Bates Motel Season 5 What We Know So Far

It feels like years since my last bates Motel review, but the good news is our pasty white little psychopath will be back very soon there’s talk of it most likely premiering in March 2017.

 What We Know So Far

• Marion Crane from the original film will be appearing in multiple episodes and Singer Rihana will portray the iconic part
• Sam Loomis and Lila Crane will also appear in the final season
• Isabelle McNally will play Madeleine Loomis
• There will also be a new sheriff in town, Brooke Smith will play the new Sheriff Jane Greene
• Kenny Johnson returns for the final season.
• Freddie Highmore is writing a few episodes for season 5 as well directing an episode.

Now from what I can gather Season 5 will be even darker than previous seasons as we watch Norman Bates lose control of his mind and transform from somewhat normal teenager to the most prolific serial killer in the history of movies. Rihanna will appear in multiple episodes, I really  hope the show will re-enact  Marion Crane’s  infamous shower scene, that has become one of the most talked about and iconic moments in the film.

 

Vera Farmiga will also reprise her dead character, Norma Bates. This season we will see norman the tightly wound psychopath start to unravel, with vision of his dead mother doing chores around the motel, in his warped little mind he believes his mother is very much alive and it has been promised by the producers that will see these bone-chilling moments played out in the entire 10-episodes of Season 5

While I am super excited for Bates Motel to be back, it is also bittersweet with this being the final season, I am-am going to miss my little psycho. To the entire cast and crew, thank you for the last 5 seasons, you are all brilliant in your own right and in my eyes talented legends who brought one of the best and my favourite horror films back to life. My hat goes off to you all. Bates Motel will go down as my favourite horror TV Series of all time.

We will keep you updated on all things Bates Motel as they come to hand, so keep your eyes peeled folks!

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 Presh (@Presh81)

TV Series Recapper at Pop Culture Pipe Bomb

Recapping: American Horror Story, Bates Motel, Elementary and Lucifer

Favorite Horror films: Psycho, Amityville Horror (Original), The Omen Pentology, The Silence of the Lambs just to name a few.

Bates Motel SN4 EP10 – ‘Norman’

Firstly I just want to apologize for my tardiness in getting my review written and live on our site, but I do have a good excuse and no I wont bore you with the details. So this week was the season four finale and I for one was greatly anticipating it with all sorts of scenarios going through my head but the way the finale ended was definitely not one of the may different scenarios I had in my head that’s for sure. Ok so let take a quick look at last weeks episode before we sink our teeth into the finale episode.

Last week we seen Norman’s crazy train pull into the station as he and Norma try to reconnect and make plans for the future. Romero frustrated by Norma being blind when it come to Norman, reaches out to Dylan for help. Norman again gets his was as Norma sacrifices her own happiness and pens a letter to Romero telling him she is sorry and that she will always love him and places the ring in the envelope and places it on her dresser. Norman plans to be with mother forever and lights the faulty furnace and closes all the vents in the house except Norma’s room he lies beside her and goes to sleep, he wakes to find Romero giving Norma CPR and utters Mother?

SN4 EP10 – ‘Norman’

Norman is being loaded into the ambulance and as he looks out the window we get a glimpse of his point of view with the Bates house on its side and so to is his world now, we also see him delve into memories of him and his mother playing hide and seek but he loses her briefly “Promise, Mother? That you will never leave me alone? She has left him physically but she is clearly cemented deep into his tormented little mind. Romero still visibly shocked is being interviewed and tells the Detective he and Norma had only been married for two-week, she slides a letter towards him that Norma wrote containing the wedding ring and the note saying she will always love him, Detective Chambers (Molly Price) believes it’s a clear-cut murder suicide and yes to outsiders it would appear as if Norma was extremely distraught over her failed marriage tried to end it and takes Norman out with her, but of course Romero and anyone who knows Norman, knows he’s is the right amount of crazy to pull this off and Romero tells her “if I were you, I’d speak to her son Norman Bates”.

Norman gets released from the hospital, when Romero tells him he knows he did it, but Norman goes along with the suicide theory and blames Romero for Norma’s death. Romero pins Norman against the wall with his hand around his throat and says ” I’m going to prove you did it, you piece of shit” releases him and walks out. Norman is no longer untouchable, and without Norma’s protection he is now going to have to watch his back. Norman comes home and calls out “Mother?” With no answer he goes to her room as though she is still in bed, but alas she is not so he lays in the bed that he had shared with his mother so many times before, Norman for the first time is now truly alone, he sets his mother a spot at the table and eats alone.

