Stunt Rock (1978)

          Delivering in a big way on both elements of its title, Stunt Rock is an Australian oddity depicting the adventures of an Aussie stuntman who visits the U.S. and hangs out with members of a flamboyant rock band, so the nearly plotless flick combines wild stunt footage with extensive concert sequences. As the cult-cinema equivalent of background noise, Stunt Rock is palatable because leading man Grant Page does lots of outrageously dangerous things, from climbing the sides of buildings to driving at insane speeds to setting himself on fire, and also because the gimmick of rock band Sorcery is that each of their shows features an onstage battle between good and evil wizards—lots of silly costumes, lots of magic tricks, lots of pyro. The movie also goes heavy into that oh-so-’70s gimmick of split-screen imagery. While I can’t say Stunt Rock held my attention particularly well as an adult viewer, I can’t help but imagine how an American version of the same movie would have blown my preadolescent mind—the notion of Evel Knievel costarring with Kiss sounds indescribably awesome (even though the actual movies Knievel and Kiss made in the ‘70s were indescribably awful). Setting aside enticing “what if” scenarios, Stunt Rock is sufficiently unique to merit attention from the cinematically adventurous. It’s not a good movie by any measure, but it stands alone.
          Page, already a veteran stuntman and TV personality by the time he made this picture, stars as a fictionalized version of himself. The premise is that he travels to America for work on an action-oriented TV show, then spends time with Sorcery since he’s related to one of the band’s members. That’s virtually the entire storyline of Stunt Rock, excepting Page’s interaction with the actress starring in the TV show—frustrated that her most exciting scenes feature stunt doubles, she pressures Page to train her in the art of doing dangerous things safely. To state the obvious, viewers already interested in movie stunts will find that aspect of the movie more compelling than others; unlike the same era’s Hooper (1978) and The Stunt Man (1980), this flick lets stunt footage unfurl without the burden of narrative import, so the vibe is very much ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Similarly, fans of Alice Cooper and Kiss are more likely than others to groove on what Sorcery throws down. The band’s heavy-metal tunes are melodic, but their onstage shtick is goofy. That said, some details in Stunt Rock are memorably weird, for instance the fact that Sorcery’s keyboard player never appears without a mask covering his entire head. What’s more, reading about the making of Stunt Rock reveals that director Brian Trenchard-Smith put the whole thing together—from concept to finished product—in six months, so that explains a lot. At least the Stunt Rock team found time to assemble a spectacular poster—why that key art failed to draw kids into theaters is a mystery.

Stunt Rock: FUNKY

Sidecar Racers (1975)

          Generally speaking, calling a film “ordinary” is not a compliment—but in the right context, it’s not precisely a dig, either. Sidecar Racers, a sports melodrama coproduced by American and Australian companies, hits nearly every cliché associated with sports films, and the characterizations are just as trite as the plotting. Yet one gets a sense of actors and filmmakers contributing the best efforts possible given the circumstances, since it’s clear neither the budget nor the schedule was quite sufficient for making a picture with plentiful action scenes and location changes. Even more praiseworthy is what the film lacks. Seeing as how the potential for a romantic triangle simmers just below the surface of the narrative, it would have been easy to edge this picture into a rougher style, accentuating sex during off-the-track scenes. Opting for a more family-friendly style works in Sidecar Racers’ favor. The movie isn’t much, but at least it’s inoffensive and relatively sincere.

          Jeff (Ben Murphy) is an American athlete bumming around Australia after his Olympic career ends. One day while surfing, he catches the attention of Lynn (Wendy Hughes), the lover of volatile sidecar racer Dave (John Clayton). She envisions Jeff taking the place of Dave’s old partner, who died during a race. A tryout run proves that Jeff’s superior balance control suits sidecar racing, so the trio makes a go of it, eventually winning several matches and nearly qualifying for sponsorship from Lynn’s father (Peter Graves), who has previously shown nothing but contempt for the reckless and selfish Dave.

          Although nothing that happens in Sidecar Racers is fresh or imaginative, the stunt work in racing scenes is wild, giving a real sense of danger as men riding alongside motorcycles dangle their helmeted skulls just inches above the ground at insane speeds. Additionally, all of the actors give serviceable performances, with occasional moments connecting emotionally. If all of this sounds too shallow for you, then you’re wise to steer clear—but if adequately rendered sports stuff with a little Aussie novelty seems like a agreeable diversion, you’ll get exactly that from Sidecar Racers.

