Phantom Limbs: Dissecting Horror's Lost Sequels and Remakes

By Jason Jenkins

phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm'lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.

Wasn't there going to be a faithful film adaptation of Resident Evil in the late 90s?

Did you know that Mike Flanagan was going to do a spinoff of The Shining after completing Doctor Sleep?

Whatever happened to the rumored sequel to Texas Chainsaw 3D?

Based on the popular Bloody Disgusting web column of the same name, Phantom Limbs takes a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes - extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore - that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages.

Here, writer Jason Jenkins chats with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insights into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.

This inaugural volume features twenty-five chapters covering such projects as:

Jigsaw's Twisted Tales by Marcus Dunstan & Patrick Melton
Hellraiser by Todd Farmer & Patrick Lussier
Hallorann by Mike Flanagan
Thirst by Mick Garris
The People Under the Stairs by F. Javier Gutierrez
The Plantation by Adam Marcus & Debra Sullivan
Resident Evil by Alan B. McElroy
Texas Chainsaw II by Scott Milam
The Hitcher by Jeffrey Reddick
Zero.Dark.Thirty by Stephen Susco
and many more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encyclopocalypse Publications
• Release date: Apr 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224777150

Book preview

PSYCHO II: THE RETURN OF NORMAN BATES

MICHAEL JANUARY

8/25/1980

PRE-OP

Based upon Robert Bloch’s novel of the same name, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror/thriller Psycho tells the story of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a thirty-something bank clerk on the lam with $40K dollars of a client’s money - money that she intends to use to rid her boyfriend Sam (John Gavin) of his debt so they can finally elope and escape the lives they’ve been shackled with. When Marion makes a fateful stop at the lonely Bates Motel during her long drive, she meets kindly motel manager Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a man stuck in his own private trap. Having lived an insulated life while managing his motel and caring for his invalid mother, Norman finds an unexpected kinship with Marion which proves tragically short-lived when Mother Bates murders the young woman in her motel room shower.

Ever the dutiful son, Norman cleans up Mother’s mess and disposes of Marion’s body in the swamp abutting the Bates Motel and its accompanying Second Empire mansion. Before long, Sam and Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) arrive to look for their missing loved one, aided for a time by Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam), a private investigator hired by Marion’s bank who meets an untimely end at the hands of Mother. When Sam and Lila confront Norman directly about Marion’s disappearance, they make a shocking discovery: Mother is a figment of Norman’s imagination who assumes control of his body and flies into fits of murderous rage whenever triggered. The film ends with Norman in custody, his Mother personality having taken over, presumably for all time.

Psycho would get a sequel in the form of 1983’s Psycho II, kicking off a franchise that would follow on with two further film sequels, more novels, a TV movie, and an acclaimed television series. But before Norman would eventually make this return to both page and screen, two writers attempted to resurrect the character in the midst of the burgeoning 80s slasher film boom.

SURGERY

"My journey to Hollywood was partly inspired by a chance encounter at West Virginia University with William Friedkin, who was on a promotional tour with The Exorcist, screenwriter Michael January explains, discussing his origins as a writer. I was among some drama students invited to meet him. I asked him a question about framing he apparently thought was perceptive, and he said if I found myself in Hollywood, to look him up. I tried to follow up on his offer but never got through to him."

Yet another chance encounter early in his career would lead to the first attempt at reviving Norman Bates and the Psycho brand two decades after Hitchcock’s masterpiece graced screens. I was a very young writer, January says. Gary Travis was a writer, producer and actor. He had produced and directed two independent films by that time. We met at a party, and I mentioned an idea I liked and he said, ‘Why don't you go home and write it?’ So I did. And we ended up working together.

The pair found themselves developing screenplays set primarily in the horror genre. Once the popularity of the slasher genre exploded in the wake of John Carpenter’s Halloween, Hitchcock fan Travis hit upon the idea of revisiting the proto-slasher grandaddy that started it all. "At that time in the 80s, sequels were becoming a very big thing. One day, Gary came to me and said, ‘You know, it’s been twenty years and nobody’s done a sequel to Psycho.’ So we decided to do one."

January and Travis penned an outline (officially a screen story proposal) bearing the initial title Psycho II: The Return of Norman Bates and registered it with the WGA in August of 1980, with the completed screenplay registered by the writers just two months later. With a finished script in hand, the duo set about putting together a package by seeking out the stars of the original Hitchcock film. I saw that Vera Miles was doing a play out in North Hollywood, January recalls. So I went out to see the play, and I took a copy of the script. She kindly accepted it, read it and loved it. She contacted us back through her agent, and said she would love to do it.

