Simon Wincer Top Ten

 1) Lonesome Dove (1989)

2) Free Willy (1993)

3) Snapshot (1979)

4) Phar Lap (1983)

5) DARYL (1985)

6) The Last Frontier (1986)

7) Against the Wind (1978)

8) The Lighthorsemen (1987)

9) Harlequin (1980)

10) Into the West (2005) 

Movie review - "Minnamurra" (1988) **

 John Sexton had success with the horsey Phar Lap but this didn't do so well despite a lot of good things - the beautiful photography, horses, locations, costumes. Imported star Jeff Fahey fits in fine. The problem is the story. The female lead Tuskha Bergen doesn't have anything to do except be passive-  she should be galloping around being feisty.

Movie review - "Turkey Shoot" (1982) *** (rewatching)

 I watched this out of the corner of my eye on a computer, and that's the best way to see it - distracted, so you can asborb the atmosphere, it's not hard to follow the story, there are explosions and sex.

The film is actually very emotionally satisfying with the prisoners rising up - Olivia Hussey's character has a journey from coward to revolutionary (she seems innocent and adds to tension), Steve Railsback brings intensity, Michael Craig and Carmen Duncan are terrific, Lynda Stoner is sweet. It's a very well cast film. 

The rape and murder of Stoner is still yuck but watching it distracted works. It looks great. Impressive production value at the end.

Ozploitation Top Ten

 1) Roadgames (1981)

2) The Long Weekend (1978)

3) Patrick (1984)

4) Razorback (1984)

5) The Man from Hong Kong (1975)

6) Fantasm (1977)

7) Stone (1974)

8) Mad Max (1979)

9) The Money Movers (1979)

10) Snapshot (1979)

NB.I don't include the ocker comedies in this. 

 

Movie review - "Initiation" (1988) **

 Odd. Thought it was going to be a horror film with an Aboriginal slant. There's a bit of mysticism. But it's not. It's a survival in the bush story. Only that doesn't happen until the last half hour. It's set in the South Australian outback but the bush is shot in the Blue Mountains which is slightly confusing.

Rodney Harvey is fine as an American teen who goes to Australia to met his dad, Bruno Lawrence, who doesn't seem to like him and deals with gangsters (sells marijuana). That's one of the several subplots. Miranda Otto is Lawrence's cute step daughter (introduced doing awkward aerobics) who Harvey is keen on - that's another subplot that doesn't really go anywhere. Anne Marie Winchester is wasted as Lawrence's parter and Otto's daughter. Tony Barry is a farmer. There's a local sleeze who eyes Otto and Harvey beats him up but that plot doesn't go anywhere either.

It's not a bad film it's been made with care, it just doesn't seem to know how to pitch itself. The plane crash survival stuff doesn't happen for too late. If they'd bought that up the front I think this would have played better. And maybe if Otto and Winchester were in the plane crash.

Some money's been spent on the soundtrack - there's Icehouse and Hunters and Collectors. A decent rousing instrumental track at the end. Oz movies website sais with some care and attention this could have been a decent teen action show. That's what it should've been. But commit. Show mum dying. Have him discover romance, proper romance. Beat a bully only set up the bully, play out the story. Make it logical where he gets his bush survival skills. There's ideas here but the film doesn't execute them.

Movie review - "Great Expectations: The Untold Story" (1987) **

 I'm not sure "missing years"sequels are ever a good idea... because if those years were so interesting why were they not in the original? Magwith is a great enigmatic character but if you lose the enigma by making him front and centre is he as interesting? They put in Pip at the start but we never get why Pip means so much. In the novel it's because he reminds Magwith of his dead daughter, isn't it? We don't see that - the film starts with Magwitch's trial.

In fairness maybe that was in the mini series version. The version I saw was a 100 minute cut down version. It feels like a TV movie - the run of the mill photography. Music.

The incident of Magwitch becoming a hang man is taken from a real life case that was dramatised in Rex Rienits 1960s ABC mini series.  Ron Haddrick was in one of those and he turns up in this, giving it a nice synergy.