Sidecar Racers: FUNKY

Adam’s Woman (1970)

          Offering an interesting look at sociopolitical dynamics impacting Australia during the era when the island nation was used by the British empire as a penal colony, Adam’s Woman tells the eventful story of a convict offered land and a dowry in exchange for marrying a “fallen” woman. Extrapolated from historical events but heavily fictionalized, the picture depicts a humanistic British nobleman, Sir Philip MacDonald (John Mills), serving as Australia’s governor. Through an experimental rehabilitation program, he offers property to hardy prisoners as a means of compelling them to abandon criminality. Not unimportantly, the program also serves the crown’s goal of colonizing remote areas. Adam Beecher (Beau Bridges) is an American serving a two-year term on assault charges, and his incarceration gets extended by seven years following an escape attempt. Sympathetic to Adam’s claim that he was innocent of the original crime, Sir Philip selects Adam for the dowry experiment, giving the inmate his pick of several jailed women. He chooses Bess (Jane Merrow), a willful convict from Ireland. They establish a homestead in a rugged valley, but conflict emerges with gangs of criminals seeking to exploit and terrorize the homesteaders.

          Had Adam’s Woman been written with more care and sophistication, the picture would have been a valuable piece of historical fiction, using the dowry system to explore myriad aspects of this complicated chapter in Australia’s history. Alas, the filmmakers simultaneously attempt too little and too much. Characterizations are thin, and the politics are mostly reduced to easily digestible slogans. More problematically, the narrative has an epic sprawl despite a running time of just 115 minutes; to properly service all the subplots and themes on display, three hours would have been a more ideal duration. The picture bursts with provocative ideas, and the production values are generally excellent, but everything feels rushed and superficial. Regarding the performances, Merrow and costar Andrew Keir (who plays a merciful prison guard) are the standouts, melding grit with heart. Mills is as mannered as usual, though he speaks beautifully, and Bridges applies more blunt-force intensity than precision or skill. Adding to the movie’s ho-hum quality are the fruity folk songs on the soundtrack, such as the opening-credits number that overdramatically describes harsh sentences given to prisoners exiled from Britain to Australia.

Adam’s Woman: FUNKY

Patrick (1978)

          An above-average shocker from Down Under, Patrick employs the creepy premise of a seemingly comatose character using supernatural means to terrorize those around him. Specifically, Patrick (Robert Thompson) has been a resident in a special hospital for several years, ever since he murdered his mother and his lover. Patrick’s cynical caretaker, Doctor Roget (Robert Helpmann), refers to the inert patient as “160 pounds of limp meat hanging off a comatose brain,” but sensitive nurse Kathy Jacquard (Susan Penhaligon) treats Patrick with compassion and respect. This being a horror movie, things don’t go well for her. Yet the plot, which also includes some romantic-triangle stuff involving Kathy’s estranged husband and her new would-be boyfriend, is of secondary importance, even though Everett De Roche’s script is logical, suspenseful, and tight. What makes Patrick exciting to watch is the way Aussie director Richard Franklin, who cut his teeth on episodic TV and raunchy comedy features, builds a sense of realism around fantastical events.

          Franklin and his collaborators get things started with a good jolt, then take their time developing characters, locations, and mood before unleashing the heavy pyrotechnics. The filmmakers also lace the picture with unsettling details, all of which feel germane to the world they’ve created. A good example is the central location of the hospital where Patrick resides. Instead of using the predictable visuals of an antiseptic, institutional building, the filmmakers set the action inside a large Victorian house, complete with soaring gables and a wraparound porch. Juxtaposed against the welcoming décor of the building is the cold behavior of the doctor and his head nurse. This combination of seemingly disparate elements creates both specificity and the necessary quality of uneasiness—something feels fundamentally off even before violent things happen. Similarly, the psychic-phenomena stuff starts slowly and builds steadily, giving the viewer time to accept wild notions of telekinesis and the like. It also helps that Franklin and his collaborators spice the movie with grounded gross-out moments, such as the fate of an unfortunate frog used in a scientific demonstration.

          Helpmann is the obvious standout among the cast, giving an urbane quality to the role of a healer hiding horrible tendencies, and Penhaligon acquits herself well as a damsel in distress. Still, much credit is due to Thompson, whose intense gaze makes the title character memorable even though he’s motionless and speechless. An unauthorized sequel, the Italian production Patrick Still Lives, was released in 1980, and a remake, again produced in Australia and again titled Patrick, hit theaters in 2013.

Patrick: GROOVY

1980 Week: The Earthling

          A staple on cable TV in the early ’80s and also one of the final statements of actor William Holden’s long and venerable career, the US/Australia coproduction The Earthling is a strange movie that feels like a conventional one. Slickly directed by Peter Collinson and boasting gorgeous location photography of Australian forests and mountains, The Earthling has such a literary quality that it seems as if it was extrapolated from a short story, although the narrative was written directly for the screen. Holden plays a dying man who returns to the Australian wilderness where he was raised so his life can end where it began. His plan hits a bump when he witnesses a car crash that leaves a 10-year-old boy orphaned. Instead of escorting the child back to civilization, Holden’s character yells at the frightened youth and tells him to fend for himself, until finally agreeing to become the boy’s guardian. Holden’s character then drags the kid along as he ventures deeper into a remote forest.