With January having done his part to secure one lead, he and Travis set about contacting the actor responsible for bringing the titular madman to life. Gary had been a contract player at 20th Century Fox, and he knew Tony Perkins, and knew he wanted to direct. So we contacted Tony and let him know about the project. We were going to produce it through Universal, that was the plan. With an offer to direct the film on the table, Perkins agreed to reprise his role and helm the sequel.

Curiously, January and Travis had one more actor to contact, and it’s a surprising choice given his character’s fate in the previous film. We had the idea to bring back Marty Balsam, January says, naming the actor who had essayed the role of doomed private detective Milton Arbogast, who met a memorable demise at the business end of Mother’s blade on the Bates House staircase in the original film. January visited the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, dropping the script at the actor’s hotel apartment. Balsam read the script, which featured a way to include him without betraying his character’s death in the first film (more on that later), and agreed to do the film. So we had Tony Perkins, Vera Miles and Marty Balsam.

With a completed script and trio of stars in place, the writers moved to complete their package by securing well-known producer C.O. Doc Erickson, who had worked as a production manager on five of Hitchcock’s films (Psycho not included). Once the package was in place, January and Travis sent their script along to Universal via their entertainment lawyer, who happened to be a longtime friend of Verna Fields, a boon to the potential production. January explains, "Verna was the editor on Jaws, a well-known person in Hollywood, and she had been given an executive position at Universal. So we submitted the project…and then we did not hear back from them." Six months passed, with no response from the studio even after several follow-up phone calls from both the writers’ lawyer and agent.

Eventually, Travis concocted an idea to get Universal’s attention. So Gary had this idea to get a response, January chuckles. He had me go down to the L.A. Flower Market and buy the largest orchid I could find. I played a delivery boy. With Travis’ plan to prompt a long overdue response in mind and an orchid in hand, January strolled into Universal Studios with the intent to deliver the flower directly to Fields. I was directed into Fields’ office. She was in the midst of a meeting with some young execs, I assume, when I set it down in the middle of her desk, while the others in the meeting made comments. ‘Ooh, ahh, mystery admirer, walla walla…’ Along with the flower, January left a letter written by he and Travis meant to prompt a long overdue reply.

So we finally heard back from Verna Fields, January laughs. She finally called and said, ‘Look, we’re sorry, we lost the script behind the filing cabinet.’ Now, I don’t know if they were serious or if it was a bad joke, but that was the response we got.

Discussions got underway with Universal, whose then-Vice President Thom Mount was reportedly a fan of the script January and Travis had delivered. Not only had the writers found a way to attract a talented cast and impress a studio head, they managed to weave a compelling tale that did justice to the classic Hitchcock film. But what story did they tell?

PHANTOM LIMB

The last time we saw Norman Bates, he was left in the care of the authorities, having been fully consumed by his Mother persona. As Psycho II: The Return of Norman Bates opens, a nurse is glimpsed working inside of the insane asylum where Norman has been held for the last twenty years. She moves about some files, switching some around, while we’re never quite able to get a look at her face. The nurse murders a security guard, then sets fire to the asylum, with the resulting news being that Norman Bates died in the catastrophe, his body having been identified by dental records.

From here, we are reintroduced to Lila, who married Sam Loomis after the events of the previous film. January reveals that Sam would have been represented here as a photo of John Gavin on Lila’s dresser, as the character would have died between films. In addition to losing her husband, Lila would have been shown as having been haunted for the last twenty years by the memories of the terrible events which transpired at the Bates Motel. She’s been single since her husband died, January notes, and she has a daughter who is going off to college.

January reveals that Lila’s daughter was named Jamie, who was intended to be played by a burgeoning star and newly-minted Scream Queen with familial ties to the first film. We wanted to have Jamie Lee Curtis on the project to play Vera Miles’ daughter, January says, revealing that the daughter of Psycho’s most famous victim Janet Leigh was being eyed to participate in the sequel. We didn’t go out to her. We needed to set up the project before we went to her. I saw some report that she thought it was silly, that there was something about her being killed in a hot tub as an homage to her mother or something like that. But there was no hot tub in our script, so I don’t know who came up with that, he laughs.

