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?
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.