Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

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

Shock Treatment

Shock Treatment

The basic principle of a horror film is to shock the audience. The doctors treat the comatose Patrick with electric shocks. In a shot as clever and effective as anything in Psycho or Carrie, overhead tram lines spark in the foreground as Kathy crosses the road towards the clinic (a distinctive looking building that rings a few bells) in the background. 'Do I shock you?' the Matron asks Kathy, having introduced a theme of sexual perversion consonant with the twisted mother-figures in the Hitchcock/De Palma films, and thereby, in accordance with the intuitive logic of the rules of the genre, condemning herself to an ugly fate.

But Kathy Jacquard, as played (and played very well) by English actress Susan Penhaligon (you may remember her as the super-bitch daughter in TV's Bouquet of Barbed Wire), does not shock easily—in any sense of the word. Here we find an indication of the other major strength of this film. Its script (by Everett de Roche) gives us round, believable and independently active characters, seen either in totally credibly situations, or reacting credibly in the face of extraordinary circumstances.

There's also a very appealing hard edge to the dialogue and to the plot's surrounding details. Patients at the clinic, for instance, do wet themselves and to get excretions; a man stuck in an elevator does have to excrete somewhere, etc. You could point to this as being distinctly Australian. That's possibly true—it's certainly a feature usually absent in the American product. And that's a shame, because it's a virtue that lends the story added weight by making it more 'real'.

In comparing Patrick to Psycho and Carrie, I have intended the highest form of praise—these latter two being films I admire to an almost ridiculous extent. In terms of style, Patrick is perhaps-closer to Psycho, at least inasmuch as it is a less sensuous experience than Carrie—none of the long, fluid crane shots, or the soft focus or slow motion. This is not to say that Patrick is not visually beguiling in its own right. Cinematography (by Donald McAlpine) and art direction combine beautifully to give an effect, particularly noticeable in the opening sequence, rather as if a killer has been let loose in Interiors.

And so the Australian film industry is well and truly in full stride. With Patrick, it has already given us a genre classic. And at the same time, a lesson for film-makers here in New Zealand. In the rank garden of public approval it is the coarse and hardy weed that will thrive, not the effete artistic bloom that wilts at the first signs of a frost. Only when a good crop of noxious weeds has been established can they be coaxed into flower with any success. Entertainment into art.

For now, horror and art buffs alike will just have to wait patiently for the imminent advent of John Carpenter's Hallowe'en, which promises great things. In the meantime though, I'll go to see Patrick again.

Paul Hagan.

The freight brake man's work, when the weather was good offered many pleasant interludes.