I enjoyed the little arc of Sigrid Thornton falling for Robert Coleby and turning into a drunken trashback in the space of a few minutes. Bruce Spencer and Noel Ferrier feel like good Dickens types. I'm not sure John Stanton was up to his role - someone like Ray Barrett would've got more light and shade. But really this felt like something the Brits should've made. The actors would've been more at home.

Movie review - "The Everlasting Secret Family" (1988) **

Nutty movie. Fascinating. A friend said it managed to be both homoerotic and homophobic. It's so odd.

For the first half hour or so it was promising. Private school student Mark Lee is seduced by politician Arthur Dingham who then uses Lee who seduce other elements of society. "Oh so it's like a thriller that will be interesting" I thought and awaited for thriller shenanigans. Nope.

Then it sort of hinted that Lee was going to try to find the secret of immortality and then I thought "oh it's going to be a sort of horror/fantasy thing" and waited for that. Nope.

Lee falls for Dingham's son to Heather Mitchell (Paul Goddard) and they... fall in love. The end. Huh?

Why was this film made? How did it get financed? Ginnane was involved? It's a real head scratcher.

It's not particularly well directed, like most Michael Thornhill movies, but again like most of his movies at least has ambition.

Louis Nowra plays a snide suit salemsan in the vein of the one in Sunset Boulevard and does very well.

Movie review - "Dark Age" (1987) **1/2 (re-watching)

My opinions on this haven't changed. It's beautifully shot, a decent script, mediocre direction (I don't want to be mean knowing Arch Nicholson got ALS but it's not very well directed - you only have to compare it with something like Roadgames to know the handling isn't first class).

John Jarrat is fine and Nikki Coghill is magical. I kind of wish she'd played the lead - her character kind of hangs around too much. It would have been better with Coghill been a caring softy with Jarrat as a more swashbuckling type maybe.

The crocodile is bad. Too many close ups. Better to have it lurking under water. Killing the little kid still has a major shock. Poor continuity. Strong support from Burnham Burnham and Gulpilil. Ray Meagher and Max Phipps are a lot of fun too.

Movie review - "The Survivor" (1981) ** (warning: spoiler)

A really frustrating film because it showed so much promise - this could've been really good. Producer Tony Ginnane later said he regretted not showing more gore, going instead for a more cerebral approach. There's no reason that couldn't have worked - had he gotten a decent director. David Hemmings was very mediocre, and the botched job done by him and the screenwriter (though in fairness the latter's work could have been rewritten) stands as a rebuke to the idea Australia doesn't/didn't have enough local talent. It's very poorly written, full of logic holes, and shoddily directed, missing opportunities for suspense wholesale.

Robert Powell really should be an everyman type hero but he looks so weird and ethereal - this worked in Harlequin but not really here. There's no one for the audience to hang on to because Jenny Agutter is weird too - she's a psychic. The film needed an ordinary audience surrogate. They could've dropped the psychic stuff altogether for Agutter. Or used Angela Punch Macgregor more.

Peter Sumner has quite a big role - maybe the film could've used him more. Argh, I don't know, it's so frustrating. I wish Everett de Roche had done a pass at the script. Or Tony Morphett. Someone who got logic. And I wish a decent director had filmed it - Richard Franklin, say. Or Simon Wincer. What a waste.

Movie review - "Snapshot" (1979) ***

One of a series of thrillers produced by Tony Ginnane in the late 70s/early 80s - others include Thirst, Patrick, The Survivor. This is one of the best, an unpretentious, well done flick with solid script work from Everett De Roche and direction from Simon Wincer.

Unlike many other Ginnane works around this time it feels fulfilled - it hits the beats it wants. You don't feel it's left anything out or has massively unfulfilled potential - it's an unpretentious, tight thriller.

The script also benefits from the input of De Roche's wife Chris, in that it is very sympathetic to the female point of view. Model Sigrid Thornton (excellent) is constantly preyed upon, whether its by the weird photographer (Hugh Keays Byrne), a sleazy photographer (Robert Bruning), her best friend (Chantal Contouri), her ex (Vincent Gil), her bitchy sister, her mother who wants her to get back with her ex because he was nice to mum.

