Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Opening scene, a black-and-white sunrise over the Bates Motel, is a good, atmospheric touch, until we realise the footage was lifted from Psycho II, getting things off to a cheap, tacky start.Some good set designs are about all this turkey has going for it, as Bates' former asylum roommate is willed the Bates Motel, by the now deceased (in this film, anyway) Norman Bates. What could possibly go wrong with an ex-mental patient returning to the scene of a very violent crime? And I'm sorry to keep repeating myself and bringing this up, however, the Bates Motel should have been demolished decades earlier, not only because of the murders which occurred there, but also because the highway built in the 1950s (mentioned by Norman Bates in the original Psycho) routed traffic away from that road.Wide eyed, boyish looking Bud Cort is awful, and the screen writing in this Psycho meets wannabe Twilight Zone was as bland as could be. I don't have a problem with there being no murder, and no act of on- screen violence committed, what I do have a problem with was the inept screen writing, killing off Bates for the sake of a proposed weekly television series, and for what? So we can watch Cort's character mundanely and uneventfully running to motel? Or watch as he slowly goes mad, and is driven to kill, in extremely predictable fashion?

Christmas-Reviewer This is a bad TV movie. However what is funny is that it was a pilot for a TV show. I don't know they were thinking. To me if there is no Norman Bates there is no Bates Motel. Instead we get a "Twilight Zone" set at The Bates Motel. That might not sound bad however this movie is bad. The acting from Lori Petty is beyond words. Bud Cort is no Anthony Perkins. The screenplay must of been written by a 12 year old. The direction isn't there at all. Its bad from a to z. This movie should be shown in film schools as the prime example of bad movie making. I can not think of anything worse. If you can let me know. Bates Motel must have made Alfred Hitchcock spinning in a shower drainBates Motel is a 1987 American made-for-television comedy-drama horror film and a spin-off of the Psycho film series produced by Ken Topolsky, written and directed by Richard Rothstein, and starring Bud Cort, Lori Petty, Moses Gunn, Gregg Henry, Jason Bateman, and Kerrie Keane. The film is about Alex West, a mentally disturbed youth who was admitted to an asylum after killing his abusive stepfather. There he befriends Norman Bates and ends up inheriting the Bates Motel. It was originally produced as a pilot for a proposed TV series set in the Bates Motel, but it was not picked up by the network. The film ignores the time-line from Psycho II and Psycho III.Alex West (Bud Cort) roomed with Norman Bates (Kurt Paul) at the state lunatic asylum nearly twenty years for killing his abusive stepfather, and they became close friends. After Norman's death, Alex learns that he has inherited the Bates Motel, which has been vacant since Norman's arrest. Alex travels to Norman's California hometown (renamed Fairville for this film; in the original film it was Fairvale) and with a little help from teenage runaway Willy (Lori Petty) and local handyman Henry Watson (Moses Gunn), Alex struggles to re-open the motel for business, until rumors about the place being haunted by the ghost of Norman's mother, Mrs. Bates, are apparently true. Only to find that the haunting was a prank and the ghost was the bank manager, Tom Fuller (Gregg Henry), who refused to give Alex a loan by trying to scare him away. Tom is then forced to help Alex and the others with renovating the motel or face prison for fraud. The motel was soon finished with the renovation.Meanwhile, Barbara Peters (Kerrie Keane) runs away from home and ends up staying in Alex's motel for the night, contemplating suicide for getting older, going through three divorces, and not having children. Barbara meets a teenage girl (Khrystyne Haje), who invites Barbara to dance at an after prom party in the motel with her and her teenage friends, including Tony Scotti (Jason Bateman), though Barbara felt uncomfortable hanging with young kids. It is then revealed that Barbara's real name is Sally, and that the teenage girl is her younger self from an alternate dimension who took her own life and is now trapped in "the other side", along with Tony, and other teens who also committed suicide. Sally tells Barbara that she has a life worth living for, then Sally leaves with the rest of the group. Barbara leaves the motel the next day, planning to live her life to the fullest.Alex looks at the screen telling viewers, "If you ever need a room, come by." "I can't say for sure what you'll find, but it is what makes the world go around."The general idea of the film sounded interesting but it fails to send chills down your spine.

NerdofHorror I remember i looked for this "hidden gem" for almost two years. I was very excited when i sat down to watch it. It was a bit different then i thought, but nor bad at all. Rather good actually, but it's so Unneccesary. The film has some good acting though and especially from Bud Cort. He has a brilliant way of acting in this pilot. Very strange and mystical and also kind of nervous. (Perhaps it is a little Norman in him to).Overall a recomended film for the "Psycho - fanatics", but not a movie you HAVE TO SEE.8/10

TelevisionJunkie I've been getting bugged for years for copies of this film -- since it hardly ever got played after it bombed on TV back in '87. As a piece of Psycho history, I taped it in '87 and foolishly let people know that I had a copy.... I'm so glad Sci-fi is airing it so I don't have to sit through it anymore. Made as a potential pilot for an anthology series, the movie flopped badly and a show never materialized. Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates himself) boycotted the production. Not that he really needed to, since the public hated it as much as he did....I'd like to say this film is awful. But I can't really say that, since I've seen so much worse. But as an attachment to the Psycho films, it IS awful. It ignores the two sequels that had been made and even makes mistakes based on information from the original. Bud Cort gives a mind-numbingly dumb performance as the friend of Norman's who inherits the motel after his death. You never really have sympathy for him 'cause he just plays it so dumb. Lori Petti, who I usually love, is rather annoying as the squatter that befriends him. She does an okay job with her part, but the problem is that all the main parts were poorly written. We get more than half of the way through the movie, focusing on Cort and Petti trying to get the motel running again, and then we enter the first of the Twilight-Zone-ish stories: a woman who wants to kill herself is befriended by some strange teens. The writing and acting in this segment isn't bad, but after sitting through the Cort/Petti story, it hardly seems worth it. There's really only one creepy segment in the film -- the presence of the woman in black at Mrs. Bates funeral (but the discovery of her corpse is nonsense, since they found her body in the basement in the original film). The whole Jake Bates story seemed like it was jammed in so they could add a few more scares, though the scares fell flat. And the black-and-white segment at the film's climax could have been great -- if they hadn't went the Scooby-Doo unmask-the-villain route -- but as another reviewer wrote, it seemed to be the inspiration for "Scream 3" (which I love, by the way). Though the film is a piece of Psycho history, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone, except maybe fans of the actors -- even then it wouldn't get a strong recommendation....