Patrick

Hey, show of hands: Who here is seriously creeped out by hospitals? I see a lot of hands coming up. Uh-huh, that's right. I'm inside the monitor, watching you all. If you don't like hospitals but you like a good horror movie, you should check out Patrick. You should also probably check it out if you do like hospitals, because it's set in a hospital, so you'll totally get to see it a lot.

Stupid intro paragraph aside (sorry, everyone), Patrick is a 1978 movie by Australian director Richard Franklin, about a young nurse who is terrorized by a comatose patient with psychokinetic powers. I first heard of it when it was featured on an excellent documentary called "Not Quite Hollywood", all about the lawless days of Australian exploitation movies in the 70's and 80's.

The movie opens with Patrick, a disturbed young man, who, after having to listen to his mom have sex with a guy in the next room, murders her and her lover. We don't see what happens next, though, it jumps forward in time after that. We'll get back to Patrick in a minute.

Three years later, a young nurse named Kathy is being hired at a hospital. The stern matron gives a long speech about all the weirdos and perverts they come across when hiring hospital orderlies. Kathy's main assignment will be tending to Patrick, who is now lying in a coma, completely brain dead. The one thing he can do is spit, as an involuntary response. The doctor in charge there is keeping his body alive basically to study him. The matron believes he should be allowed to die.

As Kathy spends time in Patrick's room, she begins to notice that he appears to be responding to her. She begins asking him questions and he responds, by spitting once for yes and twice for no. He then begins typing responses through her on the typewriter she fills out paperwork with. Of course, nobody believes Kathy.

Things get creepier when Patrick starts inserting himself in her home and social life. He can't stand to see her around other men, and jealously tries to drown Brian, a doctor she's talking to about his psychokinesis. He also ransacks her home to prevent her from sleeping with him. She thinks her husband (they're separated) is responsible. They start talking again, and Patrick doesn't like that either. Kathy only belongs to him.

Hey, this movie is pretty great! It's unsettling and weird, and kind of gets under your skin. The spooky hospital setting certainly helps with that, with the disciplinarian matron, an old man with dementia walking around all the time, and this cynical doctor. The premise is pretty original, though similar to a ghost story. Director Richard Franklin has a great knack for building suspense. I would like to watch more of his movies, especially Road Games.

Though he doesn't utter a word, and seldom moves, Robert Thompson, who plays Patrick, steals the entire movie. His big creepy eyes just stare off into the distance, and as much as you look into them, you can't really tell if there's anything there or not. The spitting is a particularly weird touch. Quentin Tarantino actually took that little detail and used it in Kill Bill.

Patrick isn't a very well known horror movie stateside, but I gather it was very successful in Australia. I strongly recommend it for the Halloween season. Good stuff!

The Outlaw Josey Wales

Wow, looking back at my reviews, it's been a long time since I've done a Western. Unless you count Cowboys and Aliens, I guess, and that movie is maybe best left forgotten. Well, seeing as I'm now a Texan, it's about time I saw Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales.

The Outlaw Josey Wales is about a simple farmer, whose family is murdered by a bunch of out-of-control jerks who happen to be fighting on the side of The Union. I don't know my Civil War too well, but I got the sense that they were just mercenary types, not actual uniformed enlisted men. Josey is found brooding and grieving at his son's grave by another group of men who are on the trail of those guys. He winds up joining them and fighting as a mercenary type on the Confederate side.

When the war ends, his group is persuaded by their leader to go turn in their arms to a senator and swear an oath to the Union. Everybody goes but Josey, whose war is not yet over. When the group is betrayed and gunned down, Josey goes crackers on them and mows them down with a Gatling gun. He manages to escape with his own life and that of a badly wounded kid that used to ride with him. There's a huge price on his head now and everybody and their mother is after him.

As the movie progresses, Josey Wales stays one step ahead of his pursuers, outsmarting them when he can and shooting them when he can't. He finds allies on his way, and forms a new family of sorts. Eventually it all comes to a head in a big awesome shootout.

Clint Eastwood is doing his tough guy thing, which we all know he's the best at. He's not quite The Man with No Name, since we know his story from the start, but he's almost as iconic in this role. He chews tobacco through the whole movie, which in and of itself is disgusting, but when you add to it the constant spitting, it's doubly so. And then add to it that he's always aiming his spit at things. You know, whatever he can aim at: scorpions, dogs, dead guy's heads, live guy's heads, horses, shoes, cattle. The one thing he never aims it at is a spittoon. If anybody needs any gift ideas for Josey Wales, let me know.

The supporting cast is pretty great. Josey's "family" consists of an Indian girl he rescues from being raped at a trading post, a clever old Cherokee man who acts as his foil, and an old lady coming down from the north with her granddaughter, who he rescues after their wagon train gets raided. I liked the old Cherokee man, he got a lot of the best lines.

So The Outlaw Josey Wales was another very good western revenge flick. I still prefer the heightened reality and stylization of the Sergio Leone films, while Eastwood's directing style is much more simple; clear and straightforward storytelling. Josey Wales definitely has better dialogue than the Leone films, since it wasn't all worked out after the fact in overdubbing. I could have done with less spitting on things, but I bet that was pretty historically accurate. A lot of spit in the old west and not nearly enough spittoons. It was a new frontier.