PATRICK STILL LIVES, and this time he will kill you via Severin Films' new Blu-ray edition of the sleazy and gory Italian horror cash-in.

Five well-to-do but not-entirely-respectable socialites – politician Lyndon Cough (Franco Silva, SPASMO) and his buxom wife Cheryl (Carmen Russo, THE PORNO KILLERS), scuzzy businessman Suniak (John Benedy, THE DEVIL'S LOVER) and his mistress Stella (Mariangela Giordano, THE SECT), and champion swimmer David Davis (Paolo Giusti, EMANUELLE ON TABOO ISLAND) – receive invitations for a stay at the Herschell Wellness Clinic that they cannot refuse; literally because their host knows incriminating things about their them and threatens to expose them. Lyndon and Cheryl expect to pay off and suspect Suniak to be their blackmailer, while Suniak and Stella are eying them for some whatever influence alcoholic Lyndon may still have (and Stella is eying up virile David for something else entirely). The clinic's proprietor Dr. Herschell (Sacha Pitoeff, INFERNO) has discovered that one of them was responsible for the careless accident that landed his son Patrick (Gianni Dei, SEX OF THE WITCH) in a coma, and he has been harnessing his son's telekinetic abilities so that he may wreak vengeance upon all of them; that is, when the boy is not using his powers to molest nurse Lydia (Andrea Belfiore, BLUE TANGO).

While the Australian telekinetic horror film PATRICK owed a debt to Alfred Hitchcock, particularly PSYCHO – with its director Richard Franklin hired by Universal to helm PSYCHO II – this Italian cash-in owes a bit of something to Cornell Woolrich via Umberto Lenzi's giallo SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS with its story of vengeance taken upon a number of people in the absence of the knowledge of the true guilty party. Shot at Villa Parisi where producer Gabriele Cristiani and director Andrea Bianchi later helmed BURIAL GROUND (also with Giordano), PATRICK STILL LIVES looks a bit slicker even though the budget was probably just as low. Like director Mario Landi's GIALLO IN VENEZIA for Cristiani, the film's sleaze content is higher and actually quite grueling in its most tasteless setpiece while otherwise just being unpleasant. The women are voluptuous – including Anna Veneziano as a maid who rebuffs David's flirtations in favor of some implied bestiality with the villa's German Shepherds – but they are all pretty much as sexually-frustrated as Patrick since Landi spends the time between death scenes with some tiresome dramatics that fail to create suspense since we already know the who and why of the supernatural events. The score is credited to Berto Pisano and shares a couple cues with BURIAL GROUND – those cues dating back from earlier film work – while some others sound like Goblin-esque prog-rock from their non-soundtrack albums of the seventies.

Never dubbed into English and unreleased in the United States until Shriek Show's 2003 DVD editions – uncut and general release versions, the latter trimming Giordano's gory death – PATRICK STILL LIVES comes to Blu-ray from a 2K scan of the original 16mm camera negative. The negative suffered some deterioration resulting in faint stains and flickering throughout but the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen presentation still looks better than BURIAL GROUND which was also a 16mm production with a damaged negative. Colors are rich and saturated, particularly the blood, optical effects, and primary gels, while the resolution provides enhanced textures in clothing, skin, and the prosthetic make-up effects, the latter never convincing in the first place but more unpleasant here. Blacks and shadows are inconsistent but never as horribly blocky as they were on the Shriek Show DVD. The Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is a bit more consistently cleaner with the faint hiss probably part of the original recording and mixing. Optional English subtitles translate the dialogue.