In many ways, it only seems right that the memorable satanic serial killer in 2024’s Longlegs has emerged from the same family genes that gave us one of the horror genre’s most unforgettable killers, Norman Bates. Way back in 1960, actor Anthony Perkins brought the role of that cross-dressing, mother-obsessed murderer to life, and some sixty years later, his son, Osgood Perkins, dreamed up a subtle, complex, and creepy psychopath for an entirely new generation in the form of Dale Kobble.
If Osgood Perkins had any qualms about following in his father’s footsteps, he probably wouldn’t have starred as a young child in Psycho II or begun making horror films in the latter part of his professional career. Instead of running and hiding from his family’s past, Osgood Perkins has embraced it and used it as a foundation for the kind of scary stories he likes to tell. Longlegs is one such movie, and while, on the surface, it might appear to be a quintessential horror movie trafficking in satanic and other supernatural themes, at its heart, Longlegs is an extremely personal movie inspired by the Perkins family’s secret life.
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How Did Anthony Perkins Lead a Double Life?
By Keeping His Sexuality Secret From Everyone, Including His Children
Anthony Perkins was born in New York City on April 4, 1932, to Janet Rane and Osgood Perkins, who was himself an actor. According to interviews he gave later on in life, Anthony maintained a very tortured and troubled relationship with his parents, one that was further complicated by feelings of deep anguish following his father’s death from a heart attack when Anthony was just 5 years old. Nonetheless, Anthony followed in the family business, and at the age of 15, he joined Actors Equity and began performing in stage productions before heading off to Rollins College and Columbia University.
In 1953, Anthony Perkins made his feature film debut in The Actress, co-starring Jean Simmons and Spencer Tracy. From there, he went on to book regular television and theater work, earning immense praise for his Broadway debut in 1954’s Tea and Sympathy. Two years later, he earned an Academy Award nomination for his turn as a young Quaker caught between his spiritual, pacifist upbringing and his military obligation during the Civil War in Friendly Persuasion.
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Noted in particular for his ability to layer his performances with grace notes of sensitivity and genuineness, as the 1950s came to a close, Anthony Perkins began to lean more into romantic fare in films like The Matchmaker and Green Mansions. Then, in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock hired him to bring to life one of the most talked about roles in the horror genre’s entire history, the seemingly pleasant innkeeper with a deadly, sociopathic secret, Norman Bates. That role turned him into a superstar, which, in turn, necessitated Anthony Perkins keeping the truth about his personal life even more hidden.
Anthony Perkins’s secret was that he was gay. It was something he had known for quite a while, at least since college, but he often tried to suppress and hide his sexuality. Needless to say, leading men in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s seldom, if ever, stepped foot outside the closet, as it would have been tantamount to career suicide. And Anthony Perkins was an extremely ambitious fellow. Friends described a man who would let nothing get in the way of his career, and he did what he could to hide the truth about his personal life by living platonically with a domineering older woman named Helen Merrill while engaging in sexual affairs with a series of male lovers.
Then, in 1973, Anthony Perkins married Berry Berenson, an actress, model, and photographer who had a schoolgirl-like crush on the star and pursued him relentlessly. Soon enough, they had two sons, Osgoode and Elvis, to whom Anthony was devoted. Perkins’ gay friends doubted his claims of remaining faithful to his wife, but many of them could not deny that Anthony seemed truly happy when spending time with his family. In fact, this family unit was so convincing that even Anthony’s sons had no idea about their father’s true proclivities. Eventually, however, the truth came out.
In 1990, the National Enquirer broke a story that Anthony Perkins was battling AIDS. He soon after died of complications from the disease in 1992. As for Osgood, well, he has plenty of good memories with his father, a man he says he bonded with over their appreciation for dark humor. It was these very abstract and surreal sensibilities that Osgood attempted to tap into when he began making movies of his own, inspired by his family’s secrets.
How Did Osgood Perkins Family Inspire His Career?
Every Family Has Secrets Worth Telling
Osgood Perkins’ film career technically began at the age of 6 when he was brought on to star as a young version of Norman Bates in flashback sequences from Psycho II. Generally speaking, his memories of that time are fuzzy, but he recalls being scared by the movie’s set, which felt very much real to him. What began as a fun way to spend time with his father eventually became something of a minor career. A bit later on in life, Osgood drifted further into acting, appearing in small roles in feature films like Secretary, Not Another Teen Movie, and, most notably, Legally Blonde as Elle Woods’ geeky classmate, David Kidney.
