There are really only two things that exist in Australia that are truly terrifying: natural environment and colonial history. In an effort to explore our harsh national topography and its even darker psychogeographical counterpart, writer/director Bill Bennett turns to the traditional tropes of genre filmmaking, resulting in the visually stunning, thematically poignant - though narratively disappointing - horror-thriller, Uninhabited (2010). It is certainly not the case that Bennett is a technically unskilled filmmaker; on the contrary, his films are often as thoughtful as they are aesthetically gratifying, Uninhabited marking no exception there. It is however a badly scripted and poorly acted screenplay that lead to this film’s unfortunate downfall. In spite of a sound revelation of thematic intent through subtle tone and inferred historicity, Bennett is just too ambitious on too low a budget to take on an all too tired popular generic paradigm.

Beth and Harry (played by not just generic newcomers, but feature film virgins too, Geraldine Hakewill and Henry James) are a young couple in love who take a romantic holiday to get away from the stress and strain of contemporary urban life. Escaping to the most secluded environment available; a remote, unpopulated island, some five hours by boat from the mainland; they hope to “forget” the context of their everyday lives and to achieve a deeper connection to the natural world and to each another. At first their dream holiday is just as they had planned: gorgeous sun drenched days complete with carefree sex on the beach. But once the young lovers have become entirely uninhibited on an island they understand to be uninhabited, a typical spate of unexplained spooky events begin to occur. First the couple find their belongings are slightly amiss and then they discover filmed footage of themselves sleeping; as long blithe days turn hastily into haunted nights the couple come to realise that they are not, as they had previously thought, entirely alone on the island.

Between them, Beth and Henry exhaust just about every overt horror film villain enabling cliché known to the genre; they conveniently “lose” one of their only important to survival/potential murder weapon belongings - a hand spear; despite having a satellite phone with which to call the mainland they wait until creepy events escalate far beyond rational belief to even contemplate using it (at which point, needless to say, it has mysteriously disappeared); they leave their campsite to “investigate” strange noises and, when they do find evidence of someone other than themselves on the island, they go straight for hostility and confrontation as opposed to appealing to their cohabiters for help which, of course, only results in their earning new, additional enemies. Add to this the actors’ one-dimensional abilities and some rather atrocious dialogue and you have yourself a pair of protagonists whose deaths you are likely actively willing.

But just as you think Bennett has lost it the film takes a turn in the right, redeeming, direction. In their exploration of the island, Beth and Henry discover an abandoned hut dating back to the 1920s and the apparent quarters for an Indigenous slave girl. Markings on the wall of the hut and a tourist journal that warns of a young Aboriginal girl, Coral, whose “ghost” is seeking revenge for having been repeatedly raped and then murdered at the hand of white colonial men, indicates that what comes next will be a traditionally Freudian consideration of an historical and cultural “return of the repressed”. From here on in the couple are staged against one another as binary opposites in both their gendered responses but also in their views on historical authenticity. Beth identifies with Coral and her empathy leads her to an understanding of the atrocities committed against Australia’s Indigenous people. Conversely Harry plays the arrogant, and ignorant, misogynist male who denies a history that, in this film, quite literally asks to be acknowledged.

The fate of our faulted heroes isn’t optimistic and Bennett’s subsequent message rings out loud and clear: acknowledging this country’s dark history is an absolute responsibility for anyone assuming an “Australian” identity; the two inextricably linked. That is to say that our responsibility to our past cannot be cloaked in fear and folklore because it is not “just a ghost story”.

Filmed on a small budget with a tiny crew of just twenty-five (and apparently just barely enough electricity to keep the shoot well enough lit), Bennett has produced another film that is a contradiction unto itself. Beautifully shot and incredibly atmospheric, but let down by too many stand out issues, Uninhabited is a film whose ambition outweighs entertainment.

Review by Tara Judah

Director: Bill Bennett
Screenwriter: Bill Bennett
Cast: Geraldine Hakewill, Henry James, Tasia Zalar, Bob Baines, Billy Milionis, Terry Siourounis

The story is brought alive with the arrival of nurse Kathy Jacquard (Susan Penhaligon) who is given the noon ‘til 9 shift to watch over Patrick and quickly comes to believe that he can understand the world around him and goes as far as to claim that he can control objects and the actions others through his mind.

