Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Babies the Musical, On Ice

Take any movie, cartoon, or play. Now have the players lip-synch to tinny orchestrated music. Then add ice skates.

If you're really looking for something new, turn most of the main adult characters into babies...

And voila!-- an evening of fun for the whole family.

That got me thinking about show ideas that simply didn't make the cut. Ones that were entirely too awful to even see their way to Ice Rink Glory.

And that's why I believe hidden somewhere in the bowels of a production company basement, covered with dust and cobwebs, you will find...

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Babies, the Musical, On Ice.

Naturally, with something that absolutely dreadful... that inappropriate... that tasteless-- well, I figured I'd have to try writing it up for you folks. So, here we go!

The story centers on a young Norman Bates, as Mother runs the "Bates Hotel and Daycare Center," trying to pick up extra cash. (Also rich, widowed salesmen with small children.)

The show opens as Mrs. Bates skates in, clad in her black flowered dress and shawl. We're in her creepy Victorian parlor, watching the guests' children play. In "Love Cuts Like a Knife" she sings of the challenges of being a full-time single mother/part-time serial killer...

Young Jimmy goes missing
And sweet Suzie, too
Those traveling salesmen,
They haven't a clue
So handsome, so dashing
In perma-press suits
The thing that's between us
Are these little brutes
Here Suzie, there Jimmy
You stay in the cellar
While I rhyme and make time
With this swell salesman feller
And if he protests,
well, that's so like a man!
He'll be fond of the pond
And you, Sue, an orphan

The former-Olympic-skating-hopeful playing little Norman, meanwhile, is lamenting the mysterious absence of some of his daycare friends, in his solo number, "Sing to Me."

Twinkle, twinkle little star
Did little Suzie wander far?
And ABCDEFG
Why won't Jimmy play with me?

It happens like this every day
I make a friend, he goes away
And here is Norman all alone
A game to play, the kids all gone

So I'll be Jimmy
I'll be Sue
And I'll be Norman,
Also, too!

I'll never be alone again
I'll always, always have a friend
I'll sing to me
Oh, how I'll sing to me!

And donning the dress he finds in Little Suzie's left-behind luggage, Norman does a well-pointed triple-axle, a crossover and a camel spin.

Ah, but little Milton Arbogast, one of the visiting children (who will grow up to be a private investigator one day) is suspicious about what's happened to his dad, the vacuum cleaner salesman.

Slipping away, he steals Mrs. Bates' keys and unlocks the door to the mysterious fruit cellar she never allowed anyone to enter.

And there, in the half-light, he sees Suzie and Jimmy and 15 other children, tied up among the fruit crates, gagged and crying.

He frees them one by one and they form a skating conga line to sing about their trials and tribulations, kidnapped at the hand of crazy Mrs. Bates.

This forms the basis for the Caribbean-styled hit musical extravaganza, "It's the Pits."

No adult will believe us
No grownup to know what she did
They'd think we make-believed it
'Cause who would believe a kid?

But we're happy and we're free now
And we'll all run away
And get years of psychotherapy
But for now you'll hear us say,

Living in a fruit bin is the pits
Living in a fruit bin is the pits
I don't care for a pear
And apple is crapple
Living in a fruit bin is the pits

The show closes as the kids skate off to safety, picked up by a traveling band of singing nuns who, coincidentally, run an orphanage.

Mrs. Bates is left with Norman, and they conclude the production with a "Sing To Me" reprise in duet form.


Yep, I think I have clearly proven this script is one that should hide quietly among hundreds of other musical Capades, in the great warehouse of rightfully-quashed dreams...

Of course, I also don't think necessarily it's any more terrifying than seeing, say, "Dora the Explorer in Live Action"... But, hey, that's me.

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So any suggestions for other "on ice" shows that should never, ever make the cut? Or do you recall seeing a show you thought was almost too bad to believe? I'd love hearing about it!

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