PATRICK STILL LIVES (1980)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 93 Minutes
Audio: Italian DTS-HD MA mono with English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)
Director: Mario Landi
Cast: Sacha Pitoëff, Gianni Dei, Mariangela Giordano
Patrick Still Lives (1980) comes from the combined Italian born minds of producer of Burial Ground, the screenwriter of Nightmare City and the director of Giallo In Venice... need I say more? Following the success of ozploitation coma-shocker Patrick (1978) this trio of lucre-minded exploitation filmmakers decided to make an unsolicited and super-unofficial sequel to that film, taking the general premise and arguably improving upon it with generous amounts of sleaze and gore. It all begins with the uni-browed Dr. Herschel (Sacha Pitoëff, Inferno) and his son Patrick (Gianni Dei, Giallo In Venice) stranded on the side of the road while standing next to their broke down car. As they are joking around a short passenger bus drives by and one of the passengers tosses a beer bottle out of the window, striking Patrick so hard in the face and with such force that in not only seemingly requires reconstructive surgery but knocks him straight into an irreversible coma.
A few years later Patrick is being kept in a private green-lit ward at his father's health spa, a luxurious place with an in-ground pool and sprawling grass-covered grounds. On this day Dr. Herschel is welcoming five very special guests for a weekend stay. Among them we have lothario David (Paolo Giusti, Girls Will Be Girls), stuffy politician Lyndon (Franco Silva, Spasmo) and his hot-stuff wife Cheryl (Carmen Russo, The Porno Killers), a machismo-oozing mustached-man named Peter (John Benedy, Kill Django... Kill First) and his sex-hungry wife Stella (Maria Angela Giordano, The Sect), all of whom seem rather seedy and shady right from the start.
We discover that Dr. Herschel is a tiny bit demented and has been wanting revenge on the person or persons who threw that bottle at his son Patrick on that fateful day. He's been playing the long-game with his vengeance plans, having spent years tracking down the occupants of that particular bus on that particular day, and after finding them he has invited them all for a complimentary stay at his health spa. However, it is not he who will taking the revenge, no sir, it seems that over the past few years Patrick, with his father's assistance, has been able to hone newfound telekinetic
powers while in the wide-eyed coma. These telekinetic powers are seemingly fueled by siphoning off the mental power of three other comatose patients that his father keeps with him. This part is never quite explained but I inferred that this is what must be happening, otherwise why would his father keep three comatose patients there with him in a private spa, not that any of this needs to make sense to enjoy it, but it made me wonder.
The whole idea of five strangers being summoned to a luxury spa and then being killed off one by one has a very Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None vibe about it, and that's very much how it plays out, with scandalous secrets are revealed, one of the men getting slap-happy with the women, and some girl-on-girl cat-fighting on the dining-room floor. Being that this is an Italian exploitation flick the film is stuffed with loads of gratuitous nudity and some nicely graphic deaths, with Patrick handing out his mental-revenge in a myriad of gruesome ways.
We also get a b-story involving Dr. Herschel's sexpot secretary Lydia (Andrea Belfiore, Blow Job) who overtime has caught the attention of the comatose Patrick, it seems that not even a coma can prohibit him from noticing what a hottie she is. Patrick has the ability to control and influence Lydia against her will, forcing her to perform nude stripteases for him, which is as much for our pleasure as it is his.
Deaths in the film come by way of being boiled alive in a swimming pool, a decapitation by car power window, a pair of frenzied German Shephard's eating a woman alive, a meat-hook through the neck, and of course the most infamous death of the film, that of a woman being skewered by a telekinetically animated fire poker, entering her through her vagina straight up through her mouth, and this is the uncut graphic version of the film, so you see it all! This distasteful kill is a real stomach-churner, it being painfully drawn out with the woman shrieking like the wooden splinter in the eye of Fulci's Zombie and as graphic as the skewering from Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, only on budget that is clearly a fraction of either of those flicks.