Once Lila hears about Norman’s death, she decides to purchase the Bates Motel and reopen it as a bed and breakfast to purge the nightmares she’s had of the place for so many years. Her daughter thinks she’s crazy, wondering why she would be driven to do this. It’s surely a surprising choice, but one that January notes was firmly rooted in character. "I thought about the psychology of the Lila character, the psychology of going through that last shocking scene from Psycho, with the lightbulb and the mother in the chair. I thought, ‘What does that do to someone?’ Audiences had nightmares about that for a long time, but what about the person that lived it? What would it do to them … and how do you try to fix that for yourself?"

Lila succeeds in reopening the motel, managing to attract customers to the notorious site in spite of (or perhaps due to) its history, including a rather unsavory group that January points out was meant to harken back to Hitchcock’s penchant for dark comedy. "This rather annoying fat lady comes by with these pudgy little children. They check in at the motel, and we keep hearing these children running back and forth on the boards of the porch. But then, at one point…we don’t hear the children running anymore." The following morning, the guests’ car is gone.

More strange events follow, including the introduction of Doctor Axelberg, to have been played by Martin Balsam. He and Lila grow close, with the widow telling her daughter over the phone that she’s met a man, which makes Jamie happy. The two go out for a time, before Axelberg ultimately winds up murdered on the stairway of the house in a deliberate revisit of the original.

Distraught over Axelberg’s disappearance, Lila eventually lays down in the upstairs bedroom of the former Bates house. What follows is a set piece January wrote in the hopes of echoing some of Hitchcock’s great sequences. I played a lot with mirrors, January says. People have been disappearing, Lila is afraid, and looking around the house, and there are these mirrors. The upstairs bedroom is still kind of similar as it was when Norman’s mother was there, and the bed has a canopy … finally, she relaxes and lays down on the bed. Lila hears something, before realizing that the canopy above her reveals the shape of a body. As she’s laying there, a knife rips through the canopy, and Norman Bates … falls on top of her with the knife. Clad in the iconic Mother wig and dress, Norman attacks Lila on the bed. And we cut away, January teases. That was my intended shower scene moment.

At this point, the film is handed off from Lila to Jamie, echoing the switch in protagonists from the earlier film. That was part of what I was trying to do, January says. I was a Hitchcock fan, and I was trying to honor him when I was writing it. Jamie, having not heard from her mother, leaves her fiancé Dan behind to travel to the motel. There, she meets Norman Bates, assuming that he’s the man her mother has been dating. Norman Bates doesn't really make an actual appearance until well into the film, January points out, revealing that the writers played with the idea that Norman was there throughout the film, but "we didn’t see him. In a more Hitchcockian style, characters would be there, and then they would not be there. We didn’t have a lot of visual killing of people, not until a little bit later. We stayed away from that."

As with the original film (and the film sequels and television series that would eventually follow), Norman is presented as a sympathetic figure here, as opposed to a mere slasher. "Tony wouldn’t have done it if he was a monster. He wanted the character to be a character. To that end, the writers delved a little further into Norman’s backstory for the sequel. I wanted to deal with Norman’s father, explains January. The [first] movie was about the mother, but we never knew anything about the father."

As the film ventures into the third act, a major reveal occurs with the reappearance of Axelberg, revealed here to be Milton Arbogast’s vengeful brother…and Norman’s psychiatrist. He had his own agenda, January says of the manipulative character, revealing that he was very much the antagonist of the piece. He had a purpose that wasn’t being expressed. He was that Hitchcockian character that has an ulterior motive that we don’t find out until the twist.

As the film races toward its ending, Norman is shown to have been living in a cave underneath the house’s fruit cellar. There’s a cave system that goes from the fruit cellar to the bog where [Marion Crane’s car] went under in the first film. Norman has been living down there, practicing his taxidermy art. January took the idea presented in the original film, that Norman used his taxidermy craft to bring his mother back, and took it to a logical conclusion for the madman. I thought, ‘If he’s around and he comes back, what’s he going to do with himself? Well, he’s going to practice his art. And if he lives alone, he wants to have a family.’ So he makes himself a family.

That’s right, after Jamie discovers the cave system beyond the Bates House’s fruit cellar, she stumbles upon a shocking sight: Norman has built a family from his recent motel victims, including the annoying lady and her children, creating a menagerie of stuffed bodies to keep him company in the dark. "You see them all in the basement, with their eyes and mouths sewn shut. That was a reveal that I hoped would have a similar power to the mom in the chair [at the end of Psycho]."