Romero goes to see Norma at the morgue, but the employees think it’s not a good idea but he looks untill he finds her body as he pull back the sheet he sobs and my heart broke for him he is truly in love with her and in an instant she is taken away from him, he places her wedding ring on her finger, kisses her and tell her that he loves her wherever she is and he always will. Norman still denial that Norma will come home, is looking into the mirror and asks what do I have to do mother? As though he was waiting for her to answer him, he starts emptying out the meds he has been taking since his time at Pineview, which is not a good move considering his already delusional state of mind. When the phone rings he rushes to it thinking it may be mother calling, but it was the funeral home looking for Alex Romero, Norman quickly tell him Romero no longer lives there and he will have nothing to do with the ceremony. Norman is told to bring an outfit he would like Norma to be buried in.

Norman has had it in for the big screen TV Romero had brought so it only makes sense to destroy it, while he is in the process of destroying the same Detective that questioned Romero pulls up that as Norman is going to town on the TV. Norman is quick to cast suspicion onto Romero as he claims Norma was upset over leaving Romero, he also claims he didn’t know much about their relationship because he was in Pineview. He claims that Alex wasn’t a good guy and the he only married Norma to get him locked up in the Pineview Institute. Norman can be quite convincing, but I don’t think he has managed to convince Detective Chambers, it seem she suspects something is not quite right with him or his story. At the funeral home Norman seems to at ease and quite comfortable in that environment, could it be a new job for him perhaps? Romero learns that Norman may have been in the room when the repair guy told Norma that furnace could kill them if its lit. Dylan reaches out to talk to Norman because he knows Norma won’t speak to him for a while due to their fight but when he say that she probably won’t reach out to me, Norman neglects to tell Dylan that Norma is dead and will never be reaching out to him. As heartbreaking as it will be when Dylan finally knows the truth about Norma, I think he and Emma are safer being in Seattle.

Norman didn’t tell anyone about Norma’s funeral, he gets up and starts his eulogy to an empty church he says Norma was like a miracle and she wasn’t supposed to leave me, clearly still in denial that she died by his hand. Romero enters the church and Norman gave him the ring back defying Romero last wish for his wife, Romero lands a few good ones on Norman that sends him into the church pews bleeding from his nose. Alex is on a mission and heads to the station to get his gun, as he leaves the DEA turn up and arrest him for perjury for lying about his relationship with Rebecca, they are really clutching at straws but it may have saved our favorite little psycho’s life. Norman is becoming increasingly convinced that his mother with be coming home soon, he is becoming more delusional and thinks it’s a good idea to go and dig Norma up and bring her, he lays her on the couch and shakes her to wake up and open her eyes and when she doesn’t he glues her eyes open and scream “look at me mother”. Norman is teetering on the edge of grief, desperation and delusions which is a very dangerous combination.

Chick finds the door open walks in Norman meets him before he gets to the couch that Norma’s body is laying on, he tells Norman he has come to pay his respects and he brought Norman a chicken enchilada casserole, he sees Norma’s body lying there and says “you do what you have to do, but you know she is dead right? He tells Norman that he will come back in a few days to check in on him, but that could become potentially dangerous for Chick. With it dawning on Norman that she is not coming back he loads a gun to finish off what he started, he put the barrel in his mouth and just as he goes to pull the trigger he hears ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ playing on the piano, its Norma in a red dress happily playing the piano he sits with his arm around her while she plays and the camera pans out to Bates Motel neon blue sign.

I definitely didn’t see that ending coming at all, one thing I have been thinking about is maybe Norma has never really been there? Could she have just been the other side of Norman’s split personality? Season 4 has been outstanding, the writer, the actors and the rest of the crew are just insanely talented and I am very much looking forward to what season 5 will bring.

The Inspiration Behind Norman Bates **GRAPHIC CONTENT**

Since there was not Bates Motel episode this week i thought i would have a look into what or who inspired Hitchcock’s Psycho and the birth of Norman Bates and what I found was totally disturbing but very intriguing nonetheless. Norman Bates was a fictional character created by Robert Bloch for his novel Psycho and was portrayed by Anthony Perkins in Hitchcock’s 1960 film of the same name, but did you know that Norman wasn’t just purely fictional, he was actually based on a convicted murderer by the name Ed Gein.