Thorton is a strong lead and ideal for women in peril films - she should've played the lead in more Ginnane films (notably Thirst). There's campy fun with a trip to a late 70s cabaret (which gets lots of screentime). Thornton does a topless photo shoot wading in the water on what looks like a freezing day. Contouri tries to seduce Siggie and Denise Drysdale pops up to crack a few bitchy comments.

I don't want to overpraise this. It's very familiar material - stalkers became the bread and butter for soaps. But it's tight, and creepy and well done.

Movie review - "Thirst" (1979) **1/2

A really strong idea - Chantal Contouri discovers she's descended from a royal line of vampires - and a strong world - vampirism in the modern day - but the story doesn't kick on.

Contouri is passive a lot of the time, walking around and being freaked. There's too much padding and repetition - scenes of Contouri walking, refusing blood, escaping and being recaptured. The time could've been better spent on other areas - the royal family, her past. Maybe have her go vampire a lot earlier.

It's a shame because the idea is great and there are some memorably moments - Contouri taking a bloody shower, flashbacks to her being traumatised as a girl.

The cast are ideal to play vampires - Max Phipps, David Hemmings, Henry Silva (wasted in his role), Shirley Camero, Robert Thompson from Patrick. Rod Mullinar is on hand to play his handsome leading man thing which he often did at the time.

It's got other Tony Ginnane hallmarks too like Brian May's booming music and nice atmospheric photography. Unfortunately like much of Ginnane's output it's disappointing.

Movie review - "Harlequin" (1980) **1/2

Notorious in its day because it was made with funds from the Australian taxpayer and the film tried to pretend it wasn't set in Australia - there are references to the US political system rather than the Australian one, plenty of mid Atlantic accents and foreign actors, people drive on the other side of the road, accents are dubbed into Americans.

I personally feel the film could have hit all the story points it wanted, still had imported stars, and be set in Australia. I found the dubbed American accents really annoying - from the bit players mainly... Especially when you have cast like David Hemmings and Paula Duncan capable of mid-Pacific accents. But never mind...

Years on the film comes across as a very flawed piece. There's an imaginative central concept (a modern day updating of the Rasputin story), some interesting characters, beautiful photography, good actors. I would've loved to have read Everett de Roche's original script, with the lead as a priest, and set in Australia, with Harlequin having a strong sexual drive. (I'm surprised there wasn't more sex in the film... isn't that an exploitative element?)

Robert Powell is perfect in the title role. I enjoyed Paula Duncan. David Hemmings was more "iffy"... though it didn't help that his character was so sketchy. Broderick Crawford does his Broderick Crawford thing... again I just wish he's character didn't feel so "cut about".

Alyson Best pops up to provide some brief nudity, in a role that again feels cut about. TV icon Bevan Lee pops up in a support role. Alan Cassell's American accent (dubbed) is annoying.

Still, it's probably one of the best movies Tony Ginnane ever made.

Movie review - "Turkey Shoot" (2015) ** (warning: spoilers)

The third remake of an Aussie-sploitation "classic" following The Long Weekend and Patrick, which doesn't look like being any more successful than those films, though I could be wrong. This was a frustrating movie which actually seemed closer to the 1987 Arnie film The Running Man rather than the Aussie original and is irritatingly dumb in some parts, but isn't all bad.

First of all the good stuff. Jon Hewitt knows how to use the video camera well and there were some exciting scenes where we'd cut to CCTV footage and then back - I think this was done to help cover the low budget (especially a car chase) but it was effective. I really liked the music and some of the action sequences were very well done.

But it's a poor story. And a boring one. Satire of game shows where people watch other people being killed was done a lot in the late 80s - not just Running Man but also Robocop - but here its presented like it's something new and fresh and funny. Smiling cheesy comperes talking about people being killed - hahahaha! Satire! The network executive (Belinda McClory) is ruthless about ratings - wow! satire! (Will network TV even exist a few years in the future? That doesn't seem considered here.  We see the complete credits for the Turkey Shoot TV show not just once, but three times.

