Movie review - "Nightmares" (1980) ** (warning: spoilers)

 John D. Lamond tried his hand at soft sore sex and here changed gears, going for the slasher market. The script was written by Colin Eggleston.

They imported a "star" Jenny Neumann, whose main credit was in Larry Buchanan's Mistress of the Apes. This has decent photography and a Brian May score. It's also got a young Gary Sweet (lots of hair and a high pitched voice), Max Phipps doing good work as the mean director, John Michael Howson in a hilariously OTT cameo as a critic, Gary Day as a cop, the people in the theatre show also include Maureen Edwards, Briony Behets, Sue Jones and Nina Landis.

 We know Neumann's the killer all along so there's not a lot of suspense. There's some okay kills - I'm not the best judge, slashers aren't my thing. The theatre atmosphere is ideal.

I wish Nina Landus has played the lead, Neumann doesn't bring a lot to the party -would she have even been vaguely known?

A film that you want to like because it was Ozsploitation and Lamond comes across as such a cheerful rogue, and Colin Eggleston made The Long Weekend but it's really not that good.

Movie review - "Breakfast in Paris" (1981) **

Change of pace from John D. Lamond... a romance (not really a rom com) about an American woman Barbara Parkins whose boyfriend (Chris Milne from Felicity) cheats so she heads to Paris and falls in love with Rod Mullinar.

These films are harder to do than they appear, and Lamond can't pull it off. It's clearly being shot in Melbourne with Paris second unit and the budget doesn't stretch to truly nice looking clothes and settings.  The blocking, shot selection and camerawork doesn't help.

Mullinar was something of the George Brent of Australian cinema so it's fun to see him as the leading man in this venture. 

This film is a hard slog. There's not enough story or fashion or glamour. The false love interest is false. (Why not bring back Milne as a threat). The dialogue is poor. There's a lot of swearing. No chemistry between the heads. Mullinar's character is controlling.

I love that Lamond made it but his film really is inept. He wasn't much of a filmmaker. I'm giving it two for sentimentality.

Movie review - "A Slice of Life" (1983) *

10BA comedy that reunites the team from Pacific Banana, director John D. Lamond and writer Alan Hopgood. The star is Robin Nedwell, an English actor who had appeared in the Doctor sitcoms.

It's a low concept piece - well, low high concept. Nedwell goes into surgery, is given a vasectomy, becomes irresitible to women, then discovers the vasectomy isn't effective and impregnates the women.

That's a terrible idea for a movie. It's blandly directed, made without wit.

The women include Julie Nihill, Amanda Muggleton, and Jane Clifton so that's some novelty. Other roles are played by John Ewart and Derryn Hinch cameos as himself. Alyce Platt plays a 'giggling girl".

This film is awful. It's unfunny and slow and pointless. Lamonds 70s sex films had more point and heart - they were positive about sex. This is dumb.

Brian May did the music and Michael Hirsch was associate producer. David Parker did stills.

 

Movie review - "Backstage" (1988) *

 A hard slog - though it has some good things: Michael Aitkens is an ideal leading man for an imported star (virile, likable, the right age), the supporting cast is strong (Rowena Wallace, Kym Gyngell, Noel Ferrier) and it has a love for the theatre that is very winning.

Its heart is in those backstage musicals of the 1930s - all the gossipy theatre types and epigrammatic dialogue - and really should have gone all the way and copied that. But there's too much drama, and the star, Laura Branigan, can sing but can't act.

They could have had her going to appear in a musical - singing all the way through rehearsals and on opening night; the filmmakers could have still hit the points they wanted to make about cultural imperialism. But no, she's in a drama, an English drawing room comedy - and we have to sit through Branigan acting in slabs of it. Then we've got to see her audition for The Seagull and acting in slabs of that. The story would have worked just as well had she appeared in a Broadway musical. The poor girl can't act and they keep foisting her acting upon us. It means the second half is a real chore, while the first half was more watchable.