          Some movies about inspirational relationships between old and young characters concern the teaching of life lessons. The Earthling has some of that stuff in its DNA, but it’s also about the teaching of death lessons. Had the filmmakers done a better job of defining their characters, the movie could have become a timeless meditation on using compassion to overcome the impermanence of human existence. Instead, The Earthling is something like a rough draft of that hypothetically fascinating movie.

          The picture is murky right from the start. Patrick Foley (Holden) arrives in a small Australian town, where he briefly reconnects with a childhood friend named Christian (Alwyn Kurtis). This simple scene should have allowed the filmmakers to answer basic questions, such as why Patrick has an American accent and why he left home. Instead, the scene is a prickly argument about how Patrick doesn’t appreciate the people who love him, culminating with Christian’s accusation that Patrick’s plan to die alone is characteristically selfish. Like so many other things in The Earthling, this crucial scene kinda works and kinda doesn’t. The main thrust is clear, inasmuch as it’s impossible to misunderstand how the filmmakers want viewers to perceive the main character, and yet the details are so fuzzy that it’s hard to genuinely believe what’s happening.

          And so it goes throughout The Earthling. Patrick and the orphan, Shawn (Ricky Schroder), bond simply because the story needs them to bond, not because the filmmakers present evidence of real human connection. It doesn't help that tow-headed Schroder is the quintessential Hollywood kid actor, exuding innocence as he cries glycerin tears. Still, the wreckage wrought by Holden’s years of offscreen hard living lend gravitas and poignancy to his characterization, meaning that he’s in a different—and superior—movie than the one occupied by his costar.

The Earthling: FUNKY

Ride a Wild Pony (1975)

          Like the following year’s The Littlest Horse Thieves, gentle family picture Ride a Wild Pony is a live-action offering from Walt Disney Productions that’s completely bereft of American idiom. Whereas The Littlest Horse Thieves was made in the UK, Ride a Wild Pony was shot in Australia. Furthermore, the picture was based upon Australian literary material, and nearly all the actors are Aussies. So even though Ride a Wild Pony offers the same sort of animal-centric, feel-good story one normally associates with the Disney brand, the picture is in some respects a foreign film. It is also, unfortunately, not a very good film, although the story is compassionate and harmless and sensible. The problem is that there isn’t very much story, so the exact same set of narrative events could have been put across just as effectively, if not more so, in, say, a one-hour production made for one of Disney’s TV shows. Ride a Wild Pony spins a threadbare yarn about a poor boy’s bond with a willful pony, and the picture doesn’t embellish the core story with much in the way of action, comedy, or suspense.

          Scotty Pine (Robert Bettles) is the son of a poor farmer in New South Wales. He lives so far from the nearest school that his truancy becomes the subject of legal action. Kindhearted lawyer Charles Quayle (John Meillon) arranges a deal by which Scotty gains the use of a wild pony as transportation to and from school. Scotty falls in love with the animal, whom he names “Taffy,” and they share adventures until the day Taffy breaks free from his stall and runs away. Scotty is heartbroken. Meanwhile, a rich girl named Josie Ellison (Eva Griffith) suffers in different ways, because she lost the use of her legs following a bout of infant paralysis. She longs to ride horses, even though it’s unsafe for her to do so. Her father decides to build her a one-person carriage. To pull the cart, Josie selects a spirited pony from a local herd, unaware that it’s actually the long-lost “Taffy.” She renames the horse and revels in riding her new carriage. That is, until Scotty sees the horse and carriage one day and liberates “Taffy.” More legal action ensues.

          Ride a Wild Pony is fine as far as it goes. The child actors are neither especially cute nor especially whiny, the adult actors perform their roles well, and the abundant location photography creates a pleasant sense of place. To its credit, Ride a Wild Pony is a kiddie film that more or less unfolds in the real world of adult social structures, meaning that actions have believable repercussions, and that children aren’t allowed to run wild. That said, the ending is a foregone conclusion, and, in fact, everything that happens in Ride a Wild Pony is predictable.

Ride a Wild Pony: FUNKY

20th Century Oz (1976)

          After decades in which producers largely abstained from adapating L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, presumably to avoid comparisons with the timeless MGM musical The Wizard of Oz (1939), the ’70s saw a handful of bold new interpretations. The most famous of these projects is the all-black musical The Wiz, which hit Broadway in 1975 before becoming a film in 1979, but a lesser-known spin on Baum’s fictional universe emerged from Down Under around the same time.

          Released in Australia in 1976 and the Unites States a year later, 20th Century Oz—which was originally titled Oz: A Rock n Roll Road Movie—mostly squanders the brilliant notion of placing Dorothy Gale’s story within a modern glam-rock context. Writer-director Chris Löfvén seems to run out of creative gas at regular intervals, as if the chore of replacing Baum’s fantastical characters with real-world avatars is just too much. Additionally, it occasionally seems as if Löfvén is riffing specifically off MGM’s movie, rather than the Baum source material, so segments of the story that should be energized by musical numbers are not. That’s because, despite the subtitle the film bore during its Australian release, 20th Century Oz is not precisely a musical. It’s a drama that contains a few scenes in which characters perform music.