I never got a true sense of the world - it's a few years in the future, okay, set mostly in the US (it's annoying that there's Australian tax payer dollars in this with all the characters acting in American in a story which could have easily been set in Australia but never mind...), where the US has been at war in Africa which is going on and on with no end in sight, and Dominic Purcell is in prison for supposedly having committed a massacre in Africa, which the audience boo at, but America has been transformed into this society where there's a show where people cheer at criminals being hunted down and killed? I didn't buy it - at least not the way set up here.

Dominic Purcell lumbers through the lead - he's got the looks and the physicality, but lacks charisma, sensitivity and humour. He never seems too stressed or torn or worried by what's going on- and the script makes him far too much of a superman. It's like there is no threat on Earth enough for him - they constantly introduce all these antagonists and have Purcell dispatch them in about five to ten seconds. The one that made me really mad was when he took out an entire squad of trained killers with automatic weapons by using nothing but a few hand guns and quick reflexes. At this point I felt the filmmakers could be bothered bringing in any tension or legitimate excitement, they were phoning it in. So by the end of the film when they have Purcell take on "the world" - which is admittedly a clever concept and could have sustained the movie if introduced earlier and actually explored - I didn't get into it because I knew they wouldn't do much with it, and they don't.

Viva Bianca at least has warmth, even if she's not terribly convincing as a Navy officer - the filmmakers made the mistake of introducing her via a long take of her walking down the corridor in uniform, and she sashays so much I thought they were setting things up with the gag that she was a stripper. She doesn't have much of a character to play either but at least she participates in the action. (No nudity though despite her track record on Spartacus - like a bewilderingly large proportion of modern day movies which are nods to 70s/80s exploitation, this is relatively sexless and tame in the nudity department.)

Robert Taylor should have made a good villain - he's got the voice, the talent, the presence. But the filmmakers cut off his balls by making him the most incompetent sniper in recent cinematic memory - Purcell sneaks up on him easily not once, but twice; he shoots at Purcell several times but never shoots him; Purcell knocks him out.

The consistent plot holes in this movie were infuriating. The powers that be want to take out Purcell because he knows The Truth but have been unable to kill him over three years even though he's been in prison? (I get that he can survive the occasional shanking in the showers but three years?) General Nicholas Hammond wants to make amends for what he's done with his life (a good character motivation, and his death scene is the best bit in the film).... so instead of just confessing himself, he arranges for Purcell to go on this show, and then Bianca to help him escape, and engineer it so that Purcell visits him? How about just screen something yourself? And Purcell is given the "secret information which could bring down the government" - he doesn't give it to a journalist or upload it himself, he gives it to a random woman (Leah Vanderberg) he meets at a protest? Seriously, she could have been anyone.

I think the big problem with this film is it was made by people who were technically skillful, had some vague idea of what was commercial from what they'd read about, who ripped off a bunch of far too old ideas from the 80s, threw in some lazy "hey the war in Afghanistan is a con" type satire and blamed no one turning up at the cinemas on the fact that there's no market for this sort of movie any more.

Movie review - "Turkey Shoot" (1982) ** (warning: spoilers)

This gets off to a pretty good start, with your standard early 80s montage of society collapsing (well done, it should be said), then some John Carpenter-esque music playing as three prisoners are taking off to a camp, throwing us right into the action. (Apparently there were scenes setting up the action which were cut out but I think they were right to get straight into it, with only quick flashbacks for Steve Railback and Olivia Hussey but they set up everything you need to know.)

There is some campy (excuse the pun) fun at the prison, with Noel Ferrier and Michael Craig excellent as wardens, Steve Railsback hamming it up hilariously as a resistance leader, Lynda Stoner showing off her bare arse in the shower, Olivia Hussey looking terrified, Roger Ward as a sadistic guard, Gus Mecurio as a castrated guard, Carmen Duncan being nasty. All the actors play their roles in exactly the right styl for this sort of thing - intense Railsback, reminding me of a communist militant captured by the Nazis, beautiful flower Hussey out of her depth, scenery chewing pirate acting from the villains etc.