Among the dead figures in the menagerie is Axelberg. But in a shock moment, his eyes pop open. He’s not dead. It is revealed Axelberg, as perverse revenge for his brother, had worked his way to be Norman’s psychiatrist at the state hospital, and convinced Norman that he was his abusive father in a process to release him of the persona of his controlling mother, and is actually the force manipulating Norman in his new killing spree.

Jamie discovers that Lila is still alive, before a climactic battle ensues which sees Jamie’s fiancé Dan charging in to help save the day. He’s a bit of a hero, January says, but he is also a bit of a jerk. I like characters that exist in the gray.

With Lila’s life in the balance, Norman turns on Axelberg and kills him, his Mother persona returning to dominance once again. The house catches fire, with Norman seemingly vanquished as Jamie and Dan pull the barely living Lila from the cave into the fruit cellar, and then out of the burning house. Our survivors embrace a safe distance from the flames and watch as the Bates House burns, even as the script hints that Norman may have survived. "A bit like Boris Karloff in Frankenstein in the burning mill, he will return."

TINGLES

While Psycho II: The Return of Norman Bates’ story may have gone out with a raging inferno, the project itself died a far less spectacular death. This was a period of some negotiations between our agent, Allen Greene, and Universal, January notes. This is when Thom’s comment that he liked the script came up. If he had been President it might have turned out differently, but the decision was apparently above him. Thom later approached me about writing a project when he was an independent. January points out that Universal never definitively passed on the script, but we got the sense that they were dragging their feet and not being serious. Probably keeping their options open until they could get their own thing in hand.

Frustrated at Universal’s stalling, Travis approached Perkins and suggested that they pull the project from the studio and shop it elsewhere, having been approached by potential financiers who offered to fund the film if it found distribution. Paramount and 20th Century Fox showed interest as well, though it ultimately led nowhere. With no claim to the original IP, Travis was forced to consider producing the film as a bootleg sequel to the original film. "We contacted some attorneys, and they said, ‘Yeah, if you do this, you do this, do this, you’re okay.’ We took Norman Bates’ name out, some other names out. We tried calling it Return of the Psycho at one point, or The Return of Norman. I don’t think it was very realistic, because the money people were interested in a Psycho sequel, and not some other thing."

Perkins stayed in touch with the producers, though he would eventually board an entirely different iteration of Psycho II. "I suspect at some point along this time, Universal finally put together their Richard Franklin project, and probably made an offer to Tony. They took him to do their project, and ours sort of faded away. So ultimately, it died.

Universal’s legal department eventually got around to sending a ‘cease and desist’ letter when the story about the alternate project hit the press, but we heard grumbling through the grapevine that they might have used some of the ideas we had in their script, but were concerned about running into our copyright, to original story elements we came up with.

A Psycho sequel would eventually arrive in the form of a 1982 Robert Bloch novel, as well as director Richard Franklin’s unrelated Psycho II, penned by Tom (Fright Night) Holland and starring Perkins and Miles. Vera Miles got a thankless minor bit part reprise role, January says. That’s my biggest disappointment in all this, that she lost out on a great role to cap a career.

Given that Psycho had lain dormant for two decades before January and Travis drummed up interest with their own follow-up, one wonders if January considers their work to be the impetus which revived a franchise that would continue on with another two novels (Bloch’s Psycho House and author Chet Williamson’s Psycho: Sanitarium), two more films starring Perkins, a feature length pilot for an aborted 80s television series (Bates Motel), and an acclaimed A&E television series (also titled Bates Motel) which ran from 2013 until 2017.

I would think that we sort of launched the idea about doing a sequel, January allows, but somebody might have gotten to it eventually. I certainly think we put it on the plate. I was unhappy with Universal. I thought the least they could have done was take the script off the market, but they didn’t.

HALLOWEEN 6

MICHAEL JANUARY

UNDATED EARLY 1990S

PRE-OP

After the success of 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, a fourth sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal ‘78 slasher classic was rushed into production to meet a Halloween ‘89 release date. Opening to disappointing box office, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers would see an end to the short-lived resurgence of the franchise, with the next installment not arriving in theaters until over a half decade later. Nevertheless, the years between the fifth and sixth installments were filled with several potential takes that were considered, including those from creatives such as Quentin Tarantino, Scott Spiegel and Carpenter himself, who reportedly considered a space station-set sequel.

