... aka: Patrick 2
... aka: Patrick Is Still Alive
... aka: Patrick lebt! (Patrick Lives)
... aka: Patrick Lives Again!
... aka: Patrick Still Lives
Directed by:
Mario Landi
Richard Franklin's PATRICK (1978) was a slow, serious and fairly restrained thriller inspired by Hitchcock, which was able to play U. S. theaters with a PG rating after just a few snips of brief nudity. This unsanctioned, not-really-a-sequel follow-up hilariously goes in the exact opposite direction... by being about as sexed-up, gory and sleazy as humanly possible! Forget being edited down for a PG, this would of had to have been extensively re-edited to qualify for an R back in 1980. Alas, no one even bothered trying. This bypassed U. S. theaters altogether, sat out the entire VHS era and was not officially released here until 2003 when Shriek Show finally put it out on DVD. Due to its lack of availability in English-speaking countries for decades (it apparently wasn't released in Australia, Canada or the UK either), an English-language audio track was never recorded for this title.
As far as its sequel status is concerned, the events of the original are mostly ignored and this simply carts over the coma patient character, the telekinesis angle and some other ideas (Patrick falling in love with one of the females, using a typewriter to communicate...) The most burning question of all is how these filmmakers managed to get away with making something like this and promoting it as a sequel without getting sued into oblivion!
After their car breaks down, Dr. Herschel (Sacha Pitoëff, who was in Argento's INFERNO the same year) and his son Patrick (Gianni Dei) are forced to wait for help on the side of the road. A blue van approaches. Instead of pulling over to assist them, the driver flings a glass bottle out of the window that hits Patrick square in the face! He's taken to the hospital where a doctor is able to reconstruct his face but not do anything about the fact Patrick has fallen into a deep coma.
Not long after, five guests arrive at the remote Herschel Wellness Resort for, presumably, a little rest and relaxation. It's off season so they, along with a small staff, are the only ones there... unless you count a trio of naked prisoners kept on life support in a green-lit secret room, but we're getting ahead of ourselves here. As for the five guests, there's Lyndon Croft (Franco Silva), an uptight member of Parliament, his much younger trophy wife Cheryl (Carmen Russo), former champion swimmer Davis (Paolo Giusti), bitchy, alcoholic nympho Stella Randolph (Mariangela Giordano) and shady, mustachioed Peter Suniak (John Benedy).
All five of the guest have received an anonymous letter insisting they come. Well, blackmailing them into coming there is more accurate. Since all five are now part of the elite, they don't want their dirty little secrets exposed. As for the politician and his wife, she seduced and then slept with just the right people to get Lyndon into the House of Lords. Davis, the son of a wealthy insurance company president, got drunk one night and accidentally killed three people in a car accident but then fled the scene. Stella was a streetwalker (a hard habit to break, as we will see!) and Peter was a thief and drug dealer.
The most memorable character here is undoubtedly Stella. She nonchalantly sunbathes topless in front of everyone, unsuccessfully tries to seduce nearly every man in the cast and starts laying into the other guest during dinner after sucking down a pint of J&B Whiskey (who must have co-sponsored this film since it's present in every other scene). Wearing just an open robe and sheer panties, Stella stumbles into the dining room, calls one guy a pig and then, when the politician's wife tells her to cut it out, replies, "We all know you let yourself be slammed like a cow by a bull to help your husband's career!" That leads to a catfight where the wife shrieks, "Get away from me before I catch syphilis from you!" After getting rejected by the dealer ("The drugs turned you into a faggot!"), Stella then tries to crawl into another uninterested guy's bed but is called "gorilla garbage" (?), gets beaten up (!) and is then thrown out of the room!
Giordano, who has the unenviable task of trying to bring this degrading role to life, is easily the most interesting person in the cast. The actress started her film career in her teens and appeared in tamer fair like peplum and spaghetti westerns for decades. Hitting her forties, she married a producer by the name of Gabriele Cristano, who first cast her as a nun in the possession / sexploitation film MALABIMBA (1979), which Giordano claimed was the first film she ever did nudity in. She repeated course in every other film she did for Cristano and, in this one, goes through most of her scenes with little to no clothing on! However, to her credit, Giordano tries her best to imbue this otherwise cartoonishly over-the-top character with some pathos / pitiable qualities. Most of the others don't even really appear to be trying.
While the hateful and obnoxious characters are doing their thing, Dr. Herschel and a few of his assistants are experimenting with unwitting subjects in an off-limits wing of the clinic, presumably in an effort to help the comatose Patrick. Patrick is kept in a separate purple-lit room and, like in the original, starts using his telekinetic powers to lash out at the guests. There's a mild revenge plot going on here, with the doctor having lured these people there because he suspects one of them is responsible for injuring Patrick but none of it really makes much sense. We also never really learn who did it, or if any of these people did it. It's all just a flimsy excuse to justify the real reason the film was made.
All four female cast members get naked and get naked a lot. Aside from Giordano and the exceptionally voluptuous Russo, there's blonde Andrea Belfiore (billed as "Anna Veneziano"), who, in a convoluted bit of plotting, is another suspect in the bottle-hit-and-run yet has been newly hired there as a secretary. In her short time there she manages to strike the fancy of Patrick and, during one especially gratuitous scene, gets hypnotized and does some beyond-R-rated masturbation on a couch. Another unknown and uncredited actress plays a maid named Meg, who seems to be having a sexual relationship with two German Shepherds (!) and is eventually devoured by the beasts while in the nude. They also throw in a bit of full frontal made nudity.
In addition to the constant nudity there's plenty of unconvincing though gruesome effects. Death is caused by electrocution and toxic fumes, getting boiled alive in a swimming pool, decapitation by power window and a hook through the throat / hanging. The most memorably tasteless bit is Giordano's demise though, which finds a poker being forced into her panty hamster, through her body and then out her mouth.
Subtle it is not, yet, in a strange way, this extremely mean-spirited and extremely dumb film is actually a more successful offering than the original simply because it knows it's nothing but sleazy, exploitative trash and goes beyond the call of duty to deliver just that! Even though I recognize that Franklin's film is by far the better made / acted / directed / produced of the two, truth be told, this is a lot more entertaining and I'd rather watch it again if given a choice between the two.
★★1/2
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