          The other big shortcoming to Löfvén’s approach is that he failed to invent a memorable stand-in for the Wicked Witch of the West; as a result, the movie’s Dorothy spends a lot of time wandering around the Australian countryside without any real obstacles in her way, save for the elusive nature of the movie’s Wizard character. Nothing lacks momentum quite like a road movie without a narrative structure predicated on clearly defined dramatic conflict. On the plus side, the allusions to glam-rock culture work well, and some of the tunes featured in the background of the movie are memorable, even if they’re not fully integrated into the storytelling.

          At the beginning of the movie, Dorothy (Joy Dunstan) is a 16-year-old groupie looking for kicks. Hopping into a van with a band that she sees perform one evening, Dorothy gets knocked unconscious during a car accident. She emerges into a dream state where the band members personify other characters, and the dream-state Dorothy decides she must attend a concert by sexualized rock star The Wizard (Graham Matters). Instead of Glinda the Good Witch, Dorothy meets a gay clothier named Glin the Good Fairy (Robin Ramsaay), who provides Dorothy with magic red shoes.

          20th Century Oz is decidedly adult, with four-letter words and fleeting nudity. That aspect of the picture pays off with the film’s best image—Dorothy peels back a shower curtain to discover The Wizard without his stage makeup, thereby providing a clever riff on a moment from the MGM movie while also saying something about the artifice of glam-rock. Getting there requires slogging through a lot of drab scenes, and it’s hard to generate much rooting interest in Dunstant’s petulant characterization. That said, good luck getting the movie’s bouncy theme song, “Living in the Land of Oz,” out of your head.

20th Century Oz: FUNKY

1980 Week: Breaker Morant

          Beautifully filmed, expertly acted, meticulously directed, and thoughtfully written, Breaker Morant is not only one of the best Australian films ever made, but also one of the finest dramas of its era. Presenting a complex story about courage, cowardice, politics, violence, and war, the picture dramatizes an infamous real-life incident that took place during the early 20th century in what later became South Africa. Amid the storms of the Second Boer War, fought between forces of the British Empire and those resisting British rule, three officers in an Australian regiment serving the UK were accused of killing unarmed combatants, including a German priest, as reprisal for the murder of their commanding officer. Partisans of the accused characterized the legal action that was brought against the Australians as craven political expediency, a maneuver designed by the British to appease German interests and facilitate a peace settlement. Despite strong evidence proving that the Australians were following orders, the officers were executed, and many people perceived the event as a classic miscarriage of justice.

          Cowritten and directed by Bruce Beresford, using Kenneth J. Ross’ play Breaker Morant as a foundation, this elegantly constructed film follows the trial of the Australians and includes flashbacks to key events on the battlefield. A picture emerges of a conflict in which the rules of engagement were murky at best. The leader of the Australians is the sophisticated Harry “Breaker” Morant (Edward Woodward), a horseman and poet who was born in England and therefore understands the duplicities of the British aristocracy better than his Australian-born comrades. In fact, Morant realizes his fate is sealed the minute he meets the attorney assigned to represent the Australians, an inexperienced Aussie named Major J.F. Thomas (Jack Thompson). The lawyer is given only a day to prepare, and all of his motions to buy time are overruled. Yet as the absurdly one-sided military trial commences, Thomas proves more formidable than either the defendants or the jurists expected, sparking hope among the Australians that truth may out. In sad and tragic ways, it does—with little effect on the foregone conclusion.

           Through evidence and testimony, Thomas demonstrates that a no-prisoners policy was in place before the death of the Australians’ commanding officer, thereby demolishing the prosecution’s argument that Morant and the others acted savagely. “The tragedy of war,” Thomas opines, “is that these horrors are committed by normal men, in abnormal circumstances.”

          Beresford shows exquisite restraint in every aspect of filmmaking. The performances are almost perfectly modulated, with anger breaking through decorum at just the right moments, and the camera angles and lighting that Beresford contrives with cinematographer Donald McAlpine heighten tension while also infusing scenes with the immersive texture of remote locales. Woodward is extraordinary in the title role, blending cynicism and romanticism to incarnate a unique individual. Bryan Brown, in his breakout performance, lends roguish charm while playing one of Morant’s co-defendants. And Australian-cinema stalwart Thompson does some of the best work of his career. Best of all, the movie can be watched in close detail by viewers curious about the internecine historical details, and it can also be absorbed viscerally as the story of ordinary men thrown into battle against forces beyond their ken.

          Either way, it’s a masterpiece of dramatic storytelling.