As Kathy attempts to draw Patrick out of his coma she chats about how she is also attempting to separate from her husband Ed and what is going on with a potential love-interest Brian, a neurologist who is familiar with Patrick’s case and Dr. Roget’s experiments. Kathy’s assumptions about Patrick’s mental abilities prove to be correct, yet she doesn’t count on his possessive nature and the damage he is capable of doing to both her and those around her.

The slow build-up of tension throughout the film is aided largely by the musical score with full credit going to Brian May. May went on to do film scores of Mad Max (1979), Turkey Shoot (1982) and Roadgames (1981, again working with Franklin as director). As well as these, May wrote the similar score for Harlequin (1980) which I greatly disliked yet here, in this collection of patients, staff, boyfriends, police and a telekinetic patient watching over them all the eerie sounds work well with the images presented.

A major point of congratulations must be given to the acting of Julia Blake in her Nurse Ratched inspired role. As the spinster Matron Cassidy, the self-titled “boss-cocky” of the hospital, Blake plays the cold and hardened nurse with extreme precision and with just a touch of well deserved fear toward the power Patrick posses but which she refuses to acknowledge.

Patrick is a film that pays great homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in numerous ways. The film’s title is written in the same font as Hitchcock’s classic, the film’s director Richard Franklin purposely set the clinic in an abandoned private hotel in Melbourne’s South Yarra that looks distinctly like the Bates house, Franklin himself went on to director the 1983 feature Psycho II, and just as Norman did, Patrick has extreme mother issues. There is even a remade shower scene in which Kathy’s ex breaks into her apartment whilst she is hidden behind the shower screen.

Having been made on a budget of less than $400,000 Patrick did extremely well overseas. It beat out Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatcher’s (1978) and Carpenter’s Halloween (1979) to win the Grand Prix Jury Prize in the French Avoriaz Fantasy Film Festival. It screened well throughout the 1978 Cannes festival, Franklin won Best Director in the 1978 Spanish International Film Festival and had spawned an Italian-made ‘sequel’ a year later. Recently it has been referenced in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 1 - I shall leave you to figure out where. It was announced earlier this year that there will be a remake, thus I suggest you all see the original before the butchering begins.

Review by Eleanor Colla

Director: Richard Franklin

Bruce Beresford’s memorable 1976 film has a reputation of bawdiness and vulgarity mixed with explicit nudity that well and truly precedes it. However, few of these seedy, politically incorrect associations have any basis in truth - at least not by modern standards. Instead, David Williamson’s adaptation of his own play is a caustic and occasionally brutally honest snapshot of Australian society at the time; a portrait deftly contextualized by its single night setting and topicality. It’s October 1969 and a party is being thrown by teacher and failed novelist Don Henderson (John Hargreaves) and his meek, straight-laced suburban wife Kath (Jeanie Drynan). It’s to be a night of revelry and celebration for the polls have closed on Election Day and a Labour victory spearheaded by Gough Whitlam is presumed by all, unseating the Liberals and their leader John Gorton (who makes a neat cameo at the start of the film).

Don’s guests are a colourful, quintessentially Australian bunch. There’s brash and opinionated Mal (Ray Barrett) and his scowling, resentful wife Jenny (Pat Bishop). Simon (Graeme Blundell) is clearly the odd man out with his plastered down hair, pipe and safari suit. His ditzy wife Jody (Veronica Lang) seems like a fish out of water too but she’s far more willing to be enveloped by the group than her husband who, when not making slightly embarrassed neutral small talk, stands around awkwardly in the background as if awaiting summons.

Making a head-turning entrance is artist Kerry (Candy Raymond), a gorgeous, sensuous, dark-eyed vixen who draws the attention of every male eye with her magnetic presence. Her naturally jealous, uptight dentist husband Evan (Kit Taylor) makes the best of the situation whilst barely tolerating those around him who he clearly views with suspicion and contempt. Recently divorced photographer Mack (Graham Kennedy), flashing naked snaps of his ex-wife, is present too. Not far behind him are obnoxious lothario Cooley (Harold Hopkins) and his latest acquisition, Susan (Claire Binney), barely out of her teens and tagging along like an eye-catching but cheap adornment.

Dipping in and out of conversations we see the group overlapping spiritedly: it’s like a cross-section of suburbia with all of our definably Australian traits poking through. Supplementing these are pompous, brash, overbearing moments of posturing that lead to arguments and even the odd naked entanglement. But nearly everything that occurs is undeniably authentic, as is the atmosphere created. The film may seem exposed somewhat by its theatrical origins, but there’s hardly a wrong note in Williamson’s screenplay, even though you could argue some of the blatant sexual propositioning does seem ‘of the era’, or exaggerated at least for the purposes of a little provocation.

The transformation that occurs is a gradual but not entirely unpredictable one. As the night kicks off, the partygoers become consumed by the occasion: there’s buffoonery aplenty; outrageous tall stories are related; sexual proposals both blatant and delicately worded come thick and fast; loud political debate is injected as an adjunct to the most frivolous observations - both setting off another round of egos jostling for superiority in the next conversation. But as the evening wears on, the group dynamic begins to change. With razor-sharp perception, Williamson effectively peels back the social masks, the array of facades keeping civility in place. The quick-witted jibes are soured by personal effrontery; subtle at first, but burrowing deeper as it becomes obvious that the most pointed observations are striking particularly sensitive nerves. Watching the inevitable implosion is compelling stuff, though there’s a grotesquery about it that is slightly uncomfortable too. Fuelled by excessive alcohol consumption, the shock political defeat after promising early indications, petty frustrations and foiled sexual conquests, the party begins to come apart at the seams with nearly everyone reaching boiling point.

Strip away the peripherals that colour your first impressions – the fashion, the hairstyles, and the ghastly décor – and the commonality of Williamson’s characters and themes become most apparent. Each actor wears his or her character like a glove in what amounts to a perfect ensemble. But Barrett and Hargreaves are ultimately the most important figures, with the juiciest roles; Barrett makes Mal both loathsome and pitifully pathetic, whilst Don is weak-willed and subservient, yet hard to hate. Despite the lewdness and brazen sexual objectification, there are strong parts here for the women too - especially Jenny and Kath, the most disadvantaged, emotionally destitute partners who, despite initial impressions, are wallowing in decaying, loveless, deeply unsatisfying marriages that persist for the sake of appearances and little more. The film’s ending is neither evasive nor subservient to any commercial consideration; it’s dark, sobering and uncompromising.

Don’s Party has hardly dated at all; instead it confirms itself as a telling document of hilarious, and yet deadly serious social commentary and one of the great films of the 70’s. Williamson’s brilliant, savage dialogue sparkles and in exposing us to a few uncomfortable truths about ourselves and our mundane domestic lives, he and Beresford continued cementing their reputations as emerging creative figures of some note.

Review by David O’Connell

The film opens with Dylan Thomas’ words “We watch the show of shadows kiss or kill / Flavoured of celluloid give love the lie” - a self-conscious acknowledgement that the girl and the gun are cinematic constructs, shadows dancing across the celluloid, their presentation of love: artifice, cinematic lie. This loaded intro is Bennett’s appeal to the audience not to engage in the usual act of total disavowal but to keep their wits about them because what follows is more than just the story of a couple on the run.

Al (Matt Day) and Nikki (Frances O’Connor) are lovers and small time scamsters whose commit petty crimes are motivated by both their socio-economic circumstances but also the thrill that comes from life on the run. In terms of narrative, Nikki is the real driving force, something of a femme fatale and, even though this film is not strictly noir, her voiceover statement which segues into back story definitely gives her an authorial standpoint from the outset. The set-up for the plot begins with a flashback sequence to a young Nikki, perhaps five or six years old, as she witnesses a knock at the door: her father; he immediately douses her mother in gasoline and sets her alight. Nikki watches her mother burn alive and this single event establishes early on both her hatred for men and her personal insecurities which later manifest into a delightfully Freudian “return of the repressed”.

Cutting back to present day we see Nikki wearing a sexy red dress, picking up a rich married businessman at the bar. Having successfully flirted her way into his hotel room she drugs him and, together with Al, rips him off before getting the hell out of there. Though it is clear this is a well rehearsed scam for the duo it appears to be the first time that such a poor, unsuspecting (albeit immoral) lump of a man has ended up dead. What’s worse, the prize stash they’ve scored isn’t money or jewels but instead a paedophilic sex tape incriminating one incredibly popular and well known footballer, Zipper Doyle (Barry Langrishe). Upon finding themselves in something of a tight spot, the couple decide to flee Adelaide and embark upon a literally and figuratively implacable, barren journey across the Nullarbor. Along the way tensions heighten and wherever they seem to stop over, bodies turn cold.

