Years after the success of Psycho (and the dwindling success of the Anthony Perkins-led sequels), the Bates Motel came to the small screen to refresh the franchise … but not on the series you’re thinking of. Bates Motel, the Psycho prequel starring The Conjuring‘s Vera Farmiga and future The Good Doctor star Freddie Highmore, premiered on A&E in 2013, running for five seasons and earning three Emmy nominations. But 26 years earlier, NBC tried to make its own show about the eerie lodge — Bates Motel, starring Harold and Maude‘s Bud Cort and a young Lori Petty, four years before Point Break would make her a star. But some questionable creative choices — including handing the hotel off to a new owner, and adding a supernatural element — ensured that the show would have an even shorter life than the typical Bates Motel guest.

What happened in 1987’s Bates Motel?

Set 27 years after the events of Psycho (and disregarding the plots of the sequels), the planned series followed Alex, a former asylum roommate of Norman Bates. After Norman’s death, Alex learns that he’s inherited the old Bates Motel, and decides, as one does, to re-open the old place with the help of a local teen runaway (Petty). Alex, Cort said in a 1987 Tribune interview promoting the special, “literally has been raised by Norman in the confines of the institution.”

At first, it seems like Alex is being haunted by supernatural visions of Norman’s mother … but those turn out to be a Scooby-Doo-style prank, perpetrated by a local banker.

Not a prank? The spirits of local dead teens (including a young Jason Bateman!), who convince a motel guest not to commit suicide.

Bates Motel was supposed to kick off a new series

© NBC/courtesy Everett Collection

Originally, Bates Motel was supposed to be a horror anthology series, which was trendy at the time — it premiere on July 5, 1987, just a few years after Tales from the Darkside, Amazing Stories and the ’80s reboot of Twilight Zone hit the air, and just a few months before the far-more-successful syndicated Friday the 13th series began.

“This would not be a series about a ‘victim-of-the-week’,” Cort said in a 1987 AP interview. “The hotel becomes a place for redemption, a place for second chance. The karma of the original ‘Psycho’ debacle is shattered by events in our film … There’s now something magical about the place that gives people a chance to reflect on their lives.”

But it didn’t make the fall schedule, and the pilot was aired as a TV movie, to gauge audience interest for a potential run of the series.

But the hour-and-a-half special, which was marketed by the studio as a “thriller-comedy,” never quite hit the mark with audiences, and any plans to turn it into a series were scrapped. The TV movie currently has a 2.9 rating on Letterboxd, and a more generous 3.8 on IMDB.

Perhaps its most lasting legacy? The show spiffed up the old motel with an ultra-80s adobe wall that surrounded the Bates Motel set on the Universal Studios backlot for over half a decade after the show fizzled.