There is a certain type of crassness that is inherently two things: endearing and Australian. But of course there is another kind of crassness that forgoes endearing and situates itself as merely Australian. Welcome to Woop Woop (1997) is a film most commonly condemned as the latter. But just because it’s not endearing doesn’t definitively mean it ought to be so easily dismissed. Sure - it’s dark and admittedly daft, but somewhere beneath its damaging depiction of the detritus of contemporary Australian culture lies a harsh historicality; an indubitable landscape, unpleasant and unforgiving.

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.