EXCLUSIVE: 'Psycho' Star Anthony Perkins' Horror Film Director Son Reveals How Ghost of AIDS Victim Dad and Death of His Mum in 9/11 Left Him Feeling 'Cursed'

Movie maker Osgood Perkins says the deaths of his Psycho star dad from AIDS and his mum’s demise in 9/11 left him feeling cursed.

And the 51-year-old director said he channeled the appalling hurt he’s suffered over the years into his latest comedy-horror flick The Monkey, about a wind-up which orchestrates terrible deaths by banging its miniature snare drum, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

The film’s shock-and-gore tactics are the director’s way of dealing with the loss of his parents, the actor Anthony Perkins and Berry Berenson, a photographer and actress.

Perkins, who famously played Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1992, aged 60.

Osgood's mum Berenson was 53 when she boarded American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, 2001, after which the hijacked plane was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

He said of his new film: "I was like, 'Oh right, this story is about this thing that creates these obscene deaths, these really unthinkable, weird tragedies that come out of nowhere.'

"Well, I’ve experienced unthinkable, weird tragedies that come out of nowhere. I’m an expert at this. And whereas when they happened to me, I was certainly defeated by them, I’m an older person now, I’m a father. I wouldn’t have got to, 'Haha, I’m making a comedy about the fact that everybody dies' if I hadn’t also had many years of feeling cursed and heartbroken."

Until his late thirties, Anthony Perkins had relationships only with men, before opting to undergo conversion therapy.

He married Berenson in 1973, when she was three months pregnant with Osgood.

The director said: "I think my father was doing his best, existing in a realm of being hyper-visible, but also totally hidden."

He made the admission as he reflected on what he called the "deep cut" of growing up with an "internally turned" father.

"That polarity of existence couldn’t have been an easy thing. I think that his impermeability when it came to me… the older I get, the more understandable it is," he added.

"I don’t want to say 'forgivable' because there’s not even anything to forgive. But that longing for connection is something that doesn’t go away."

The absence of a father shapes the twin brothers in Perkins' new flick The Monkey, both played by Theo James (Divergent, The White Lotus). We meet them first as boys in the late 1990s, and then jump forward to the present day. In both timelines the brothers are haunted and taunted by the satanic toy monkey with its carnivorous grin – just like the one displayed by Perkins at the end of Psycho.