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Who Was Psycho's Mrs. Bates, and More Movie Questions
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Question: This is an obvious question, but I've neard a lot of contradictory answers. Who was the voice of Mrs. Bates in Psycho? – Dan
FlickChick: It appears that three people provided the voice of Norman's "mother" in Psycho (1960). Actresses Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan (whose husband, actor John McIntire, played Sheriff Chambers) and an aspiring actor named Paul Jasmin, who did the voice-over dialogue at the end, after Norman is arrested — the "I woudn't hurt a fly" speech.
Jasmin went on to become a photographer and did a lot of on-set work. I've heard that Gregg, who had an uncredited bit part in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946) and died in 1986, voiced Mrs. Bates' less strident dialogue and that Nolan, who died in 1998, did the harsher lines.
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Question: When I was a kid in the mid-1960s, I saw a horror story where an old woman was readying a corpse (closing the eyes, arranging the face, cleaning up the room where the body was) and then steals a ring off the body. A fly that can only be described as malicious then frightens the woman (and the audience) by constantly landing on the body. The corpse changes each time the fly lands — the eyes open, the face smiles, etc. I thought it was an episode of Night Gallery or some TV show like that, but my mother says it was part of a larger movie. Do you know this story? J. Ted
FlickChick: I do: It's a segment of the Italian horror movie Tre Volti della Paura (Three Faces of Fear), which was directed by Mario Bava and released in the U.S. as Black Sabbath (1963). The segment you're describing was called "A Drop of Water" and was supposedly based on a story by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, but I've never run across anyone who could figure out what story that might have been. Black Sabbath is available on DVD.
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My husband and I saw the new James Bond movie on opening night. Loved it, by the way — Daniel Craig rocked! Anyway, we got into a debate about whether Casino Royale is a prequel to all the other Bonds. I know it is the first James Bond book by Ian Fleming, but does that make the movie a prequel? I say yes to the prequel, my husband says no. Help me out here. Brandi
I'd say this is a gray area of the first order, complicated by the fact that the other Bond movies based on Ian Fleming novels weren't made according to the chronology of the books. The word I wound up using when I reviewed it was "reboot," because Casino Royale is clearly meant to be a new start for the Bond franchise, and the things that happen in it, at least to my mind, are not meant to have happened before the events depicted in the Sean Connery/Roger Moore/George Lazenby/Timothy Dalton/Pierce Brosnan films. But they will be the foundation on which future Bond films are built.
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Dec 20, 2006 6:20 PM
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