Breaker Morant: RIGHT ON

Newsfront (1978)

          Offering a nostalgic but tart look at the period in media history when theatrical newsreels gave way to television coverage, the handsomely crafted Newsfront also includes a litany of important Australian events from the years 1948 to 1956. A similar story could have been told about nearly any developed nation, but the rugged Australian setting fits this specific narrative about an old-fashioned cinematographer who resists change. In addition to making his feature debut, Aussie director Philip Noyce cowrote the script, which dramatizes social and technological changes by juxtaposing the experiences of stubborn Len Maguire with those of his comparatively easygoing younger brother, Frank. Yet the Len/Frank saga is just one of many storylines.

          Deliberately episodic, since actual Australian newsreels are woven into the story, Newsfront unfolds like a soap opera, with the staffers at two competing newsreel agencies crisscrossing over time. Len evolves from the cocky daredevil who’ll do anything for a shot to the embittered veteran who gets scolded for playing it safe. Along the way, he changes wives, loses friends to tragedy, and proudly supports the Communist Party. He’s a thorny choice for a central character. Although Newsfront features several action scenes depicting the risks Len and his peers take to capture footage, the most dynamic vignettes actually occur in mixing studios. It’s fascinating to watch the newsreel teams create soundtracks live—as a director gives cues by hand, a sound technician adjusts the music score and a voice-over actor delivers the purple prose for which newsreels were famous. Newsreel camera technology was the same as that used for fiction films, but this particular mixing process was unique to the newsreel medium.

          Generally speaking, the workplace scenes in Newsfront are more effective than the domestic bits, partially because Noyce employs such an understated style, and partially because leading man Bill Hunter (as Len) is supremely stoic. Hunter is cast well, seeing as how Len’s first marriage becomes a casualty of his remoteness, but Hunter never generates much emotional engagement. Costars Chris Haywood (as Len’s apprentice) and Gerard Kennedy (as Len’s brother) are more accessible, and the whole cast is quite good on a technical level. A pre-stardom Bryan Brown plays a small role, and Wendy Hughes offers a striking presence as the woman who gets caught between Frank and Len.

          Boasting consistently impressive production values—a sequence involving a flood looks amazing—Newsfront is quite watchable despite its clinical quality and ho-hum ending. Additionally, the movie is noteworthy because it earned a slew of Australian Film Institute awards (the Aussie equivalent to the Oscars), and because it marked a pivotal moment in Noyce’s career. Although the director didn’t achieve a true international breakthrough until helming the taut Nicole Kidman thriller Dead Calm (1989), Noyce subsequently directed numerous big-budget films, including a pair of Jack Ryan adventures and the twin 2002 triumphs Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American.

Newsfront: GROOVY

Tim (1979)

          The same year that Mel Gibson first played Mad Max, in the film of the same name, he starred in this very different feature, a sticky-sweet romance about a middle-aged woman who falls for a mentally challenged fellow 20 years her junior. While not an especially interesting movie, thanks to the sluggish pacing and trite storyline, Tim has some novelty simply because of Gibson’s presence. While his innate charm gets him through, the actor is as mediocre in Tim as he is assured in Mad Max. This says a lot about the importance of synchronicity between actor and role. In the ensuing years, Gibson’s capacity for real-life anger has become legendary, so it’s now easy to recognize why he simulated Mad Max’s sociopathic angst so effectively. Yet the title role in Tim called for an actor who could convey pure innocence, and that particular quality seemed to exist slightly outside Gibson’s wheelhouse circa the late ’70s.

          Throughout Tim, he diligently strips free of affect and guile, but in doing so, Gibson comes across more like a needy puppy dog than a believable human being. It’s also distracting that Gibson is so extraordinarily attractive—whether he’s prancing about in tiny swim trunks or working in short-shorts and a tank top, Gibson looks like he’s in a homoerotic music video, rather than a serious dramatic film. So while he’s not bad in the film, per se, he’s just slightly miscast—which has an impact on the overall project, since he is, after all, portraying the title character.

         That said, Tim is an essentially respectable enterprise. U.S. actress Piper Laurie, the picture of midlife elegance, stars as Mary Horton, an American-born professional living in Australia. One day, she spots handsome young laborer Tim (Gibson) doing yardwork next door. When her own gardener calls in sick, Mary hires Tim as a handyman, eventually extending his work to her beach house as well as her primary residence. Because Tim is simple-minded, Mary’s burgeoning affection for the young man is initially quasi-maternal in nature. Yet her patronage pleases Tim’s blue-collar parents, who fear Tim has no prospects in life. Then, after both of Tim’s parents fall ill, Mary’s role in the young man’s life becomes more central. She denies the physical aspects of her attraction to Tim until the circumstances of their lives change, so much of the film’s drama stems from Mary’s angst over whether to get intimate with a man who has the mind of a child.

