Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		1.5

Patrick Still Lives Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 12, 2021

Patrick Still Lives is one of those films where you understandably may not have even one clue as to what’s going on at times, but where women just trotting around a massive estate without any tops on may distract you long enough so that you won’t really care. It may be salient to note that I frankly didn’t even remember I had reviewed Severin Films’ now long ago release of the 1978 Australian horror feature Patrick until I started doing background research for writing this review, which is for a film which is an “unauthorized” sequel that really bears no connection to the first film other than it, too, features a patient named Patrick (played here by Gianni Dei) who is in a coma but who still has a “particular set of skills” that allow him to control things via telekinesis, which in turn leads to a series of pretty spectacularly graphic killings. My Patrick Blu-ray review gets into some of the connections between that film, its director Richard Franklin, and the venerable Hitchcock masterpiece Psycho, but suffice it to say there are absolutely no connections to any iconic films in Patrick Still Lives, and, as noted above, there’s virtually no connection to Patrick. Instead this film begins with a very brief vignette showing Patrick and his father Dr. Herschel (Sacha Pitoëff) stranded by the side of the road after their car has broken down. Dr. Herschel says they’ll just have to wait for someone to drive by who can offer help, and then just like clockwork, a car does appear, but instead of helping, they throw something at Patrick. I initially was not quite sure what it was supposed to be — I thought for a moment it might have been acid in a bottle, since his entire face is suddenly bloody and he's clawing at his eyes, but since Patrick’s face is unscarred later, I guess maybe it was just the blunt bottle that did the "damage". Patrick ends up in a coma and is kept in a kind of secret lair by Dr. Herschel. One of the first questions which may arise in more inquiring minds is what the three other comatose people in a kind of anteroom are doing, but luckily (?), one of them is a topless woman (albeit of the more aged variety than is otherwise seen in the film), so maybe there will be enough distraction there to keep the wondering to a minimum.

It's almost silly to go into any real plot dynamics, though there are actual kind of hilarious stabs (no pun intended, considering one of the film's more gruesome kill scenes) at character beats when a gaggle of people ostensibly involved in Patrick's current vegetative state are coerced into coming to the estate where one assumes Patrick is being "cared for". There are couples who don't like each other, various personal dramas that are fleetingly referred to, and a whole blackmail angle that is quickly introduced and then just as quickly discarded. Through it all, an almost delightful aspect is that director Mario Landi never met a breast he didn't like, and so the women just traipse around without tops on or, in one case, with a bra stretched below breasts, which only further accentuates them.

My favorite moment in this regard actually has to do with a kill scene of one of the male characters, who is pretty much boiled alive while swimming in the estate's pool. And then virtually skipping through the nearby garden a topless woman arrives at his steaming corpse and just begins omitting ear splitting screams. About as hilariously as anything, during the next scene, which has the whole coterie of characters gathered around the corpse, she's put her bikini top back on.

Without getting too graphically into detail, the allusion above to stabbing has to do with what is probably the film's most notorious scene, which does involve impalement of female genitalia. It's pretty gruesomely filmed and it's of course completely shocking, but it's just as obviously there for no other reason than to promote shock. The film has an unabashedly sleazy style that has its own diehard adherents, and those folks will probably find enough nudity and gore here to satisfy them.

Patrick Still Lives Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Patrick Still Lives is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. The presentation begins with the following brief disclaimer (which can also be seen in screenshot 19):

The following scan of Patrick Still Lives is from the original 16mm camera negative. There is some discoloration in some scenes due to damage in the element but this hopefully not mar your enjoyment of this audacious filmic experience.

The back cover of this release further discloses that the scan was in 2K. While there is some rather minor but noticeable fluctuation in color temperature, especially in the first few minutes of the film, on the whole the palette here is really rather nicely suffused. Both the garish greens of the weird anteroom with the three other comatose patients as well as later purple lit moments and a lot of the outdoor material pop surprisingly well, given the overall lo-fi ambience of the film. There is some minor damage to be spotted along the way, and a few scenes, notably some of the darkest material, can verge on a noisy quality. Grain is understandably thick a lot of the time and frequently has a yellowish cast. My score is 3.75.

Patrick Still Lives Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Patrick Still Lives features a nice sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono track in the original Italian, with optional English subtitles. This is another looped film where "sync can be loose", as they say, but in terms of fidelity, things are really rather spry sounding, beginning with Berto Pisano's theme, which sounds like a harpsichord version of Mike Oldfield's iconic "Tubular Bells" from The Exorcist. Some of the other cues are decidedly more (supposedly) funky, but sound fine. Dialogue (such as it is) is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout and there are no major signs of age related wear and tear.

Patrick Still Lives Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• C'est la vie (HD; 11:12) is a really appealing interview with Gianni Dei, who sadly passed away in October of 2020. Dei details some of his early roles (when he was still a teenager), and the featurette has a kind of cool side by side presentational style where little snippets from those films are shown (without soundtracks, while Dei continues to speak). He talks about bad choices he made, his unexpected success as a singer, and a "comeback" property that as of the shooting of the interview hadn't yet seen the light of day. This might have arguably been better called È la vita, since Dei speaks in Italian, with optional English subtitles.


• Trailer (HD; 2:48)

Patrick Still Lives Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It would seem that those involved with the original Patrick evidently couldn't have cared less about this enterprise, given that I didn't find any record of controversy and certainly no legal action based on an inappropriate purloining of an idea and even a titular character name. The original Patrick at least had a bit of subtext going for it, and Franklin's long love for Hitchcock at least intermittently shone through, but this film has little to recommend it other than some kind of funny toplessness and a few extremely graphic moments of supposed genital mutilation. Technical merits are generally solid, and the interview with Dei is fun, for those who are considering a purchase.