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Ultimately, Osgood Perkins never truly considered himself an actor but a filmmaker instead. After writing (and selling) a few screenplays in Hollywood, Osgood was hired to helm his directorial debut with A24’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter in 2015. His brother Elvis composed the film’s score. What’s most interesting of all is how Osgood regards his burgeoning horror filmography as a sort of indirect autobiography.
For instance, Osgood Perkins’s second horror film, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, was dedicated to his father, Anthony, because its story of a live-in aide, played by Ruth Wilson, trying to piece together what happened in the remote house of an author now living with dementia can be read as an exploration into the nature of someone who is no longer around to speak of the past themselves. The movie even includes a clip of Anthony Perkins in his Oscar-nominated performance from Friendly Persuasion. Osgood explained his thought process behind the making of the film to The Los Angeles Times, telling them,
“It was about how we want to know who our parents are, and sometimes we don’t get that desire until they’re gone. It can be impossible to learn who someone is when they’re not around anymore.”
When sitting down to write his most recently released film, Osgood Perkins wanted to continue with that autobiographical trend. To do so, he dreamed up a story that was as much about the pain parents can inflict on their children as it was about a psychopathic and supernaturally inclined serial killer. Its name became Longlegs.
How Did Anthony Perkins’s Secret Life Directly Inspire His Son to Make Longlegs?
Parents Lie for Good, Bad, and Sometimes Even Satanic Reasons
It’s going to be difficult to talk about Perkins’s familial underpinnings in Longlegs without spoiling some of the film’s biggest twists. So, from this point forward, consider yourselves warned.
The remainder of this article will spoil the ending of Longlegs. If you haven’t seen it yet, turn back now!
The kernel of the idea that provided the foundation for Longlegs was Berry Berenson’s devotion to keeping her husband, Anthony Perkins’s sexuality a secret. That extended beyond just Anthony and Berry’s friends to their children as well. Neither Osgood nor Elvis had any idea that their father was gay. Eventually, Osgood’s mother herself died on 9/11, as she was a passenger on the first American Airlines plane that flew into the World Trade Center. Following his mother’s death, Osgood had a lot of personal issues to work through. Longlegs eventually became a way for him to do so.
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In Longlegs, the character of Lee Harker (played by It Follows’s Maika Monroe) has survived growing up under the deluded roof of her deeply religious mother, Ruth, played by Alicia Witt, and becomes an FBI agent. This relationship is meant to parallel Osgood’s with his own mother, and, as he explained to IndieWire,
“Everything I try to do, I try to make it about myself, only so that it creates a truth for me and an honesty, and I know I’m never full of sh*t if I’m talking about myself.”
The truth that Osgood Perkins worked awfully hard to expose was simple enough: a parent, even a mother, can lie to their children. By creating a cover story, a parent can submerge the truth in what they feel is a service to protect the family, but that secret can result in unintentional consequences.
This was a theme that Osgood tried to insert into his third horror film, Gretel & Hansel, but since that wasn’t his script, he had to wait a bit longer to make sure he got it right. When he set out to make Longlegs, he only had one purpose: to point out that a mother can lie and that she can do so out of love. Thus, Lee Harker’s mother, Ruth, is revealed as having kept a deadly secret at the end of Longlegs; she’s serial killer Dale Kobble’s accomplice, having agreed to help this deranged individual murder families for decades in order to keep her daughter safe.
It’s a decidedly more outrageous and deadly secret than the one that Osgood’s mother kept from her own family, but the parallels are clear. What’s more, Osgood Perkins hasn’t finished making autobiographical horror films quite yet. His next film will be an adaptation of Stephen King’s short, The Monkey, and he was drawn to the project because he saw it as an opportunity to explore his relationship with his brother, Elvis. In that film, twin brothers must come to peace with the death of their parents, and Osgood saw this as a chance to work through similar issues, especially considering the extreme circumstances under which both his parents died.
Will The Monkey’s autobiographical elements help make it as successful as Longlegs? Time will only tell, but considering the overall quality of that latter film, it’s pretty safe to say that audiences will be willing to sit through more of Osgood Perkins’s therapy sessions as long as they continue to provide an endless series of thrills and chills.
An upcoming horror thriller directed by Osgood Perkins, featuring an intriguing blend of crime drama and supernatural elements. The film stars Maika Monroe as Lee Harker, a determined and talented new FBI agent. Harker is assigned to a perplexing cold case involving a serial killer portrayed by Nicolas Cage.
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