Between the mounting dead bodies, being tailed by the police and hunted by an irate football paedophile, the two leads slowly begin to unravel, suspecting one another as the killer. With Nikki’s increasingly strange sleep walking habits and Al’s subsequent recoil, their once certain love is brought into question along with their individual senses of self. In a particularly striking sequence of tightly shot reversals, the two have at each other whilst hurtling towards an infinite nowhere across the callous Nullarbor. The atmosphere is highly claustrophobic which is perfectly and ironically juxtaposed against the endless desert landscape. Considered against earlier jump cuts which were used to provide a clear sense of fragmentation and fractiousness, this carefully shot sequence reveals another level of their individual subjectivities and shows Bennett’s flair for intimate filmmaking.

Largely improvised to great effect, Kiss or Kill is a film that adheres to a classical narrative paradigm complete with plot causality whilst offering another level of reflection thereupon for a clued-in cine-literate audience. With clear reference to genre classics such as Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965) and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) - complete with character commentaries on David Lynch’s Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune from Wild at Heart (1990) and Oliver Stone’s Mickey and Mallory Knox from Natural Born Killers (1994) - and with an added appetite for hard-boiled fodder, Kiss or Kill is an altogether curious little art house film that seems to want to be simpler than it actually is. The parting shot is a perfect example of Bennett’s inability to leave well alone, extracting any seriousness from its final sting by offering up anecdotal ambiguity. Entertaining and intriguing in equal measure, it certainly leaves an atypical aftertaste.

Director: Bill Bennett
Screenwriter: Bill Bennett
Cast: Frances O’Connor, Matt Day, Barry Langrishe, Chris Haywood, Andrew S. Gilbert, Max Cullen, Barry Otto, Michael Hill

From here the film is relatively fast paced. The drug dealer belongs to a group of Cantonese martial art experts/criminals, headed by the gregarious Sydney money man Jack Wilton (George Lazenby, Australia’s very own James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and thus a Cantonese police officer is flown in. When Inspector Fang Sing Leng (Jimmy Wang Yu) arrives on the scene, the typical fights, chases, deaths and love affairs begin with the two bumbling and crass Australian officers trying to catch up.

Coming early in writer/producer/director Brian Trenchard-Smith’s career, The Man From Hong Kong doesn’t fail to disappoint in the ‘Ozploitation’ category, nor in the ‘good cinema’ category. Cinematic elements shine through and Trenchard-Smith uses mise-en-sc?ne to marvellous effect. The clash of Western and Eastern culture is imminent in the film both on a character level as well as cultural level, which Trenchard-Smith represents through the physical space within the frame. Both Sydney and Hong Kong are major urban developments built around and encompassing water, and both have a proud culture and history attached to them.

The shots of Hong Kong are clustered, controlled and regimented; the hang glider spirals into a police training facility, Cantonese criminal’s run down narrow back allies in Sydney, jumping over fences and fighting in cramped kitchens. Sydney is open and free; the hang gliders could not be safer as they soar above the coastline. Australian police run through the main streets seeming to not even notice a back alley.

The tight camera angles used during the fight scenes are juxtaposed to the wide sweeping shots that work to include the bushland and water in the backdrop, leaving the shots open and spacious. This open space allows for cars to slip and slide across the road and into the untamed bushland before exploding into the open spaces around them. Ultimately Trenchard-Smith is using the element of physical space as more than that of contrasting the two cities but of contrasting the two cultures, in particular through the use of martial arts as an Eastern art form and the consequences that this has upon the characters who utilise it.

The Man From Hong Kong signifies the first Australian-Hong Kong co-production, coming two years after Bruce Lee’s death and in the midst of a global rise in martial arts films. Having been referenced heavily in Mark Hartley’s 2008 Not Quite Hollywood: The Untold Story of Ozploitation!, The Man From Hong Kong was not made without problems. Jimmy Wang Yu reportedly hated Australia and despised his on screen love Caroline Thorn, played by Rosalind Speirs. Wang Yu also injured himself in a hang gliding scene whilst George Lazenby was unable to remove his burning jacket fast enough and sustained burns to his hands, with said scene played out in slow-mo for the viewer. The car chases were filmed on open roads without permission, with these gonzo stunts adding to the intensity and drama encapsulated in The Man From Hong Kong.