The dialogue is full of epigrammatic quips you'd routinely find in badly written eps of Australian TV - I remember Arcade was full of them - but at least you hear it from some decent actors. Aitkens' character is the son the best Australian playwright of the 1950s who only really had one hit - so I'm guessing he's Ray Lawler's son! (Or Richard Beynon?) He really is rude to Branigan in the opening press conference. Some critics complained that it wasn't realistic critics could teach someone to act but some theatre critics had been directors, eg Harold Clurman.

Movie review - "Alvin Purple" (1973) *1/2

I'm not a wowser, or at least I don't think I am, and I absolutely acknowledge the box office success of this, which was remarkable. It's got a great title and Graeme Blundell is utterly perfect in the lead (any other actor and I think this would have flopped). And there are some very attractive women in stages of undress.

But it's a hard, hard, slog. It's so repetitive - women chase after Alvin. That was okay for the first half hour but as things went on it became more difficult. I remember the car chase being one that particularly broke me.

I mean I could handle it if there had been some solid comedy sequences, but it's a one note samba. There is novelty in seeing grand dames of theatre like Jackie Weaver running (or lying) around nude.

Movie review - "Sky Pirates" (1986) **

No one seems to have a kind word to say about this Oz 10BA Indiana Jones knock off but it's sheer existence is extremely winning. It was made by the producer-director combo of John D Lamond and Colin Eggleston, best known for soft core sex and horror movies, but they managed to raise a relatively healthy budget for this.

That's healthy in terms of Australian films - it suffers badly in comparison with Hollywood blockbusters... though not say Hollywood B films. Judged by the standards of Raiders knock offs it's fine, helped with cheerful performances from John Hargreaves and Max Phipps.

It starts quite well with Hargreaves and Phipps and Simon Chilvers going off on a mission to a Pacific Island.  This is great... but then all this stuff happens off screen, people go missing, and Hargreaves winds up back in Australia being court martialled, then escapes and heads off with Chilvers' daughter, Meredith Phipps to figure out what's going on.

The main problem with this film structure wise is the action keeps stopping and starting again - would've been a much more fun had the mission started and everything built from there. Them being on the run from the authorities has no real pay off or threat once they're going because the bulk of the action happens out in the isolated Pacific.

It's full of irritating holes - why is Phipps evil? Why have a silly Russian roulette scene? What is the Mysterious Power and why does it do what it does.

There's some good stunts and sets. Loved the photography and location work on Easter Island. It's full of tropes I love, like pilots and dingy bars in the third world. It's silly and over the top just a bit sloppy. People were too mean about this.

Movie review - "Felicity" (1979) **

Australia's answer to Emmanuelle - there's even a scene where the title character reads the book - complete with similar soft focus photography, exotic locations and a young woman's sexual awakening. Unlike Emmanuelle, Felicity is a virgin to start off with - well, a virgin when it comes to sleeping with a man, she's already had a boarding school lesbian experiences. She's younger too, which does make this a little uncomfortable at times, even though Glory Annen is clearly in her twenties.

Most of this is set in Hong Kong, giving rise to some terrific production value. (Some of it was shot in Melbourne - I presume the scenes set in that house with a large pool took place there, it feels very spacious for Honkers). There are lots of lingering scenes of Felicity putting on underwear and getting changed and some narration which sounds like it's straight out of Penthouse Forum ("I knew he was watching me as I was getting changed but it excited me", "I began touching my nubile young body").

Yet the film can't be dismissed entirely. It's a rare Australian film that encourages people to have sex, and says that it's an enjoyable thing - not just Felicity, but the family she stays with, her Asian friend (who she sleeps with), the nice bloke she hooks up with (Chris Milne, playing a knockabout self deprecating guy instead of a stud, which is a pleasant change). Even after Felicity and her boyfriend go on a break when she goes to Macao both sleep with other people but aren't punished for it. And there's a surprisingly un-erotic scene where Felicity loses her virginity to a man in a handlebar moustache - which makes the good point that when you have sex you should care about for partner's feelings (a point made in The ABC of Love and Sex, Lamond's earlier film, which characters in this movie go to see).