In the early days of the sixth film’s development, not long after the fifth film’s release, Halloween rightsholders Trancas International began seeking out pitches for the sequel. Among those who answered the call was a genre enthusiast with experience in resurrecting a well-known screen slasher.

SURGERY

I was a golfing buddy of Michael Jacobs, Michael January begins, charting the beginning of his association with The Shape. "He wrote Halloween 5, and he didn't wanna do 6, so he introduced me to Trancas." Having written primarily in the horror genre up until this point in his career, including a riff on Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and an attempted Psycho sequel [see previous chapter], January was aware of Carpenter’s film and its sequels, though he admits to losing interest in them at around the point that Season of the Witch hit in 1982. After refreshing himself on the details of the fifth film, January set about crafting his take on a potential sixth entry in the growing franchise.

I went to an office out on West Sunset Boulevard, out in West Hollywood somewhere, he continues. Once at the Trancas offices, January took his seat in front of a few execs, though Trancas head and Halloween godfather Moustapha Akkad was not in attendance. I assumed they were hearing other pitches, because I wasn’t especially special at that time, January laughs. That’s how I got invited to enter the sweepstakes, I guess.

What January pitched to the execs amounted to a straightforward attempt at a Halloween sequel, albeit one which takes place in a surprising venue. While some of the later takes (and eventual film) would take some shockingly big swings with the narrative, January aimed for a back-to-basics approach to the slasher series that would directly follow up the previous installment. "Mine takes off right from the end of 5. It was more of a straightforward story. I wasn’t adding voodoo or whatever."

PHANTOM LIMB

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers ended with The Shape being sprung from jail by the mysterious Man in Black, leaving the entire Haddonfield Sheriff’s Department decimated and young Jamie Lloyd sobbing at the realization that she’ll never be safe again. A massive manhunt ensues, with Michael, this crazed killer who shows up at Halloween with a mask, becoming very culturally familiar with people. Even still, Michael escapes apprehension, free to continue his reign of terror another day.

Time passes. Jamie grows. She’s trying to live a normal life, and even attempts to start dating. She’s trying to have a boyfriend, that kind of stuff, January notes. As yet another Halloween approaches, a babysitter is murdered. The police close in on Michael, the killer still sporting his white mask. They spot him on the railroad track with helicopters and searchlights, there are dogs, and the police surround him. They shoot him with beanbag nets and capture him. He’s taken and arrested. It’s coming up on Halloween, and there’s this great relief that they’ve captured this crazed killer.

Elsewhere, we’re introduced to a local, rundown amusement park which is on its last legs. Hoping to bolster attendance for this particular Spooky Season, the owner holds a promotion: Michael Myers Night on Halloween! Any attendee who purchases and wears a white Shape mask will get a free, extra-sized soft drink with their two-for-one hot dog meal. This crass marketing stunt sees the park filled with faux Michaels just as Jamie, her new boyfriend and their group of pals enter the park. The sight of the Boogeyman figure that has plagued Jamie all her life gets the expected response from our heroine, though she soldiers through for the sake of her friends and their fun night out. Jamie is dealing with her psychological stuff, January notes, but she’s going to be surrounded by kids. It’s gonna be okay. ‘You’re gonna be fine.’

In the meantime, back at the Sheriff’s Department, the police are confounded by Myers, who is not communicating with them at all. Realizing that the only person to ever truly reach Michael was Sam Loomis, the cops call the good doctor in, who arrives in a wheelchair.

He’s had a stroke, January reveals. They wheel him into the interview room. The guards bring Michael in and set him down in a chair, and chain him to the table. He just sits there, a very ordinary guy. Loomis studies his old patient, who had weathered burning and bullets and severe physical damage throughout the series. Loomis is looking at him. His face starts quivering. He rises up out of the chair. ‘THAT’S NOT MICHAEL MYERS!’

January points out that having Loomis in a wheelchair was written in part out of a concern for Pleasence’s health. That was part of it. I figured it was going to be his last one. The wheelchair also allowed Loomis to dramatically rise from his chair. I thought we could play with Loomis as a Captain Ahab, reducing him to this obsessed guy who’s still going in a wheelchair.

January reveals that while Loomis would have had that big scene in the Sheriff’s station