Review by Eleanor Colla

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Screenwriter: Brian Trencahrd-Smith
Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, George Lazenby, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Roger Ward, Ros Spiers, Grant Page, Rebecca Gilling, Frank Thring, Hung Kam Po

Australian youths of the 1980s were apparently just as likely to fall prey to the same foolish distractions as those of today if John Clark’s mostly unintentionally hilarious Running on Empty is any indication. This was only ever going to be a cult film, with its undernourished treatment of hotted-up cars, schoolboy vendettas, abnormally high hair and fake Italian accents.

On the backstreets of Sydney, the dastardly Fox (Richard Moir) is ruler and king, disposing of all challengers on the illegal drag racing scene with ease. In the opening sequence we watch in horror as his latest opponent is propelled to a fiery death as the crowd scurries away. Fox’s girlfriend of sorts, and a seemingly reluctant one, Julie (Deborah Conway), soon catches the eye of another prospective racer in Mike (Terry Serio). When Mike is caught in the act driving her around and getting a bit frisky, Fox sends in his loathsome, meat-headed minions to rough him up and propose the kind of challenge that has no escape clause. He must race Fox three times with the stakes rising exponentially with any loss.

Mike is unable to avert defeat the first time around, so with the now sympathetic Julie and his mechanic Tony (Vangelis Mourikis) in tow, they head for the wilds of the outback to drum up some mug racers to thrash, thus building a bank with which to make the necessary upgrades for his car. It’s the only conceivable means of out-dueling Fox, and after running into some double-dealing rednecks who reduce his beloved transportation to a ghost of its former self he calls on the aid of Rebel (Max Cullen), an aging and blind James Dean wannabe who looks like he just stepped out of a malfunctioning time machine.

Mike returns for a second bout with Fox but the latter’s underhanded tricks lead to a disastrous outcome for Mike’s car which, beyond all repair, has to be put out to pasture. For the third and final encounter, the most drastic of measures is required to overcome Fox’s seemingly invincible Dodge. Mike now has to suck up his humility and go crawling back to Rebel to ask permission for the use of his immaculately restored Chevy to give him a chance at reaching the winner’s podium.

Though this simplistic film follows a predictable path, it has achieved some notoriety as a minor cult hit, the type of film that people with a tendency for falling head over heels for fast cars will lap up for the drool inducing associations it conjures. The recurring themes have been put through the wringer in far superior variations, of course: dethroning the arch nemesis (always an unconscionable bastard of the first order) to achieve glory and get the girl; then there’s speed as an unsubtle metaphor for breaking free from the constraints of authority.

This was Clark’s first and only film; seemingly he vanished without a trace after putting together this curiosity - a film set in Sydney and, bizarrely, funded by The Film Corporation of Western Australia. Barry Tomblin’s screenplay is mostly witless and superficial in an almost deliberately B-grade manner. Witness Fox’s admonishment of Tony prior to beating him up: “What a lot of sauce from such a little piece of spaghetti.” Tomblin too is credited with no other project in his career. Perhaps he and Clark got sucked into the same vortex whilst daring to imagine a sequel.

Luckily our hero Mike is a sympathetic firebrand, the kind of fundamentally decent guy we’ll readily root for under these circumstances. His reluctance to back peddle is endearing in the way that a dog wrestling with a bone for hours wins your respect for its sheer tenacity. Serio has charisma of a crude sort, and enough good looks to earn him a passing grade. It’s no surprise however that pop singer Conway’s career haemorrhaged  soon after. Mourikis makes for a lovable offsider, suspicious accent and all, whilst Moir doesn’t even get a chance to chew up the scenery, so bare are the landscapes - both literal and metaphorical – of Tomblin’s limited imagination.

Cullen deserves special mention for his funny but excruciatingly awful portrayal of Rebel. His speech is littered with corny American sayings spouted with an accent that wavers in and out like a dodgy shortwave radio signal. And yet somehow he’s hard to hate, especially with that camel tied up in his vacant lot and a propensity for referring to everyone as “cat.” Then there’s the random appearances of Penne Hackforth-Jones and Graham “Auntie Jack” Bond as a couple of ludicrously attired, impotent police officers who look like porn actors teeing up their paper thin personas in those useless few moments before they rip off their shirts.

The final showdown between Fox and Mike is over fairly quickly, with a thoughtful, wordless pause inserted before the charcoal burning final image that - in a film supported by far sturdier framework - you couldn’t resist labeling ‘iconic’. It ends this forgotten film - cherished by an odd few - on an exultant, audacious high. And for that reason the $5 I forked out to rescue this neglected and unadorned relic from the bargain bin at Target was not wasted.