John Michael Howson makes yet another appearance in a Lamond movie as a pervert. Annen gives quite a good performance (relatively speaking) in the sort of role that is hard to pull off - she's not Sylvia Kristel but she does well enough. Whether you're actually turned on by any of it depends what you're into.

Movie review - "The ABC of Love and Sex" (1978) **1/2

John Lamond's follow up to Australia After Dark is another documentary about the underbelly of Australian life, with more emphasis on sex. This makes it even more exploitative than that first film, although it's less obviously Australian - the things they talk about apply to pretty much every country, really (indeed, apparently the hard core sex footage was shot in Sweden).

But you know, while it's easy to mock these sort of films, and it's no masterpiece, its heart is in the right place. Yes there are plenty of bums and boobs and dicks and vaginas, but the messages it puts forward are ones that many sex therapists espouse today: don't be judgemental about sex, nothing beats a supportive and caring sexual relationship, communication is importance, homosexuals should have the same rights as others, size doesn't matter so much as caring, experimentation can be fun.

It does have that exploitative side (for instance, in the segments of homosexuality it shows gay men being campy and bitchy, and the lesbians having sex) but at least it is supportive and encouraging of people having sex, showing it to be a good, positive, enjoyable thing - which even now remains rare for Australian cinema.

As a piece of cinema, it's a more assured work than Australia After Dark showing Lamond's increasing confidence. I enjoyed the opening and closing animation, John Michael Howson camps it up in a cameo, and there is some gloriously daggy dancing during the open credits. There is also some surprisingly hard core footage (as in erect penises) which is presumably why this ran into censorship trouble.

Movie review - "Australia After Dark" (1975) **

John D Lamond's Aussie knock off of Mondo Cane proved enormously popular in terms of its low budget - the right film at the right time. It's not all about sex, it's about weird and wonderful aspects of Australian society, with an emphasis on sex.

It's a real grab bag - nude modelling, bikini shops, Arnhem Land, Todd Henley regatta, a gay wedding ceremony (sensitively treated, and a rebuke to those who think Lamond was just an exploitation merchant), a pre-op transexual stripper, artists, a look at the amount of beer Australians drink, a prison museum, UFO spotters in Tully, fortune tellers, brothels. It was shot on 16mm and doesn't look too crash hot, and has several leering moments, but it's actually quite interesting in spots. Some of the sequences (e.g. witch ceremonies) look obviously faked but that's part of this movie's charm. 

It's exploitative but not mean spirited. Hayes Gordon does the straight faced narration.

Movie review - "Pacific Banana" (1980) *

A fascinating time capsule - to think this was not only written, but funded, released in some cinemas and on video. But then Alvin Purple had been a phenomenon as had Australia After Dark so the South Australian Film Corporation presumably thought there was still some life in the sex comedy genre.

There is something endearing about a film that is so shameless - with its atrocious puns, frequent nudity, idiotic plot, and dopey humour. It has absolutely no pretentious other than to be a piece of crap - and while the humour is broad, it isn't mean.

It also isn't professional however - the idea of using a narrator to comment on the action (as in actually comment on it - saying things like "oh no!" to events on screen and "watch out Martin") is up there with the worst ideas in the history of Australian cinema. The core story concept is bad too - it's about Martin (Graeme Blundell) sneezing and losing his erection whenever aroused. That's not fun to watch it's just sad and depressing (cf Alvin being chased by all these women was funny). It's also a bit yuck he's pursued by a school girl, even if she is 18, who turns out to be his true love - isn't this skating things a bit close to the wire, even for 1980? The plot with Robin Stewart and his two fiancés feel as though it doesn't go anywhere.

Graeme Blundell does everything he's required to - but he was getting a bit too old to play this sort of role (at this age having been impotent for so long felt sad). There are some nice views of Tahiti, some appalling acting from the support cast, shoddy directing. There are two very good looking girls in Deborah Gray and Alyson Best who keep taking their clothes of and seem like nice people (free spirited rather than sleazy) and Robin Stewart plays his party in the style required. But that narration...