Movie review - "The Naked Bunyip" (1970) **

Future historians looking at Australian films of the early 70s would think the whole county was obsessed with sex, and with good reason. This 1970 film is a sort of semi-documentary within a fictional framework. Graeme Blundell is perfectly cast as an awkward market researcher looking into sex in Australia; he investigates such things as pornography, pack rape, strip clubs, homosexuality and prostitutes. Among the people he interviews are Barry Humphries (as Edna Everage), Jackie Weaver, Harry M Miller, a young John Button and Barry Jones.

The film was a hit, one of the first successes of the Australian film revival; audiences were no doubt partly motivated by voyeurism and a desire to see some naked flesh, but the film was also valuable (then as now) as a social document and a plea for tolerance. It is a bit too long.

The DVD has a superb featurette documentary which has interviews with all the main players, including director John B Murray, executive producer Philip Adams, Blundell and Button, among others; it puts the film in the context of the time, including its unique distribution methods (the filmmakers distributed it themselves – an inspirational example for current struggling Australian filmmakers).