Review by David O’Connell

Director: John Clark
Screenwriter: Barry Tomblin
Terry Serio, Deborah Conway, Max Cullen, Richard Moir, Penne Hackforth-Jones, Vangelis Mourikis, Grahame Bond, Bob Barrett, Warren Blondell, Jon Darling, Peter Davies

Of course, a relative portion of the film’s failure can be attributed to the intense (mis)preconception with which it was met at the time of its release: Stephan Elliott’s much anticipated feature follow-up to the incredible national and international success of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). Appealing because of its quirkiness, Priscilla’s flamboyant aesthetic and sassy screenplay was easily more accessible than estranging. Woop on the other hand deliberately denies such a point of access by employing overdrawn stereotypes and an insulting rather than engaging script.

Woop is the story of American scamster Teddy (Johnathon Schaech) who smuggles and illegally sells Australian birds (cockatoos) in the back allies by the old tenement buildings in downtown New York. After a sham deal and his girlfriend’s (Rachel Griffith) untimely shoot up of his top clientele, his stolen birds are freed in the foreign and untenable environment of a busy, modern, westernised city. Subsequently, Teddy flees to Australia to be free like - and with - the birds he so ‘lovingly’ stole. A poor metaphor to stand in for Australia’s Stolen Generation? Yes, absolutely, and when deconstructed in this manner the film is indeed crass without even a morsel of that loveable rogue Australian charm that has come to be expected from our sometimes black and always self-effacing comedies. But just as Teddy is yet to discover, anticipation and expectation aren’t always so pleasantly met.

Travelling through the proverbial middle of nowhere, Teddy encounters Angie (Susie Porter), a young sex starved woman whose nymphlike behaviour masks her true agenda to kidnap and take him back to Woop, get hitched and help repopulate the otherwise incestuous and somewhat inbred town full of broadly drawn freaks and misfits. The inhabitants of Woop live under the unfair ‘democracy’ of Daddy-O (Rod Taylor) whose rules include no one leaving Woop without his consent - something he never allows and, as such, is illegal.

While Teddy spends most of his days and nights in Woop plotting his escape he gets to know a bit about the town’s past, discovering that its residents returned to live there by choice following their forced relocation from the mines in Woop Woop to elsewhere in Western Australia after the discovery that the mines were full of asbestos. The land was apparently returned to the Aboriginals (whose absence is merely mentioned rather than appropriately or sufficiently explained) and wiped off the map. The literal erasure of a place, the relocation of a people and the giving of something that was already theirs, as it is here depicted, is clearly an allegory for the country’s colonial activities and horrific crimes against Australia’s Indigenous people, even if it is carried out in so removed and melodramatic a fashion.

The performances, for what it’s worth, are actually very good: each of the film’s lead cast perform the absurd and abhorrent to a T, a fine illustration of the film’s success being a case of cutting off its nose to spite its face. Ultimately Woop has somewhat quashed Elliott’s own career and upset a plethora of people within the Australian Film Industry in its wider context; the press it received as vast as it was damning.

Perhaps, in retrospect, it is easier to consider the merits of the film as we find ourselves now situated in an era of post-reconciliation? Or perhaps audiences will never be ready for Woop Woop – its unforgiving landscape a mark of its audacity to dare broach the question of Australian identity without apology and devoid of empathy? Whatever the reason, Welcome to Woop Woop is a film that ought to only be seen with the largest of pinches of salt – a definite cult crass-ic in its post-Ozploitation political effort.

Review by Tara Judah

Director: Stephan Elliott
Screenwriter: Michael Thomas
Cast: Johnathon Schaech, Rod Taylor, Susie Porter, Dee Smart, Richard Moir, Maggie Kirkpatrick, Barry Humphries, Mark Wilson, Paul Mercurio, Stan Yarramunua, Bob Oxenbould, Daniel Rigney, David Hoey, Sarah Osmo, Con Demetriou, Rachel Griffiths.

I first saw Harlequin a few years ago when I purchased the Ozploitation, Volume 1 DVD. It confused me then and, having sat down to watch it again recently, still continues to do so.

The film’s narrative captures the Rast family, headed by the politically involved Nick (David Hemmings), his essentially estranged wife Sandra (Carmen Duncan) and their nine year old son Alex (Mark Spain) who has leukaemia. Things get interesting when a faith healer by the name of Gregory Wolfe (Robert Powell) turns up dressed as a clown.

