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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 20. August 27 1979

w Qualifications

[unclear: w] Qualifications

this point it may be necessary to call a If it were generally accepted by all [unclear: ested] Salient readers (all two of you)

Psycho is a work of an, and that Carrie [unclear: n] achievement of similar stature in [unclear: ame] field, is also a work of art—if [unclear: th] two facts were already accepted in [unclear: ple], then I could go on to make a case Patrick based on that acceptance But [unclear: usly], if I praise Patrick only in terms [unclear: ese] two earlier films—which is not just [unclear: im], as Franklin obviously made his with both of these as his starting [unclear: t]—if I do this, when readers have only [unclear: opinion] of Hitchcock and De Palma, got nowhere.

pause while I consider the problem. [unclear: o] I first do a rave about Psycho? That is, discuss it as far as I understand what is a very clever and rather complex film, open to a whole range of scholarly interpretations and every critical reaction from distaste to ecstasy? Do I then go into a shot-by-shot analysis of Carrie, with particular reference to its predecessor? And do I then attempt to describe what Franklin has taken from these films, what he's added of his own, and how these elements are synthesized?

Photo from the film 'Patrick' by Richard Franklin

I wonder if anybody's still reading...

I'll start again.

Unity of theme and motif. As good a place as any to start. Patrick has a very clever script. At the beginning of the film, Patrick kills his mother and her boyfriend. They're having a bath together, and Patrick lobs in the electric heater. A nasty shock for all concerned. The heater, by the way, is round—like the lamp and the pupils of Patrick's eyes.

Then it is three years later. Patrick has been in a coma ever since the 'accident', and Kathy's first job at the Roget clinic is to look after him. Pretty soon, she starts having boyfriend and ex-husband troubles. Of course, there's a reasonable explanation for all the things that happen, but Kathy and the audience begin to suspect something more sinister. Off the story goes, until it works itself to a conclusion, several dead bodies and audience screams later. And all the way, motifs of electricity and water dance a deadly tango, waiting for another moment of fatal union. Light bulbs, electric signs, mains switches, tram lines. Rain, dripping taps, swimming pools, intravenous drips.