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BACK IN THE SHOWER AGAIN | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - The story line is a deceptively simple one -- Marion, an employee at an Arizona real estate agency, impulsively runs off with a fat wad of a client's cash after arguing with her lover (Viggo Mortensen) during a tawdry lunch-time assignation. He tells her they can't get married because he's too poor. Perhaps, she hopes, a cash infusion can convince him otherwise. But as she's bolting out of town to surprise him with her windfall, she stops for the night at a lonely, off-the-beaten-track motel. And it is there she meets a nebbishy proprietor who seems to a have few problems of his own -- starting with his meddling mama. The world of horror film bad guys is a fairly tidy one, despite the increasingly visceral mess they leave behind. Killers are generally either brash "Heeeeere's Johnny!" showmen or supernatural entities, the better to die explosively at the end and still come back for six or seven sequels. As Hannibal Lecter, Anthony Hopkins chewed more scenery than victims, and this month's Norman himself, Vince Vaughn, was a yee-haw, stab-happy villain earlier this year in Clay Pigeons. Even one of the best horror films of recent decades, "Halloween," had to cheat at the end and turn Michael Meyers from a blank-faced boy with a really messed up idea of how to celebrate a holiday into the living embodiment of the bogeyman. Norman is different. He is sweet-faced and soft-spoken. And worst of all, it's not an act. Though no one who's seen the original could ever get the indelible image of Anthony Perkins -- all lank brown hair and dark, darting eyes -- out of their heads, Vaughn does a terrific job of putting his own stamp on the character. For a guy who made his mark hyperactively jumping on tables and barking soon-to-be-unbearable clichés in "Swingers," he's blessedly restrained here. His Norman is edgier and more sexually aware (as he spies on Marion, the unmistakable slapping sounds from below leave no doubt he's a hands-on kind of voyeur), but he's also consistently and touchingly sad. The original twitchy weirdness is still there, just with more lonely desperation. When the profoundly preoccupied Marion arrives on his doorstep, he gazes at her as if Santa's arrived a few weeks early, bringing a treat just for him. And when she announces decisively that she's taking off early in the morning, one look on his crushed countenance tells you that Mother is going to be very, very unhappy about all of this. Too bad Marion's not in so much of a hurry she doesn't have time for a nice, hot shower. When the first "Psycho" appeared, the idea of bumping off the hero less than halfway through the picture was unheard of, and remarkably, even after subsequent generations of innovative, in-your-face filmmaking, it still is. Her death here is only slightly gorier -- she now sprouts two wide red gashes on her back after tumbling from the tub -- and there's the addition of some ominous clouds intercut with all the slashing. It's the consequence of her death that remains jolting. With the central figure gone, the movie then forces us to shift our focus to the creepy guy who lives in the big house. (Imagine trying to do the same thing with Neve Campbell or Jennifer Love Hewitt. Goodbye, franchise!) And when the spotlight turns to Norman, we must accept that he is not a Freddy Krueger who can toss off clever lines while he eviscerates, nor that he will be ultimately pummeled to death by the righteous. He's a regular guy. He's Eddie O'Brien, the chubby kid who was convicted of stabbing a neighbor old enough to be his mother more than 90 times after allegedly spying on her from his home across the street. He's John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who, years after his execution, still may have bodies stashed on his property. He's the quintessential quiet, nice boy who shocked the town. And because he is so real, he is infinitely more disturbing than a hook-wielding freak dressed up like the Gorton's fisherman. Van Sant has said that he wanted to remake "Psycho" because he feared not enough people had seen the original simply because it was in black and white. The great irony of his thinking is that most movies in the horror genre now are so black and white: The guy with the big knife is a monster, the girl running away a virtuous heroine. The story of "Psycho" says it's not that easy. The girl running away may be an afternoon tryster who's just run off with a few grand. She may, by her admission, be stepping into a trap of her own making. And the guy about to carve her up just may have used that same knife to fix her a sandwich. SALON | Dec. 4, 1998