Maureen Coyle (Diana Scarwid)'s lack of faith causes the accidental death of another nun. She walks away from the convent and gets a ride from musician Duane Duke (Jeff Fahey). He starts grabbing and she escapes out into a rain storm. He stops at the desolate motel run by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and gets a job. Norman had killed Mrs. Emma Spool in the second movie but the locals have not discovered it. Reporter Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxwell) arrives from L.A. to do a story on Norman. Maureen arrives to town and has nowhere to go but Norman's motel. Maureen haunts Norman reminding him of Marion Crane. Norman goes in to kill Maureen only to find her half-conscious in a suicide attempt.It's great to see Perkins with his iconic role. He plays Norman's madness quite well but he's not the best director. The movie lacks the needed intensity. Perkins is unable to recreate the great Hitchcock's work and times have also moved on. This is a combination of the original psychological horror and the modern slasher movie. Perkins isn't able to pull it off completely.I do love the Maureen character and Norman's recall back to Marion Crane. She should command greater attention and should be the center of the climax. The order of the final kills are a little off. Duane and Tracy could be more compelling characters if they're not outsiders. I don't understand why the sheriff and the town are so protective of Norman. Duane and Tracy should be locals. It's too convenient to have three strangers come all at the same time.

Just finished watching the third Psycho after watching the first two and even if you can't say it's a bad movie it is not the same as the other two. The first one will always stay a classic. The sequel after so many years wasn't bad either. In the third one I just thought there were a couple of bad actors and lines so it can't be as good as the others. Anthony Perkins though, he will always do great as the psychotic Norman Bates. He has the perfect face for it and his acting is still as believable as in the other ones. To me they should just have limited it to the first two. Don't need to milk out the story more. But if you are a die hard fan you might just like this one as well.

"Psycho III" is the second sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and not only stars Anthony Perkins but was also directed by him. Perkins, in fact, was initially reluctant to appear in "Psycho II", made three years earlier, but by 1986 he seems to have fallen in love with his best-known character; he was to appear in a fourth film in 1990.The events of the film take place one month after the events of "Psycho II". Perkins, having given us Norman mad in Hitchcock's original, and Norman sane (albeit fighting desperately to hold on to his sanity) in its sequel, now gives us Norman mad again. I don't really need to tell you any more of the plot, although there is a new twist in that one of the women ill-fated enough to turn up at the Bates Motel is a suicidal ex-nun who has left her convent after losing her faith in God and inadvertently causing the death of another nun while trying unsuccessfully to kill herself. (The woman's name is Maureen Coyle; she is deliberately given the same initials as Marion Crane, Norman's victim in the original film). The surprise ending of the second film reversed what we thought we knew about Norman's family background; this film reverses the reversal by restoring the status quo ante.Of all the "Psycho" series this is by far the weakest. ("Psycho IV" was, to my surprise, a considerable improvement). It was also a box-office failure, which possibly explains why the fourth instalment was made as a TV movie. Perkins was presumably so obsessed with his character that he wanted to explain what happened to Norman after the events narrated in "Psycho II", and proves himself a capable actor in his portrayal of a man in the grip of an uncontrollable mania. As a director, however, he is in nothing like the same class as Hitchcock or even as Richard Franklin who directed "Psycho II". The action does not flow smoothly, the film at times seems to move too slowly and Perkins achieves the feat of making it seem gruesome without making it in the least scary. Apart from Perkins himself, none of the acting contributions stand out. The religious theme, introduced with the character of Maureen, is not well integrated with the rest of the film. Perkins seems to have gone to the well once too often with this one. 4/10

The PSYCHO films had a good run of luck; the first was, of course, Hitchcock's seminal classic, while PSYCHO II turned out to be a great psychological thriller in its own right. The third in the series, meanwhile, is utterly charmless, a simple retread of what's come before with little in the way of new material to distinguish it.The story goes that Norman is back on duty at the Bates Motel, this time dealing with a bunch of newcomers, including a nosy reporter, a suicidal nun, and a sleazy wannabe musician. What follows will surprise no-one, with a few mildly gory murders mixed in with lots of mock-crazy psycho-babble.Anthony Perkins is inevitably the best thing about this movie, as his performance as the disturbed Norman is head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. And while I ever enjoy seeing Jeff Fahey in a movie, his character is just too sleazy and unlikeable here to be entertaining. The murders are subdued and the ending is entirely predictable, unlike in PSYCHO II. Sadly, PSYCHO III is the weakest yet and the first that shouldn't have been made.