream job, but I knew if it didn’t work, or if it was too exploitative, my career, such as it was, would be over. Instead, it was the biggest hit Universal had that year and the second highest grossing movie in North America after “The Empire Strikes Back.”
MD: It also inspired Anthony Perkins to star in and direct “Psycho 3.” Did you ever think your film would get a sequel?
TH: No, it never occurred to me. It was amazing to walk around the set and to see the rebuilt house, but I never thought “Psycho 2” would spawn a sequel. I was just thrilled we got to do it. One thing I’ve learned is that you need luck. A lot of luck. Someone was smiling down on us and I’d like to think it was Alfred Hitchcock.
The re-created “Psycho” house looming large over the crew.
MD: Let’s talk about “Child’s Play” for a second, because it’s celebrating it’s 35th birthday this year. There aren’t many better examples of Hitchcockian tension in 1980’s horror than the scene where Chucky finally comes alive in front of Karen Barclay.
TH: That comes off of “Psycho 2” and working with Richard Franklin. The classic definition of suspense for Hitchcock was when the audience knew something was coming that the characters didn’t. From the opening scene where Brad Dourif puts his soul into that doll, you know the doll is dangerous. The mother and the son don’t know it, but you’re waiting for it. Working on “Psycho 2” also allowed me to perfect visual set pieces because the story moved forward visually with minimal dialogue. If you look at that scene, it starts with the batteries falling out of the toy box and ends when he bites her and escapes, and she chases after him. That’s 8 minutes of visuals and it builds. You need that build or it doesn’t work, and it’s a miracle it worked. “Child’s Play” was an enormous success when it came out, but the suspense of it has been buried a bit by the sequels and the tv show.
MD: Was there ever pressure from the studio to get to that scene faster since it was the big reveal?
TH: I don’t remember that specifically, but they were horrible to me when we shot the third act. I had 11 or 12 puppeteers working beneath a stage built 4 feet off the ground. It was extremely difficult and they were telling me to cut Chucky. I told them “no Chucky, no third act!” I had arguments with them, and they were the third administration to take over the studio since we started shooting. They thought they had inherited a dumb puppet movie, you know? But nobody had done a puppet movie like this before.
MD: Exactly. Nobody had ever seen a full-length killer doll movie before.
Holland on the set of “Child’s Play,” working with a temperamental actor.
TH: I had the nerve to do it because I saw “Trilogy of Terror” on TV, of all places. The segment from that movie where the Zuni doll comes alive and tries to kill Karen Black gave me faith. That’s what I had in mind for the third act because it worked so well. I also saw “The Shining,” where they had the steadicam at floor-level. When I saw the shots Kubrick did of the kid on the tricycle, I knew that could be the point-of-view of the killer doll. I structured my story around it.
I also have a book on “Child’s Play: A Visual Memoir,” which has photos of the puppet crew to get an idea of how complicated it was, as well as my original treatment. I wrote it with Brad Dourif in mind to play Charles Lee Ray, and if you watch him in my previous film “Fatal Beauty,” you’ll see Chucky in his performance.
MD: I could go on and on about “Child’s Play,” but that’s another conversation.
TH: Then you’ll have to come back and talk about my “Child’s Play” book!
Tom Holland, today.
Interview edited for length and clarity. “Oh, Mother: What Have You Done?: The Making of Psycho 2” is available where books are sold and on Tom Holland’s official website.
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