And, you know, some of this was pretty good  - the satire, the Most Dangerous Game set up, the quality of the cast, some of the delirious excesses (a werewolf, the most hilariously inappropriate stand-in breasts for Olivia Hussey during her shower scene). There are bits of over the top violence I didn't mind - Roger Ward's sadistic guard deserved to have his hands cut off, Michael Craig deserved to blow up, the werewolf deserved to be cut up, the cowardly vicious prisoner... well you didn't mind him being tortured. And of course the prisoners taking over the camp and slaughtering all the guards at the end was justified.

But other stuff just felt plain mean - the pretty girl beaten up by Roger Ward at the beginning (Oriana Panozzo) - she didn't deserve that, and the film lingers over her pain. Ditto the brave prisoner (Bill Young) who is part of the escape. Most of all there is the horrible scene where Carmen Duncan captures Stoner, then rapes her and stabs her through the eye with an arrow. I will go along with Trenchard Smith's claim the movie is "only" satire for the most of this movie's running time - but not for these scenes. These scenes have a black heart. And there are far too many of them. (Though it must be said when I watched the movie for the third time, in 2015 on the big screen at the Astor - they bothered me less. Maybe because I knew they were coming. But still, they are not satirical and funny, it is sadism and catering to that market.)

Olivia Hussey's performance is an interesting one. A pretty actress, she looks absolutely terrified throughout the film (apparently this was her emotional state during filming too). She does some kind of empowering things - zipping up Gus Mecurio's dick, chopping off Roger Ward's hands, stabbing Carmen Duncan - but remains scared all the way through. Still, it's sort of a journey.

Seeing it on the big screen in 2015 made me appreciate the quality of the photography and the North Queensland locations. However it did show up a lack of logic in the action sequences - characters run around with little rhyme or reason, baddies are ridiculously bad shots with their guns.

In the end, I look on this as a partly fun futuristic violent satire, with a really, really mean side.

Movie review – “Dark Age” (1987) **1/2

A “lost” film for many years, despite its eminently exploitable subject matter (I remember seeing a TV show segment on its filming which made it sound terrific) – apparently because of troubles caused when RKO bought it for world distribution. I know Arch Nicholson died tragically young but his handling is very TV, and he misses opportunities wholesale to scare the audience or create any sort of atmosphere (the music doesn’t help). The photography is stunning, as are the locations and production design.

John Jarratt and Nikki Coghill are very attractive as the young lead couple – how pretty was Coghill! She is the attractive girl next door, very engaging, with terrific legs and genuine acting ability - look at her expression in her farewell scene to Jarratt when he goes off to fight the croc. Jarratt does his boy next door thing and is winning as the park ranger trying to keep the peace - protecting a crocodile which is eating people. They even have a corny late 80s nude love scene to boot, which feels thrown in, but it is part of the movie's charm.

The script is a bit of a mess in places (eg one minute Coghill is angry at Jarratt, the next she’s fine), and low on croc action. It is however surprisingly PC – the film does this switch half way through and becomes about saving the crocodile rather than killing it, with Max Phipps being the villain and all these aboriginals dying to save the croc. (This is after the crocodile has eaten an aboriginal kid!)

Quentin Tarantino brought this film back – I saw him present it at a Popcorn Taxi Q and A, which was very entertaining despite Quentin’s cold. However he had Jarratt and Coghill up on stage, and Anthony Ginnane in the audience; they needed Ginnane up there because Jarratt and Coghill didn’t know much about the making of the film. Ray Meagher is in the film too, playing a role that could best be described as “Alf Stewart gone evil”, worried about Japanese property developers and the like. He does this hilarious thing where after every line he takes a puff on his cigarette.

 

(In Brian Trechard Smith's memoirs he says he was offered to direct it. He should've done it!)

