Ten Statements About....PATRICK (1978)

He's got...Marty Feldman eyes (and one Hell of a unibrow)...

1) While it’s obvious that this is notorious Australian producer Anthony Ginnane’s rip-off of Carrie, let’s give screenwriter Everett DeRoche and director Richard Franklin an A for effort in doing their best to make it something unique in and of itself without losing sight of what they’re supposed to be doing.

2) Boy, are all the guys in this film dicks.  Whether we’re talking the husband who tries to play rape Susan Penhaligon’s Kathy or the Cosplay Jim Carrey boyfriend who brags about their sex life to a cop or the doctor who casually kills a frog to make a point, they’re an unpleasant assortment of characters.

3) The spitting angle is unintentionally silly, and is thankfully downplayed when Kathy unintentionally speaks one of the film’s funnier lines.  Besides, the angle where Robert Thompson’s Patrick communicates with Kathy via the electric typewriter is way creepier.

4) While I don’t think it’s as much of a liability as in other horror films, this is a very long, very slow moving film.  Franklin seems to be more interested in creating atmosphere than moving the story along, resulting in some grinding of the plot.  If it lost roughly five to ten minutes, it might be improved.

Somebody used that Real Doll a bit too hard....

5) ...and my nominee for what could be lost are those involving Rod Mullinar’s Ed being stuck in an elevator.  It happens suddenly at the beginning of the second act, and we’re frequently treated to cutaways of him sitting around in this elevator with his hands bandaged thanks to a previous burn scene.  Those scenes take up what seems to be an awful lot of time in that third act, and could be cut as many of the scenes around them conveys the problem Kathy faces in locating Ed.

6) It’s a little thing, but those weird, almost comical sound effects that sometime accompany the manifestation of Patrick’s powers distract from the film as a whole.  The sound effect accompanying Robert Helpmann’s Dr. Roget trying to take an axe to the door of Patrick’s room is unintentionally in its ‘boingcrackle’ hilarity.

7) Keeping in mind that Franklin probably never expected his film to be viewed in a high definition format, some of the practical effects just don’t hold up.  There’s a dummy in particular, the after effects of an electrocution, that looks like, well, a not very convincing replica of the woman who is electrocuted.

8) I really have to wonder how much of Patrick is Robert Thompson, and if there was a dummy involved.  Thompson is only required to move/react for maybe two minutes and the rest of it is Patrick lying in bed literally staring into space.  If that performance is all Thompson, it is impressive.

Don't try to win a staring contest with Patrick...

9)  Okay, I get that Penhaligon was English, and Ginnane and Franklin tried to make the film sound less Australian for international markets....but she sounded Australian, which made the whole ‘first time working in this country’ thing make no sense.

10) While I’m sure Franklin intended the electrocution death to be the big scare, the one moment that made me jump was much more subtle, involving Dr. Roget and a frog.

Overall...a fairly interesting film (and a historically important one given its place in Ozploitation history and the career of Franklin) that may be deliberate in its pace but does manage to entertain.