Strange events cause Sandra to fall in love with the magician and Nick’s colleagues to worry about the consequences this will have on his political career. As Nick says, this couldn’t have come at a worse time. Why? Well, because the film opens with an unknown man going snorkelling in rough seas, surrounded by bodyguards. Naturally the man, who turns out to be the current senator, disappears and is never seen again. Someone, it must be said, had obviously not gotten over Harold Holt’s disappearance whilst writing the script over a decade later!

No matter. The film continues with political references abound. Indeed, the entire plot is based on the Romanov family of Russia, their son Alexei being terminally ill, faith healer Grigori Rasputin healing him and Tsar (spelt backwards creating the surname ‘Rast’) Nicholas II being merely a political tool. If the viewer had yet to figure this out much is explained towards the end of Harlequin, with Gregory attempting to convince Nick that he is merely a puppet to the political machine he works for. And whilst Nick eventually realises the error of his ways, it is already too late.

A slightly redeeming factor of the film is the social commentary about the way in which the media is portrayed as being constantly interested in the personal lives of politicians and the way in which politicians themselves manipulate those around them, from colleagues to friends and family.

Accompanying the film is an overzealous musical score that often serves only to distract from the central action of the picture. This, coupled with the cheap but not-cheap-enough-to-be-funny visual effects of Gregory and the young Alex’s magic, end up creating a hardly fulfilling plot. Powell’s performance, which consists of staring unblinkingly towards the camera, is as over the top as his costumes and makeup, whilst Rast’s bodyguards fulfil the monkey-in-a-suit-with-a-gun category very nicely.

I feel slightly cheated by the marketing of this film. It’s not a thriller, so don’t trust the back of the DVD description which compares it with Rosemary’s Baby. Also, it’s missing the majority of all things I love about Ozploitation cinema: misspent youths, car chases, slang that has actually never been used on Australian shores and crude jokes. Thus, I don’t quite know what to make of such a feature. The shots of the beach are nice, though.

Review by Eleanor Colla

Director: Simon Wincer
Screenwriter: Everett De Roche
Cast: Robert Powell, David Hemmings, Carmen Duncan, Broderick Crawford, Gus Mercurio

Plucked from obscurity, 18 year-old Alex Dimitriades was chosen for the role of Nick Polides, a headstrong, volatile student with grand aspirations of making it big as a stud on the soccer field. Sadly, at his Melbourne high school little progress is being made in abetting those dreams, for he’s unable to even convince the staff to resurrect the notion of a representative soccer team. In a climate ruled by an ingrained religious devotion to Aussie Rules, soccer comes off as an impoverished second cousin long excluded from this particular school’s curriculum. Nick seethes when confronted by the embodiment of this attitude in Mr. Southgate (William McInnes), the footy coach who early on is pitched forward as an all too-obvious adversary; he’s the most vocal dissenting voice in the staff room, a crowd of one rallying against the intrusion into his playground of a game demeaningly referred to - by the community at large at that time - as ‘wog ball’.

Luckily for Nick, a guardian angel steps in to fill the breach in the form of young teacher Christina Papadopoulos (Claudia Karvan) who senses that Nick’s misplaced anger might best be redirected into more productive outlets. Brushing aside the mocking laughter of her fellow staff members, she puts her hand up to coach a hastily assembled soccer team whilst admitting, in the same breath, to not possessing a skerrick of knowledge about the game. But with the cocksure Nick as her guiding hand, she’s able to at least set the wheels of change in motion.

Nick is won over by Christina’s noble decision to stand up for his motley crew of ethnic outcasts. But in the course of their combined efforts to form a cohesive sporting unit, deeper feelings develop. His attraction to Christina begins its pubescent conversion from the lusty fantasies associable with a schoolboy’s crush to serious consideration of Christina as “his girl”. Impropriety aside, he may be just deluding himself. Certainly Nick’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of her would scare off most women, but for Christina - not much older than her students at 22 and still able to relate to their fickle crushes – negating external factors begin to take their toll, alleviating the implausibility of the scenario.