          Based on a novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough—who famously revisited the forbidden-love genre for The Thorn Birds, which became a massive U.S. miniseries—Tim is gentle to a fault. There’s very little dramatic conflict, the movie is padded with flat and repetitive scenes of contented people enjoying each other’s company, and the gooey music score makes Tim seem like a Hallmark greeting card come to life. Still, Laurie lends more than a touch of class, Gibson’s megawatt charisma is on full display, and the Australian locations are lovely. Call it a draw.

Tim: FUNKY

Stone (1974)

          Just as the biker-movie craze was losing steam in the U.S., where it originated, the genre found new life Down Under. Yes, Stone is an Australian flick about two-wheelers and the violent men who ride them, complete with bar brawls, a biker funeral, drug-trip montages, senseless violence, unexpected poeticism, and, of course, the beloved combination of compliant chicks and plentiful booze. Stone starts like gangbusters and has a somewhat enjoyable action finale, but it goes slack in the middle once the filmmakers realize they’re run out of plot. Thus, Stone is not only a loving tribute to American biker movies but also a stylistic cousin to them—because, after all, most U.S. biker movies fall apart in the middle, too. It’s all about fighting, freedom, and fucking, man, so we don’t need your rules and your structure. Can you dig it?

          In Stone, someone is systematically terminating members of an outfit called the Grave Diggers, so an undercover cop is assigned to ride with the gang until the culprit (or culprits) can be identified. Predictably, the bikers resist the intrusion of an outsider, but when muscle-bound policeman Stone (Ken Shorter) proves his mettle in a fight, the Grave Diggers cautiously accept him into the fold. Turns out the folks behind the assassinations are business-suited conspirators who want the bikers eliminated because one of the Grave Diggers witnessed a political assassination. Further complicating matters is the fact that the biker who saw the event, hulking Toad (Hugh Keays-Byrne), was so wigged out on acid at the time of the murder that he’s not sure whether what he saw really happened.

          Obviously, the plot is not the big draw here—but what Stone lacks in substance, it makes up for in scuzzy style. The Grave Diggers all look believably filthy and wasted (real Aussie bikers participated in the making of the film), the “kills” are flamboyantly nasty, and it’s a kick to see the behaviors of American motor clubs transposed to the environs of coastal Australia. In particular, it’s amusing to hear typical I-gotta-be-me biker speeches rendered in Aussie accents. (Imagine feasting your ears on this spiel: “Whoever got you’s gonna get got, too . . . ol’ Satan’ll be in there with you, so you’ll be all right.”) Stone also benefits from a handful of snazzy design flourishes, like the boxy sidecar driven by a Grave Digger during the funeral, or the crazy eye-patch/missing tooth ensemble sported by biker Dr. Death (Vincent Gil). Furthermore, Stone is slathered front-to-back with crunchy rock music courtesy of Billy Green. Given the low expectations that reasonable folks bring to the biker-movie genre, Stone satisfies with its piquant mixture of lurid elements. If tested by any higher standards, however, the picture would be found wanting.

Stone: FUNKY

Wake in Fright (1971)

          The ’70s produced several films about civilized men descending into barbarism, but most of these pictures were predicated on the notion of violence begetting violence. For example, in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), the hero embraces brutality to protect his home from attackers. The disturbing Australian drama Wake in Fright—originally released in the U.S. as Outback—takes a different route. In this movie, a genteel teacher becomes stranded in Australia’s rugged interior, and then slowly begins to emulate the animalism of bored rural types who pass their time by drinking, fighting, gambling hunting, and screwing. Wake in Fright is a slow burn, but once things click about an hour into the film, the story assumes the quality of a nightmare. (Fair warning: If you find kangaroos adorable, you will have a hard time watching this picture’s gory hunting scenes, which feature real animals getting killed onscreen.)

          English actor Gary Bond, whose lanky frame and tanned skin make him look like a dark-eyed version of Peter O’Toole, plays John Grant, the instructor at a one-room schoolhouse in Tiboonda, Australia. On Christmas break, John heads for a vacation in Sydney by train, only to get delayed in the desolate city of Bundanyabba. While stuck in “The Yabba,” as the locals refer to the place, John loses all his cash gambling, so he has no choice but to rely on the kindness of strangers. Unfortunately, those strangers include such outback eccentrics as “Doc” Tydon (Donald Pleasence) and his drinking buddies. These wild men consume beer like normal human beings inhale oxygen, and their idea of a good time is driving around the countryside, killing animals, smashing private property, and throttling each other during vicious fistfights and wrestling matches. Yet as the days drag endlessly on, John falls into his new acquaintances’ behavior patterns. How deeply John travels into the moral abyss is best discovered while watching the movie, but suffice to say the John Grant who staggers out of “The Yabba” after his darkest night of sex and violence bears only a fleeting resemblance to the man who began the journey.

          Director Ted Kotcheff, a journeyman Canadian who made films in a startling variety of genres, shoots Wake in Fright stylishly, merging haunting standalone images—that shot of Pleasence with coins over his eyes!—with elegant camera movements during dialogue scenes. Throughout the picture, Kotcheff’s direction of actors, visuals, and sound is focused and purposeful. In fact, even though he made several films that were more accessible, including the sleek comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978) and the vivid actioner First Blood (1982), Wake in Fright might well be Kotcheff’s finest hour as a cinema artist.

          Perhaps because he’s not Australian, Bond lends a believable tension to the story, approaching the weirdness of the outback from an external perspective until his character is co-opted into madness. Pleasence channels otherworldliness as only he can, and he spices his role with ambiguous sexuality. (Kotcheff fleshes out the cast with a variety macho men and put-upon women, conveying the sense of rural Australia as a primeval battleground.) Wake in Fright is infused with vivid textures, from the coarse dirt beneath the characters’ feet to the humid air that makes everyone sweat relentlessly. Wake in Fright leaves many crucial narrative questions unanswered, but some of the images it presents are scalding.

Wake in Fright: GROOVY

The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

          First, the usual disclaimer for a foreign film that received a dodgy initial release in the U.S.—this Australian feature was originally titled The Cars That Ate Paris, but the fine folks at New Line Cinema must have assumed that American moviegoers would wrongly assume the picture was set in France. Hence the moniker on the above poster: The Cars That Eat People. And while automobiles don’t actually consume any people (or municipalities) in the picture, onscreen events are so bizarre that carnivorous vehicles wouldn’t have represented much of a stretch. Incredibly, this grim phantasmagoria represents the directorial debut of Peter Weir, who subsequently joined the ranks of the world’s most respected filmmakers. One assumes that the normally high-minded Weir envisioned the picture as a satire on consumerist culture (and on the eccentricities of rural Australians), but the surpassing weirdness of The Cars That Ate Paris is highly distracting. The picture doesn’t cross over into outright surrealism, but it comes close.

          Framed somewhat like a horror movie, The Cars That Ate Paris presents a fictional Australian municipality called Paris, where the main business is scavenging parts from cars that crash on a nasty mountaintop road just outside of town. In fact, Paris residents actually cause these accidents, evading notice from authorities by concealing evidence. Worse, survivors are taken to the local hospital and lobotomized, which is why the hospital is stocked with people in semi-vegetative states. One night, a sad-sack type named Arthur (Terry Camilleri) and his brother fall into the Paris trap, and only Arthur survives. For reasons that never become particularly clear, the mayor of Paris, Les (John Meillon), decides to accept Arthur into the town’s regular population. Conveniently for the plot, Arthur is afraid of driving because he once caused a fatal vehicular accident, so he has no real means of escape. Much of The Cars That Ate Paris depicts Arthur’s integration into the strange rhythms of Paris culture. The movie also dramatizes strife between the town’s established power structure and youthful rebels led by Charlie (Bruce Spence). The whole strange predicament concludes with a citywide celebration that turns into a bloody riot. During the climax, Weir unleashes such peculiar vignettes as the mayor reading an intense poem filled with Aussie patois (never has the word “billabong” found a more suitable home). Meanwhile, the youth gang rages through the town in customized cars festooned with spikes and other lethal adornments.

          By far the least effective element of The Cars That Ate Paris is the picture’s esoteric humor. Some of the visual gags are so broad they could appear in Monty Python sketches (such as the town doctor using a power drill to perform lobotomies), and some of the bits are so subtle as to barely exist. It’s also possible that the film is so infused with Aussie signifiers that foreigners don’t possess the necessary frame of reference for recognizing some of the punch lines. Still, as the movie grinds through one inexplicable scene after another (and as indifferent leading man Camilleri shuffles through the movie like he’s received one of the town’s signature lobotomies), a sense of inertia clouds the whole enterprise. It’s evident that Weir had an absurdist itch to scratch at this point his career; after all, his next two films were 1975’s ethereal Picnic at Hanging Rock and 1977’s impenetrable The Last Wave. Furthermore, given all that Weir has subsequently accomplished, it’s unwise to dismiss The Cars That Ate Paris as simply a misguided or pretentious attempt at allegory. However, evidence contravening that assessment remains in short supply, because The Cars That Ate Paris is as dull as it is odd.

The Cars That Ate Paris: FREAKY

The Last Wave (1977)

          Australian filmmaker Peter Weir made this enigmatic movie as the follow-up to his first international success, the moody drama Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), and The Last Wave ventures even further into the realm of dark fantasy than its predecessor. Filled with dream sequences, jarring sound effects, perplexed characters, and unexplained phenomena, The Last Wave rides the same trippy groove as many of David Lynch’s movies. It’s telling that Weir shifted into more conventional storytelling after making The Last Wave, generating such intense dramas as The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) and Witness (1985); although those pictures integrate atmosphere just as strongly as the director’s early oddities, Weir clearly found his niche as dramatist, rather than as a fantasist.

          Anyway, The Last Wave features a most unlikely leading man, tightly wound TV heartthrob Richard Chamberlain, as a Australian lawyer drawn into an odd criminal case at the same time the island nation is plagued by strange weather. And since the hero defends four Aboriginals, the storyline includes a heady dose of mysticism and premonition, as seen through the prism of the ongoing culture clash that’s inherent to the texture of post-Colonial Australia. Oh, and all of this is squished into the cinematic framework of a thriller—sort of—because The Last Wave exists somewhere on the loose continuum between drama and horror. When the story begins, several Aboriginals get into a brawl at a pub, ending in a death. David (Chamberlain), a tax lawyer who doesn’t normally handle criminal matters, is enlisted to represent the surviving Aboriginals, and this triggers a strange spiral in David’s orderly existence. In the course of investigating the crime—and attempting to understand the weird meteorological happenings plaguing Australia—David transitions from the comforting world of rational explanations to the frightening zone of metaphysical mysteries.

          Weir, who co-wrote the picture with Tony Morphett and Petru Popsecu, paints himself into one narrative corner after another—and whether he actually extricates himself from these traps is a highly subjective matter. Clearly averse to providing tidy explanations, Weir generates a series of cryptic signifiers, often presenting long stretches of screen time without dialogue. Very soon into the movie’s running time, it becomes challenging to differentiate what’s “really” happening from what’s occurring inside the protagonist’s mind. Therefore, by the end of the movie, it’s tough to determine whether the narrative has reached a personal apocalypse or an actual apocalypse.

          One wonders whether all of this would have been more effective with a defter actor in the leading role, because while Chamberlain valiantly simulates existential panic and general intensity, he fails to define David as a distinctive character. Conversely, Aboriginal actor David Gulpill (of Walkabout fame) brings an effective level of mystery to his performance as one of the accused men, since his character represents a native culture that white men like David will never fully understand. The Last Wave is an interesting ride, but the movie demands great patience on the part of the viewer. Growing steadily more opaque with each passing scene, the film dives deep into dark water and never looks back.

The Last Wave: FREAKY

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

          Although Australian director Peter Weir had been working steadily on feature and TV projects in his homeland since the late ’60s, he first scored worldwide acclaim with this evocative literary adaptation, which is often mistaken for a depiction of a real historical incident. Novelist Joan Lindsay, who wrote the book upon which the film is based, has given so many cryptic answers about the inspiration for his story that some interested parties have tried to prove that three girls from a private college (and one of their adult caretakers) really disappeared in 1900 while exploring Hanging Rock, a massive geological formation in South Australia. As written by Cliff Green, this film adaptation fuels the speculative fire by presenting Lindsay’s narrative like a true-life unsolved mystery. Moreover, Weir casts a beguiling spell by exploring the multilayered psychological impact of the disappearances on people throughout the area containing both the college and Hanging Rock. (The geological formation, at least, is real.)

          The film reveals characterization through crisis. Stern headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) frays when the careful order of her school dissipates; fragile orphan Sara (Margaret Nelson) crumbles after the loss of a fellow student with whom she was infatuated; and a wealthy young man, Tom (Tony Llewellyn-Jones), becomes obsessed with finding the missing girls. Lingering over all of these characters is the specter of Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), the leader of the group that went missing. An ethereal beauty, she represents a life force whose loss the world cannot abide. This is all very heady stuff, and Picnic at Hanging Rock is perhaps most successful as a conversation piece, since it raises all sorts of provocative questions about what happens when the lives we build for ourselves get shaken by unforeseeable events.
          Furthermore, Weir’s filmmaking is unassailably tasteful, with eerie pan-flute melodies floating over gossamer images of beautiful girls in white-linen dresses wandering through the volcanic outcroppings of Hanging Rock. Yet after the memorable first half-hour, which depicts the prelude to the disappearances and the actual Hanging Rock excursion, the narrative becomes muddy and turgid. Weir and his collaborators seem indecisive about which characters should be most prominent, and Weir vacillates between flights of dreamlike fancy and hard-edged vignettes of character-driven realism. The movie is also painfully humorless, so the middle stretch is quite tedious. Things cohere bit more during the finale, when viewers are finally shown the lasting impact of the disappearances, although it’s frustrating that certain climactic events are dismissed in a closing voiceover instead of being depicted onscreen. All in all, Picnic at Hanging Rock is filled with interesting insights, moments, and textures, but its restraint is stifling.
          Still, the picture helped Weir get noticed as a filmmaker of unusual sensitivity, so just a few years later, he directed his first Hollywood movie, the similarly moody The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). Six Oscar nominations later (so far), Weir is firmly entrenched as one of the world’s most respected cinematic storytellers.

Picnic at Hanging Rock: FUNKY