5. Patrick Still Lives (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkMcgeF9kfQ So intent were the Italians on ripping off other pictures that they even swooped on 1978s Patrick, which was neither very good nor a sizeable hit. A legit remake, starring Charles Dance and Sharni Vinson, appeared in 2013. Filling the movie with gratuitous nudity and fake gore, director Mario Landi gives us one of most outrageous clones that ever met a projector bulb. In this version, Patrick is comatose following an accident and has (for reasons unexplained) developed psychic powers, which his mad scientist father uses to punish those he holds responsible for his boys condition. Bodies are boiled alive in swimming pools, decapitated by car windows and graphically violated by a flying poker, but what really startles is Landis determined pursuit of the lowest common denominator. In one scene, a woman discovers a body hanging from a hook and, instead of raising the alarm, stops by a fountain to splash water on herself, causing her negligee to turn transparent.
Ian Watson
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
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