The atrocious dialogue is in Italian which I do not speak, so I was relying on the subtitles for this one, and from what I could tell the acting across the board is utter shite, from the overwrought screams of anguish at the start of the film when Patrick takes a bottle to the face to the way pretty much everyone stares blankly at Patrick's floating disembodied eyes that show up when he flexes his mental-muscle, it's all bad, but for us lovers of stinky cinema-fromage it also so-so good. Fear not though, this is not the sort of fright flick that needs thespian acting chops to sell it, all we need are warm, preferably nude, bodies marching towards gruesome death, and we get plenty of all of that.
The special effects are of the low-budget variety but still fun for lovers of cheap practical gore. Those aforementioned floating eyeballs are as silly as they sound, and when they show up the whole screen turns green-tinted, replicating the green lighting of the ward where Patrick is kept. As for the actual gore we get a cool torso that's been boiled with the skin blistered and falling off, and a cool-looking severed head, and there's plenty of fake blood to accompany the vaginal skewering and the meat-hook to the neck. The gore is the highlight of the film, the story not so much, but thankfully we get enough nudity and gore to keep our eyes busy our brains turned off.
Patrick Still Lives (1980) is a silly bit of Italian schlock cinema that goes well above and far beyond the Italian tradition of knocking-off a successful movie and making a sequel to it, which was not all that unusual for this era of Italian cinema, but they way they go at it with so much gusto makes for an entertaining watch.
Audio/Video: Patrick Still Lives (180) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Severin Films sourced from a new 2K scan of the 16mm OCN. It's a solid upgrade over the nearly 20-year old Media Blasters DVD, presented in 1080p HD and framed in 1.66:1 widescreen. The image is grainy which is not surprising given that the source element is 16mm, but it's uniform and well-managed throughout if a bit chunky. There some noticeable damage to the elements throughout in addition to some fading and flicker, but this is still a solid upgrade and went beyond what I was expecting. Audio comes by way of Italian DTS-HD MA mono with optional English subtitles, t is unremarkable but does the job, dialogue is presented free of hiss and distortion, and the score from Berto Pisano (Strip Nude for Your Killer) alternates between sickening synths and prog rock that approximates a Goblin score sounded good.
Extras are a bit thin for this one, we get the theatrical trailer plus an 11-minute interview with comatose star Gianni Dei, the actor getting into the entirety of his career, starting off because he was a good dancer, in films like La Cuccagni, Giallo In Venice, Le Sepicenni, Manhattan Gigolo, C'E' Una Certi Giuliana, Last Round and Madame Bovary with Edwidge Fenech (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh). He says he does remember much about Patrick Still Lives aside the floating eyeballs and working with legendary French actor Sacha Pitoëff who played his father. He says he made three films with director Mario Landi , and says he once missed out on the opportunity to feature in a Sidney Lumet film because he didn;t like where his name was to be featured on the movie poster. He wraps up describing how he left the business after he found out their were hardcore inserts added to a flick he had made, which made it look like he was doing hardcore, and how he came back into the film business years later to play a killer fashion designer in Il Grande Gioco, which is yet to be released, and his late music career. It's a solid interview that covers a lot of ground, though not a lot of it has anything to do with this film, which is unfortunate, but he at least makes the Patrick-eyes during the credits of the featurette!
The single-disc release comes housed in a black keepcase with a reversible wrap featuring alternate artworks, looking to be the original theatrical poster and a home video release artwork, the disc itself featuring an excerpt of Patrick's eyes from the movie poster.
Reversible Artwork Option
Special Features:
- C'est la Vie – Interview with Actor Gianni Dei (11 min)
- Trailer (3 min)
- Reversible Sleeve of Artwork
Patrick Still Lives (1980) gets a solid HD upgrade from Severin Films who seem to have a nose for this sort of entertaining Italian trash cinema, like a cinema-loving pig digging through shit to get to the trashy truffle beneath. The original Patrick is a fun enough flick, tastefully directed by Richard Franklin (Psycho II, Road Games), but it lacked nudity and gore and this unofficial sequels comes through with plenty of both, highly recommended for fans of Italian cinema cheese and gore.
More Screenshots from the Severin Blu-ray:
