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

Film — Shocks with Style!

page 11

Film

Shocks with Style!

[unclear: Patrick]

[unclear: an] he love?' gasps the publicity. [unclear: an] he kill?' [unclear: ly] Kathy knows...

[unclear: n't] be put off by this second-rate [unclear: on]. Given the added information that [unclear: athy] in question is a nurse in a private somewhere in Australia, you'd expect [unclear: sort] of Mills & Boon-Police Story[unclear: d]. And how wrong you'd be.

[unclear: trick] is actually a fine film, a thriller [unclear: ted] with an intelligence and style that you by surprise I won't beat around bush: this film is based firmly [unclear: ycbo], via Carrie. There are, in Patrick [unclear: n] clear allusions on the screen and [unclear: dtrack] to both these films. But, as was [unclear: ase] with Carrie, the film is neither [unclear: ative] nor a cheap rip-off; in drawing [unclear: stinctive] elements of a previous film, a [unclear: riginal] has been produced.

[unclear: try] to be more specific. The film's [unclear: a] premise is that of Carrie: [unclear: hokineses], or the (potentially [unclear: errous]) ability to move objects by [unclear: al] effort. Around this central idea, [unclear: klin] had developed a similar structure [unclear: a]; fairly classical lines within the or/thriller genre: the opening trauma, steadily developing characterisation, rowing threat, the close calls and the [unclear: X]. And (here the inspiration comes [unclear: tly] from Carrie), the final sudden [unclear: ent] of shock outside the narrative [unclear: e]. Within this structure, a good film will [unclear: r] time to do a number of other things [unclear: es]. Psycho and Carrie are models. In [unclear: s] films, and in Patrick too, it is what [unclear: irector] does with the essential elements [unclear: asic] structure of the genre that marks [unclear: s] difference between film as [unclear: tainment] and film as art.

[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.

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.