Anthony Perkins is one of the few horror actors that could have only ever played one role and would have still been recognized as a horror legend. Perkins may have been most known for playing the Godfather of slashers, Norman Bates, but he was able to take his iconic performance in that role, expand on it, and create many other memorable roles throughout the years in the horror genre. Unfortunately, most of the horror films were poorly distributed, made for TV, and unseen to the horror masses. It’s time to highlight Anthony Perkins’ contributions to horror and get the word out on some films that have gone underappreciated over the years.
Sometimes it can be detrimental to start your career off with such a banger. Perkins was just 28 and fresh off an Academy Award nomination in 1956 (Friendly Persuasion) when he gave the performance of his life as the awkward motel owner Norman Bates in Psycho. By 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was an extremely popular director, having just released films like Vertigo and North by Northwest. Perkins used the death of his father to fuel the emotional descent into madness in Psycho. As soon as audiences saw that cold stare and heard him utter “We all go a little mad sometimes”, Perkins was enshrined and horror history and would forever be seen as the perfect guy to play…well, a psycho. Perkins never regretted the role, even as it type-casted him. He went on record saying he would have rather played a character remembered forever than one not remembered at all.
Perkins would play various roles in crime thrillers, foreign films, and comedies over the next two decades, even landing a major role in Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express, but he was never able to capture the recognition he received in Psycho. He finally returned to the role of Bates in Psycho II (1983), directed by Richard Franklin (Road Games) and written by horror legend Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play). Honestly, the Psycho sequels aren’t bad. They do a great job of expanding on Norman Bates’ character development and struggle with being a good person. In fact, Norman may have made it out alright if his wasn’t coaxed back into his serial killer ways in the second film. Poor Norman.
Perkins returns to the Psycho franchise three years later with Psycho III (1986), one of his only directorial credits. Where the character’s mind was re-broken at the end of the second one, the third one has once again gotten Norman fully back into “mother mode”. The third film is extremely similar to the first film thematically and ends with the sheriff telling Norman that he may never get out of the mental institution again. May? May?!?!
Two years later in 1988, Perkins branched outside his famed franchise in horror for the first time. His first non-Psycho horror role was in the unknown slasher film Destroyer. Perkins’ role was an overzealous filmmaker trying to create a women-in-prison exploitation film, in the same prison that a murderous riot broke out in just a year before. Perkins isn’t long-lasting for the film, but his disregard for his actors makes it all the more fun when he meets his “shocking” demise. I checked this film out on a whim, scrolling through Tubi, and I was pleasantly surprised!
In 1989, Perkins would take on another “madman” role in Edge of Sanity. This is an extremely strange film. Perkins plays Henry Jekyll and Jack “The Ripper” Hyde. The story is a historical fiction mashup of the Jack the Ripper murders and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The idea came from an age-old connection of the two stories, because the play was going on in the Whitechapel district of London during the Ripper murders. Some people thought Richard Mansfield (the actor that played Jekyll & Hyde in the play) was the Ripper himself. Talk about being good at your job! The film itself isn’t great, but Perkins elevates everything by being able to turn it from 0-11 real quick between the two characters he plays. This one can be found in its entirety on Youtube.
The next year, Perkins acted in a CBS TV-movie called Daughter of Darkness by Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond). The film wasn’t bad, and certainly worth-while for a straight-to-CBS watch, but it did suffer from your general re-told vampire stuff that we’ve had beaten into our heads a thousand times. It was shot on location in Hungary, though, so the environmental shots were legit! 1990 was a busy year, as next up was the Mick Garris helmed Psycho IV: The Beginning, which was quite a bit different than the rest of his series. It focused more on Bates’ struggle with his personality disorder, wanting what was best for his family. The ending is kind of sad, too. This would be the last time Perkins would play the role in a film, but he did resurrect Bates as a cereal killer in a 1990 Oatmeal Crisp commercial.
The same year, we also got Tobe Hooper’s I’m Dangerous Tonight, a made-for-TV USA film about a woman (Madchen Amick – Twin Peaks) that tailors a cursed Aztec cloak into her clothing, is put under a spell and becomes a murderer. Perkins is in that all-too familiar helpful professor role we see often in these historical fiction horror films. Good luck tracking this one down.
Perkins’ last horror role came in 1991 with A Demon in My View. By this time, Perkins had come out publicly with his HIV-positive diagnosis, and like many actors in the late 80’s and early 90’s, were basically blacklisted in Hollywood. German director Petra Haffter took a swing and cast Perkins in another homicidal urge-battling psychopath, and the film turned out pretty good. It won the Special Jury Prize at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in 1992. Unfortunately, Perkins died less than a year later at age 60, from pneumonia made worse by his HIV.
Anthony Perkins was an incredible actor, and although his life and career were cut short and took a lot of unfortunate turns, he’ll still go down as portraying one of the most iconic roles in horror. Anthony still lives on in horror, as his son Oz Perkins has started to make a name for himself in the horror genre by directing The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015), I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), and the beautiful Gretel & Hansel (2020). I recommend checking out all of Anthony Perkins’ horror films, because although they aren’t all heavy hitters, you’ll never see him phone it in. What’s your favorite non-Psycho Anthony Perkins horror movie?
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