She can certainly relate to the overpowering parental control that Nick is hardly alien to - the type that suffocates with good intentions but leaves precious little leeway for personal freedom to flourish. Raised to respect and adhere to her parents’ wishes, Christina has her life plotted out on a circumscribed path, including a pre-determined husband-to-be, Dimitri (Steve Bastoni). There’s even a model home chosen for her by Dimitri without any consultation that offers little room to breathe, being right across the street from her parents’ home! Having another decision taken out of her hands adds to the sense of subtle manipulation; it’s a façade of compliance as honour, the kind with a firm foothold in tradition, but which the free-willed Christina must reduce to old-world memories if she’s ever going to become her own woman.

Karvan is terrific in this early role that followed her initial breakthrough in The Big Steal (1990). She has that intriguing youthful mix of fresh-faced beauty and yet with the hint of a tomboy in her short hair and ability to pull off a fetching run over a muddy playing field in skimpy shorts and a soccer jersey.

It’s a very physical performance from Dimitriades, in more ways than one; early on he’s a ball of energy, unable to suppress his outrage at the school’s denial of a soccer team. In this way, he’s also living in the shadow of his father George (Nick Lathouris) who once played for the Greek national team. The innate pressure associated with fulfilling parental expectations is a universal one but it has special connotations with those of ethnic minorities in Australian society where the weight of overcoming an implied racial mistrust is ever present.

Jenkins, who jointly adapted the screenplay with the author of the original play, Robert Barrett, does a decent job of relaying how these pressures come to bear on both Nick and Christina. There’s an element of manipulation and cliché as to how the relationships are pushed to the edge of fragmentation, but the issues they raise have hardly lost their relevance.

It’s fascinating to watch Nick’s perspective alter as his schoolboy crush takes on more meaningful proportions. For a while he just sees Christina asan idyllic object of privilege, the ones not afforded him; an unattainable goddess representative of his cultural ties to both Australia and his ancestry. For Christina, Nick himself may seem unrefined, but she’s attracted to his impulsive, giddily unpredictable nature; a young man yet to explore his potential but equally moved by the prospect of passion as pain. Raw and rebellious, he represents an unlikely outlet to release her stresses, and a polar opposite to the calculating, money-obsessed Dimitri. If her feelings were based on little more than unleashing some suppressed sexual frustration then their relationship would be doomed to a spectacular but swift end. Slowly however, Christina has to put aside the distracting fact of Nick’s youth to understand the reasons she’s really attracted to him and address whether he has any of the qualities she really desires in a man.

And what of the moral implications of a teacher engaging in sexual relations with one of her students? Well, there’s certainly a murky area of grey to consider here, though it doesn’t draw a whole lot of attention other than from Nick’s dad who is appropriately disconsolate at the thought of such a strict moral breach. We can assume that most people have few qualms about such a relationship when the ages of those involved are so close, but what a different light might have been shed on these trysts had the sexual roles been reversed? The sex scenes themselves are surprisingly hot and heavy though it’s hard to know how seriously to take the exultant choral music overlaid across the first of them. Both actors are game however and because of that fact, The Heartbreak Kid mostly defies the juvenile associations of its title. Hopefully it will be remembered as a piece of slick entertainment that also provides some valuable commentary and insights into the rapidly changing makeup of Australian society.

Review by David O’Connell

Director: Michael Jenkins
Screenwriter: Ray Barrett and Michael Jenkins, based on the play by Ray Barrett
Cast: Claudia Karvan, Alex Dimitriades, Nico Lathouris, Steve Bastoni, Doris Youane, George Vidalis, Louise Mandylor, William McInnes, Jasper Bagg, Fonda Goniades, Vikash Prasad, Kathy Halliday.

Competition closes June 7. Passes will be mailed the following day.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Welcome to the Melbourne underworld. Following the death of his mother, seventeen year-old Joshua ‘J’ Cody (newcomer James Frecheville) moves in with his hitherto-estranged family, under the watchful eye of his doting grandmother, Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody (Jackie Weaver), and her three criminal sons – the Cody boys. Eldest son and armed robber, Andrew ‘Pope’ Cody (Ben Mendelsohn) is in hiding from a gang of renegade detectives.

Middle brother Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a successful but volatile drug dealer, whilst the youngest Cody, Darren (Luke Ford), naïvely follows his elder brothers’ lead. Just as Pope’s business partner and best friend, Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton), decides that he wants out of the game, recognising that their days of old-school banditry are all but over, tensions between the family and the police explode. J finds himself at the centre of a cold-blooded revenge plot that turns his family upside down and which throws him directly into the path of senior homicide detective, Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce).