Summerfield (1977)

Warning: I’m going to spoil an important element of the plot that will probably suggest most of the rest of the movie to some readers!

Teacher Simon Robinson (Nick Tate) comes to a small Australian outback town to replace a predecessor who has seemingly disappeared from the face of the Earth. Simon’s a bit put out by this, or rather by the complete disinterest everyone in town shows towards the disappearance. Even the local policeman is more interested in proper and correct car licenses than a guy gone missing. The town’s a bit weird for Simon’s taste anyway, with a populace that mostly carries various kinds of leers and sneers on their faces, and whose members lack even the tiniest smidgen of politeness. Well, the female half  (Geraldine Turner) of the couple running his guest house (apparently the Australian term for boarding house) wants to seduce him, and he being a 70s Australian film leading man isn’t going to say no, but otherwise, it’s an unfriendly and slightly creepy place. Why, even the kids he’s going to teach are greeting him with a fake hanging!

Given the general mood and the boredom that must come with the spirit of this place, Simon begins to poke around the disappearance himself, quickly if not verbally coming to the conclusion that some sort of foul play must have been involved. At least in his mind, he does connect the disappearance to Summerfield, an island separated from the rest of the area by water, a small driveway and quite a high gate, where Sally Abbott (Michelle Jarman), one of his students, lives with her mother Jenny (Elizabeth Alexander) and her uncle David (John Waters). Because he does have a bit of a problem with his libido, he also develops more than just a tiny crush on Jenny, which will not make the situation better in the long run.

Ken Hannam’s Summerfield belongs to the not inconsiderable number of Australian films that build their own little cinematic canon of the Australian gothic. Quite a few of these films have an outsider coming (or sometimes returning) to a small town in the outback where he or she encounters various strange and unfriendly locals, the threat of violence expressed through more sweaty faces than in a Spaghetti Western, and some kind of terrible secret of the past one or more members of the want to keep buried, and which shapes the places present and future.

In Summerfield’s case, the secret is incest, which, going by the way various family portraits are shot, may have been going on for generations as some sort of family tradition, but which at least in this contemporary case is perfectly consensual (cue a discussion of how consensual sibling incest can ever be in your own mind, if that floats your boat, imaginary reader). In something of a clever twist, it’s not so much the hidden secrets bubbling to the surface and the past taking control of the present that leads to the film’s very 70s ending, but Simon not being willing (or able) to leave well enough alone; and as the nasty little twist at the end suggests, he has set in motion the death of three people for no good reason at all. But then, nothing Simon does during the film suggests he is very good at thinking through the consequences of the things he does, or trying to get into the heads of the country people he so clearly dislikes. On the other hand, you only ever know if something should actually be truly left alone or not once you’ve figured out what it is about.


Hannam’s direction style is a bit dry sometimes, perhaps not too surprising from someone working in TV more than in the movies, but there are also quite a few scenes that really drive home the particularly Australian gothic mood of the film. The film features quite a few dramatic shots of flat empty land that don’t suggest a freedom of wide open spaces but the threat of being surrounded by nothing (or nothing but people who just might be a bit crazy thanks to their surroundings), close-ups of the sweaty faces of character actors who look as if they are about to lose it every minute (but never really do), and other things that suggest a Hammer movie but by day and with too much space. Summerfield as a place is particularly great, like the idea of the traditional gothic manor turned Australian and (70s) contemporary, its dwellers isolating themselves from a part of the country that’s already too isolated for comfort, breeding behaviours rather frowned upon in less isolated spaces.

In short: Serial Mom (1984)

 In all honesty, I’ve never been much of a fan of John Waters’s films. I find the campy shock the squares side of cult movies the man operates in generally not terribly interesting – perhaps because I might be square but I’m mostly not shocked by it and really don’t relate to the approach much. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy Waters exists and makes films, mind you, for while his stuff may usually not be my jam, it clearly is his, and last time I looked, directors following their personal obsessions and interests is how it should be. Serial Mom, however, does work for me quite well.

This serial killer comedy about a murderous suburban house wife played by Kathleen Turner is one of the films that came to pass when Waters somehow got the opportunity to work with actual Hollywood money. I can’t see that happening today, or rather, they’d probably try to get Waters to make a (serious) superhero movie. As it stands, Waters made great use of his budget, not just by hiring a cast of slightly higher profile actors than his usual posse (though some of them are in here too). Most impressive is how good the film looks. Waters is clearly putting to work everything he learned when making independent films to create a so-healthy-it-is-sickly (until it turns out it is actually sick) kind of suburban paradise/freak show that’s so bright and tasteless it is only natural it exclusively harbours people as unhinged as everyone in here is. As a satire, this is of course incredibly on the nose, but being unsubtle is one of the things Waters is clearly about, and here he is so imaginative in the escalation of, well, everything, that the unsubtle business filling the film can still be surprising.

The film also happens to contain one of the career best performances of Kathleen Turner. It may not be a nuanced one but then a nuanced performance would rather be missing the point, for what Turner needs to do is throw herself into every craziness, every indignity and every tasteless joke and own it completely, seeing as she’s not supposed to portray an actual human being but the over-the-top peak of everything that’s frightening (and kinda seductive) about suburban life, serial killers and the society that birthed them Waters is so lovingly skewering here. Which she does with such energy and conviction, with a complete lack of vanity she could probably have carried the film alone even if Waters hadn’t been as at the top of his game as he is here.