- Year
- 1978
- Country
- Australia
- Runtime
- 112 min
- Director
- Richard Franklin
- Updated
- 9 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (47/100)
Patrick
A man in a coma does telekinesis. Better than that sentence implies.
A comatose young man with lethal telekinetic powers becomes obsessed with his nurse, and the film wrings genuine menace out of a villain who never moves or speaks. Richard Franklin, a Hitchcock devotee, directs it as a controlled psychological thriller rather than a gore piece.
The premise sounds ridiculous and the execution is anything but; the horror is entirely in what the motionless Patrick makes happen around him. It was a big international hit for the Ozploitation boom and spawned an Italian knock-off.
Smarter and more restrained than its logline suggests, and quietly influential.
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Written about
- Ozploitation: the Australian genre boom, 1971 to 1986
An adults-only certificate, a tax loophole, and a Melbourne doctor who knew what happens to bodies at speed. Australia's fifteen years of cheap, mean, brilliant genre film.
Filed alongside
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The sex comedy that funded the entire boom. Historically important, hard going.
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▶ watchobscureTurkey Shoot
The budget vanished mid-shoot and they kept going. Chaotic, mean, fun.
▶ watchcultFair Game
A woman alone at an outback wildlife reserve is hunted by three kangaroo poachers. Lean and nasty.