Book review – “Not Quite Hollywood” by Paul Harris

Companion piece to the documentary is disappointingly slight – only 81 pages. Mark Hartley has gone on record as complaining that there is little written about Aussie exploitation films, which wasn’t exactly true – David Stratton in his books on the industry devotes many pages to the work of Ginnane, and especially the ocker comedies. They’re still a lot better source of information than this book – which doesn’t even feature all the anecdotes in Hartley’s film. It’s colourfully designed with lots of bright pictures and posters but you can’t help longing for a proper history of the industry. One that can tell the real story.

Maybe I’m being unfair here – I’m sure Harris wrote this to a brief – it’s just that I know Hartley and his team did so much research on the subject, I would have loved to see it. Especially since I got the feeling Hartley was a little compromised by his closeness to the filmmakers and his desire to celebrate genre films in Hollywood to give a fuller picture; maybe in a few years such a book will ensue.

Movie review – “Not Quite Hollywood” (2008) ****

Half a masterpiece. I love it because I’m a big fan of the era, ozploitation, Ginnane and Trenchard Smith, Richard Franklin, etc. The film is full of energy and colour and pretty much uses the majority of nude scenes from those films, if you’re so interested, so that they’re located in the one convenient locations. It also has Quentin Tarantino talking about the films with a lot more insight than most of our critics (eg pointing out that no one shoots cars better than an Aussie).

It has flaws, though. For one thing it’s too much of a celebration – it doesn’t really deal with the criticisms of the movies in enough detail – in particular the misogyny inherent in a lot of them (there are an awful lot of tits and bush – and the cocks of John Holmes and Graeme Blundell as well, admittedly but more tits and bush; and the female point of view is limited to actors who appeared in them).

Also the issue of how these films fit in our national consciousness isn’t really dealt with - something important since many of them were financed using government tax breaks and direct funding. Alvin Purple made a lot of money, fine – but can you justify government money in Pacific Banana? Was Ginnane entitled to import all those overseas actors for his movies? (You don’t have to say he was wrong, but I think the other point of view needs to be better elucidated.)

It also doesn’t dig into the characters enough. There are key figures throughout – Trenchard-Smith, Grant Page, Ginnane, Everett de Roche – but we never really get to known what makes them tick, or go with them on any sort of emotional journey. Didn’t Ginnane go bankrupt? What’s the real reason why Sandy Harbutt never made another film?

(NB I also would quibble though that these films have been ignored over the years – David Stratton devoted many pages to them in his two books on the Australian film industry.)

Movie review - "Fantasm" (1976) **

The opening credits roll over the image of a naked woman masturbating – as she builds to a climax a European professor (John Bluthal) walks in the room and starts spurting gibberish. Australia’s most famous soft-core porn film places the same importance on humour as the ocker sex comedies. The professor takes the audience through a number of female sex fantasies, introducing each one with a lecture delivered in a humorous way.

There are ten segments: beauty parlour sex, group sex, food sex (courtesy of none other than John Holmes), rape (by a black boxer – the most unfortunate sequence), lesbian sex (the most genuinely erotic sequence), role reversal, teacher sex, invest, exhibitionism and sex with monk sex. Lack of willing actresses forced the filmmakers to shoot in Los Angeles, though it was made with Australian money and key creatives: producer Anthony I Ginnane, DOP Vince Monton, writer Ross Dimsey and director Richard Franklin. Very profitable on release.

The DVD includes some hugely entertaining DVD special features such as a featurette and commentary (!) from Ginnane.

Movie review - "Fantasm Comes Again" (1977) **

A much bigger budget than Fantasm but it didn’t do as well. The “plot” has a retiring sex advice journalist going over letters with his replacement (played by an actress with the ability of a porn star only she doesn’t take her clothes off). 

Locations seem to be the big motivating factor for sex here: there’s sex in a gym, the library, a drive-in, an elevator, a barn, a bedroom (more conventional though its amongst family members to make it interesting), a church, a van (another unfortunate rape sequence), in a pool. Writer Ross Dimsey and director Colin Eggleston used pseudonyms; Ginnane didn’t bother. On ya, Ginnane!