Patrick Still Lives! (1980)

Title: Patrick Still Lives! a.k.a. Patrick Vive Ancora (1980)

Director: Mario Landi

Review:

The oiriginal Patrick (1978) is an Australian horror film about a comatose hospital patient with Telekinetic powers. A doctor constantly performs a series of experiments on him to see what makes his telekinetic powers tick. Meanwhile, Patrick has plans of his own, like falling in love with his lovely nurse! You see, his comatose state doesn’t stop him from getting the hots for her. So, Patrick tries to constantly contact her by typing messages on her typewriter. Problem is that while she accepts that Patrick is contacting her through the typewriter, no one believes her. Patrick ends up getting dangerously jealous of her, in a psychotic sort of way and there's nothing more dangerous than a psychotic telekinetic! Patrick ends up using his telekinetic powers to kill everyone who gets between him and his nurse. It was an interesting horror film, nothing mind blowing, but I remember enjoying it. The director Richard Franklin went on to make bigger and better movies, like Psycho II (1983). He had written a sequel for this film called Patrick II: The Man Who Wasn’t There, which had something to do with a religious cult who finds Patrick’s dead body and brings it back to life. And interesting premise, unfortunately this proposed sequel was never made. It ended up lost in development hell. Still, this didn’t stop the Italians from making their own indirect sequel to Patrick called Patrick Still Lives! How was this trashy Italian flick? 

A tragic accident turns Patrick into a paraplegic telekinetic!

Nothing connects this film to the last. This is an entirely different Patrick only this time, the story develops in Italy for some reason. The story starts out with Patrick and his dad having a road side accident. While they are on the side of the road, a car passes by and someone from the car hurls a bottle out their window, the bottle smashes on Patrick’s face! Patrick ends up comatose after this accident. Fast forward a couple of years later, and Patrick’s dad is the owner of a hotel/spa. He has invited five strangers to stay at his home. But for what dark purpose? Will Patrick ever get revenge over those who left him comatose?

So basically, this film is also about a bedridden telekinetic who kills people with the power of his mind. That’s the basic premise of the original, and this one follows the same basic premise, only with a few differences here and there. For example, on this film Patrick feeds off the negative energy coming from three criminals to augment his telekinetic powers and execute his revenge. While the first Patrick film took place in a more believable scenario, this Italian rip off goes into cheesy territory. Patrick’s dad keeps Patrick locked up in a special room of his hotel, a room that looks like some cheesy laboratory in a bad sci-fi movie from the 50’s. Complete with panels of useless blinking lights and levers.

Certain things make this movie hilarious. First of all, it’s so freaking sleazy. By that I mean that the movie wastes no time in getting its actresses naked. I’m serious here! Every single actress in this movie will be naked at some point, not just showing their boobs either, these girls go full frontal on this movie! The movie uses any excuse it can to get its actresses to have a cat fight and rip their clothes off during the whole process. It has Patrick using his telekinetic abilities to perform what can only be described as a 'vagina impalement death' that is hilarious because the character that is impaled sees this floating metal poker coming for her genitals and she just sits there waiting for it to happen. It felt like a death sequence in a Lucio Fulci movie. You know how Fulci would drag the hell out of a death scene? Same with the impalement scene on this one. I guess the director wanted to torture his audience, but the scene comes off as funny instead because the girl simply freezes and lets her self get impaled. This type of scene goes in accordance with Italian Horror Film Rule #576: Make as little sense as possible!

But when we really get down to it, this movie was just an excuse to show naked girls. For example, there is one scene where a character walks into a room and there’s this gorgeous Italian lady sleeping in her bed entirely naked! Not only that, she starts moaning! She looked great and all, but I tried looking for some meaning to the scene, and I found none because this scene was a text book example of what a gratuitous nudity scene is all about. Still not convinced? Then you should see a scene in which Patrick falls in love with his fathers smoking hot secretary and manages to get her to do a strip dance for him! And she ends the dance by playing with her self! As you can see, this movie is more about the sleaze than about Patrick and his revenge. At least the film manages to squeeze in a couple of cheesy death sequences in the middle of all the tits and ass.

Sadly, the telekinetic side of the story is delivered very poorly. One scene has Patrick conjuring up a wind storm making the trees and bushes move around a lot. Funny part is that you could tell the trees and bushes were being moved by people off camera and not by the wind! That’s right folks; there was not enough budget to rent an industrial size fan to get that scene right. Patrick makes the pool water boil! Even funnier is the fact that every time Patrick uses his telekinetic powers, the screen turns fluorescent green and Patrick’s eyes appear superimposed on the screen! It’s cheesy to the max!

So basically, Patrick Still Lives is just a cheesy Italian rip-off wannabe. But as many of you out there know, there is a certain level of enjoyment to be had with this kind of movie simply because of how sleazy and bad it is. You won’t believe some of the lines these characters spew. One scene has a doctor examining a death victim and he actually says “I believe his death was due to fatality”. This movie follows all the rules of a bad Italian Horror Film: Lots of nonsensical events, lots of tits and ass, lots of cheesy deaths filled with cartoon gore and blood, and of course a poorly written script that could not have taken long to write. A fun movie simply because it’s so sleazy and bad.

Rating: 1 1/2 of 5