Patrick Still Lives Uncut Edition 2003 Horror Movie Review

Well I had heard this was a pretty sleazy film and it’s all true, but it’s also very daft and not at all believable. A young man gets attacked by an unseen assailant and spends the rest of the film in a coma. From his bed he uses telekinesis to murder a group of people, all of whom have come to visit a luxury guest house in answer to a mysterious letter.


The script is sparse to the point of being nonsensical - whoever wrote the screenplay must have simply jotted down the various death scenes and then given the characters various random things to do and talk about to fill in all the gaps. The death scenes are clearly where the money went anyway, and they are pretty severe, although maybe they just seem that way because the rest of the movie is so dull. If you have heard of this film at all, it is undoubtedly by way of it’s most famous scene in which a nearly-naked woman is impaled by a poker that goes right through her, entering between her open legs and emerging through her mouth. Its very graphically filmed, and even though it’s not realistic in the slightest, the overall effect is suitably disgusting. But watch out also for the other deaths, by a hook through the neck, gassing, drowning in boiling water, and a car window decapitation that’s actually pretty nifty. The other thing this movie really delivers is a huge amount of nudity, mostly female of course, and some of it is very explicit.


So if you like lots of naked female flesh and a few crazy murder scenes, you could be very happy with this. What you won’t get, though, is any decent story, acting or atmosphere. The concentration is so blatantly on keeping the female cast members naked that it becomes almost farcical, as every single one of the ladies (guests and house staff alike) spends half her screen time falling out of her clothes or not even bothering to put any on, which might sound titillating, but it starts to look ludicrous after the third or fourth time, and it isn’t even very attractively filmed. A real rushed job. I can’t think of many films that truly live up to the tag of “exploitation” as much as this one does.