Production
This was the second script Everett de Roche had ever written, following Long Weeked (1978). It had been around for a number of years before Richard Franklin became attached. The two men had both worked for Crawford Productions although not together until then. De Roche says when Franklin became involved the script was "a rambling 250 pages" and Franklin taught him the elements of drama and suspense. He says the final scene of Patrick leaping out of his bed was inspired by trip to a carnival Franklin had made where a man in a gorilla suit burst out into the audience, causing everyone to scream. They then started working backwards from this scene.
Franklin brought in Antony I. Ginnane who raised finance. The Australian Film Commission and Victorian Film Corporation contributed about half the budget, with the rest obtained privately. Ginnane later said he thought De Roche's script was one of the best ever written in Australia.
British film actor Susan Penhaligon was imported to play the lead, which Ginnane thought helped secure the film a sale in Britain.
I'd done Eskimo Nell in the Australian idiom, and... my friends didn't understand it. So I thought, well, I'll go to the other extreme and have everybody speaking Queen's English. And so I had everybody doing, not so much English accents as just speaking Queen's English.
Robert Helpmann broke his back during filming trying to lift up Robert Thompson in one scene.
Read more about this topic: Patrick (film)
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—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
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—Gus Hall (b. 1910)