*WARNING DISTURBING CONTENT TO FOLLOW*

Who is Ed Gein you ask? Well Ed was born on the 27th August 1906 in La Crosse County, Wisconsin. Ed also goes by The Mad Butcher, he was killer and a body snatcher and his crimes were all committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin where he exhumed corpses from local cemeteries and fashioned keepsakes and trophies from their bones and skin. Ed Gein confessed to killing Mary Hogan a tavern owner on December 8th, 1954 and Bernice Worden the Plainfield hardware store owner on November 16th, 1957. Gein had been in the hardware store the evening before Bernice Worden disappearance, the Police suspected Gein and searched his property and what they found was disturbing. Investigators found Worden’s decapitated body in a shed, hung upside down by ropes at her wrists, with a crossbar at her ankles. Her torso was dressed out like a deer and she had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, the mutilations to her body occurred after her death. Upon searching the house the investigators were even more shocked, sickened and disturbed by what they had found.

The following is what was found in Gein’s house:

● Whole human bones and fragments
● A wastebasket made of human skin
● Several chairs covered in human skin
● Skulls on his bedposts
● Female skulls and some with the tops sawn off
● Bowls made out of human skulls
● A corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist
● Leggings made from human leg skin
● Masks made from the skin of female heads
● Mary Hogan’s face mask in a paper bag
● Mary Hogan’s skull in a box
● Bernice Worden’s entire head in a burlap sack
● Bernice Worden’s heart in a plastic bag in front of Gein’s potbellied stove
● Nine (9) vulvae in a shoe box
● A young girls dress and the vulvas of two (2) females judged to have been about fifteen years old
● A belt made from female human nipples
● four (4) noses
● A pair of lips in a window shade drawstring
● A lampshade made from the skin of a human face
● Fingernails from female fingers

All the items found at Gein’s house were photographed and then destroyed, he told investigating officers that between 1947 and 1952 he made as many as 40 night visits to three different cemeteries to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a “daze-like” state (similar to what we see with Norman’s blackouts) On 30 of those visits he would come out of the daze while still in the cemetery and left the grave in good order and return home emptyhanded. On other occasions he would dig up recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and took them home, where he tanned their skin to make paraphernalia. Soon after the death of Gein’s mother, he began to create a “woman suit” so that he could become his mother to literally crawl into her skin. His practice of donning the tanned skins of women was described as an “insane transvestite ritual”

Sheriff Art Schley from Waushara County, reportedly assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein’s head and face into a brick wall and as a result Gein’s initial confession was ruled inadmissible. In 1968 Art Schley died of heart failure at the age of 43, before Gein’s trial, its said by many who knew Schley that he was traumatized by the horror of Gein’s crimes and his fear of having to testify about assaulting Gein, caused his death. November 21st 1957 Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder and pled not guilty by reason of insanity, he was found mentally incompetent and unfit for trial and sent to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and later sent to Mendota State Hospital where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. On November 14th 1968 Gein was found guilty of first-degree murder by Judge Robert H. Gollmar and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. Gein’s house and property were scheduled to be auctioned March 30, 1958 , amid rumors the house was to become a tourist attraction but on March 27th the house was destroyed by fire and arson was suspected but was never officially solved. The car he used to haul the bodies of his victims was sold at public auction for $760 to a carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons, later Gibbons charged carnival goers 25 cents admission to see it. Gein died on July 26, 1984 of respiratory failure due to lung cancer at the age of 77 in Stovall Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute.

Ed Gein’s story has had lasting effects on American pop culture by its numerous appearances in film, music and literature. His story first came to widespread public attention in the fictional version by Robert Bloch in his 1959 suspense novel Psycho, then in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film of Bloch’s novel. Gein’s story has been loosely adapted into a number of movies, including Deranged (1974), In the Light of the Moon (2000), Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007), Hitchcock (2012), and the Rob Zombie movies House of 1000 Corpses and its sequel, The Devil’s Rejects. Gein has also served as a model for several book and film characters, most notably such fictional serial killers as Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs) and Bloody Face from American Horror Story.

It goes without saying that Gein was a deranged human, but he will forever be a source of inspiration for all things dark and twisted.

References:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein