http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=525761
These are all points that I will build on and add to.
First, a general observation of Lynch's use of film references. Mr. Lynch uses film references and ideas from films to come up with his own ideas. So, rather than take a film connection and say 'well that's now really what happens in the film' think more this is a film connection that becomes a Lynchian moment with the director still giving proper credit to the filmmakers and films that came before him. Makes sense?
Why is the corpse curled in that specific position in MD?
Because it's a reference to how Mother rotted away (stinking away) in the cellar of her house, seated on a chair, before Norman took her upstairs to her bed. How do we know this? The seated position that she was in the chair becomes her fixed position on her bed. With the corpse removed by Norman and put back in the cellar, Lila Crane (Marion's sister) notes how the mattress on Mrs. Bates' bed has become a weird imprint around the position the "stiff" was put to rest in her bed.
So the short of it is that Lynch gives us the climatic scene of Psycho with a twist. Instead of seeing a rotted corpse we see a rotting corpse, the smell in the of the cellar making it tough for Betty and Rita to breathe. That's right, the girls moving through apartment 17 in near dark are in the words of Mother in the "dank" and "dark" cellar of the Bates' house. Then in a Lynchian approach, they move through to Mrs. Bates' bedroom where they find her corpse. This leads to Rita being Lila for a moment as she screams at the corpse then becoming the wide-mouthed Norman who can't speak as (after the scream) Rita can't speak either. Betty becomes Sam Loomis struggling from behind to wrestle Norman (Rita) to the ground as the corpse lays before them.
The naked light bulb as the girls exit the room being perhaps, just perhaps a reference to the famous swinging naked light bulb of the Psycho climax.
The question then becomes ... does the visual merging of images around Rita (as the exit the basement) represent the crisis where Mother and Norman are not slightly separate entities but one surviving entity? Mother.
Seems a stretch? Lynch gives more clues to this in the MD pilot that are not available to us in the feature film. Specifically, the girls come into the basement that is apartment 17 and the camera specifically focuses on an empty chair (i.e. the chair in the cellar with Mother absent as she is in her bed). He also features a shot of a set of typical cellar stairs indicating where they really are: an idea that he decided to edit out. That was probably a wise move on his part as it was the cellar stairs that first made me realize it was ... the cellar.
Another key MD scene is the famous Psycho shower scene minus the murder and shown from Mother's viewpoint. Rita is travel-weary Marion Crane, who after a scary car scene takes refuge at the Bates Motel with a purse full of stolen money. Her purse is where Marion Crane had the stolen money in Psycho before moving it to within a newspaper. Betty is Norman as Mother who comes into her motel room passing the clothes that Rita stripped off and left on the floor to approach her as she takes a shower behind the translucent shower door. Like Marion, Rita also assumes a fake name at the motel. Further, when Rita looks for shelter, Lynch shows us a shot of the outside of a motel (the name of which escapes me for the moment).
Adding a completely new reference of my own, I'll observe the similarities in the very end of both films. Norman has become his mother who sits completely silent and alone and thinks to herself "I'll just sit here and be quiet" as MD ends with an elderly woman sitting alone in a theatre and softly whispers "silencio."
Another idea that kary82 likes and certainly bears attention is that Coco represents Mother in Norman's mind and that she sees Rita as a rival for her son's (Betty) affection. Coco expresses her concern to Betty saying "If there is trouble, get rid of it!" with the "it" being Marion's car sinking into the swamp as Norman disposes of the body.
Kary82 also notes that there are:
- Detectives on the search for Rita (the girl) as there is a detective in search of Marion in Psycho.
- Betty and Rita become amateur detectives much as Lila Crane and Sam Loomis become amateur detectives within Psycho.
