Dying Breed (2008)

Cheeky!

Let me tell you a little bit about Alexander Pearce. He was an Irish convict who was shipped off to a penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. He escaped, and when he was captured he claimed he had cannibalised his fellow escapees. They didn't believe him, but when he escaped for a second time he was recaptured with bits of his partner-in-crime in his pocket, even though he still had food with him. He was subsequently convicted of murder and cannibalism, and was hanged. It's good story with the makings of a good movie. Unfortunately that movie is the 2009 thriller Van Diemen's Land, and not the subject of this review, the 2008 backwood cannibal film Dying Breed.

As well as exploiting this historical nugget and every offensive stereotype about Tasmanians you can think of, the film also incorporates another famous Tasmanian icon, the Tasmanian tiger. Although thought to be extinct (the movie begins with some real-life footage of the last of it's kind in captivity) zoologist Nina (Mirrah Foulkes) believes she has found photographic proof that the thylocine still exists. These photographs come courtesy of her sister, who turned up dead shortly after her discovery. Unable to secure funding, Nina arranges an unofficial expedition with her boyfriend Matt (Leigh Whannel, one of the Saw guys), his best friend Jack (Nathan Phillips from Wolf Creek) and Jack's girlfriend Rebecca (Melanie Vallejo).

Their trip leads them to an isolated township populated by the "descendants" of Alexander Pearce (not sure how that would work exactly, the guy was in a penal colony) aka The Pieman. After some uncomfortable interactions wth the locals in the pub (I always like these kinds of scenes; walking into a pub full of creepy old weirdos is an awkward experience we can all relate to) and a sampling of their delicious meat pies, they set out on a wildly underprepared trip into the wilderness. Soon they find themselves stalked by a mysterious figure, cannibalism etc, etc.

There's a few interesting ideas here, but most of them don't really go anywhere. The Tasmanian Tiger, for instance, is just a MacGuffin to get them to into the wilderness, and the whole Alexander Pearce connection is little more than window dressing. I was hoping that the interesting location might have brought a few fresh new ideas to a subgenre that has been done in every possible permutation, but unfortunately most of the film seems to be going down a checklist of modern horror: they've got the creepy little girl who sings nursery rhymes, the over-edited, jump-scare nightmare sequences, even a little bit of torture porn. If you guessed that one of them pulls out their mobile phone at one point and pointedly declares that there is no cell phone coverage, give yourself a prize.

The film does have a few things working in it's favour though. Like many Australian genre films there is a lot of gorgeous cinematography, and the rainforest setting gives it a slightly different feel than your typical backwoods cannibal film. There was one part with a half-eaten body hanging from the tree that looked like something out of Cannibal Holocaust. Although it's not as gory as that film it does have it's moments, including an impressively nasty bit where somebody gets their nose bitten off. Not enough nose-bitings in films, I say. Plus I liked the bit where Rebecca follows a strange noise only to discover a woman euthanising a litter of unwanted puppies with a hammer. That's the kind of fucked-up-yet-believable behaviour I want from my Tasweigan nutbars.

Given the film's genre and casting, you can't help but draw comparison to Wolf Creek, which is unfortunate because in my opinion it doesn't really stack up. Wolf Creek was a film that I liked more than a lot of people, and one of the things I liked most about it was that the main characters were pretty believable and likeable. Unfortunately that's not so much the case here: Jack is such an unrepentant asshole and Matt is so spineless that you wind up hating them both. It does differentiate itself from Wolf Creek in that it's a little sillier and not quite as bleak and serious, but then it doesn't have much of a sense of fun about it either. It has a downer ending followed by a controversy-baiting title card similar to Wolf Creek's, which states: "Since Alexander Pearce escaped, over 250 people have disappeared in the Tasmanian wilderness. No remains have ever been found." Well, I guess that's technically true.

I've really liked some recent Australian horror films, like Rogue and Wolf Creek. They have great production values, intelligent exeuction and make the most of their interesting settings. I was hoping that this one would be similar, but although competently made it doesn't have enough to separate from it's Hollywood-produced brethren. I think it flopped pretty badly in the Australian cinemas, which is unfortunate but not entirely unexpected. Australians are pretty weird about home-grown b-movies, turning out in droves to see the latest terrible Saw sequel but being endlessly critical towards any local genre film, but then I can't really judge because I didn't see it in the cinema either.

Body Melt (1993)

This is what happens when you stifle your sneezes.

Body Melt is directed by Phillip Brophy, best known for his experimental music group → ↑ → (which I guess explains the weird techno soundtrack) and Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat, an experimental short film that is centered around various bodily fluids. I guess a crazy splatter film like this was a fairly natural fit. I bet this guy gets sick of this film being compared to early Peter Jackson just because he's from a country that is in a similar geographical area with similar accents, but the comparisons are unavoidable. This film has a slightly different feel to it, though. It has more of a satirical bent, poking fun at things like the 90s fitness craze and happy suburban families.

An evil pharmaceutical company/health spa named Vimuville decides to test their latest batch of body-enhancing drugs on the residents of Pebbles Court, a cul-de-sac in an outer suburb of Melbourne. Disguising the drugs as vitamins, they send out free samples and invite some of them to their facility for a free treatment. One of their top chemists has a change of heart and tries to warn them, but the villainous Dr Shaan (Regina Gaigalas) gets wise to his plan and injects him with a fatal dose of the drug during a sweaty sex scene. As the rogue chemist drives there he begins to show symptons of the drug, which include headache, nausea and writhing tentacles bursting from your neck. He makes a quick stop at a servo to chug some dishwashing detergent, but when he reaches Pebbles Court he crashes his car and gets splattered all over the driveway. When the two detectives show up on the scene they dismiss it as a road fatality, although they do stumble upon the chemists tape recorder, which contains the message "The first phase is hallucinogenic... the second phase is glandular... and the third phase is AAARRGH!"

The storyline is nearly impossible to follow and none of the characters are developed in any detail, so for much of the film you are left floundering for a protagonist. You'll think you have a handle on who the main character is supposed to be, only for them to be killed off. There's no real consistency in the drug's effects either, so really the film seems like an excuse to show people dying in weird and crazy ways. One woman chokes to death after her tongue swells up to the size of her forearm. Another woman's head deflates like a punctured balloon. Another man's penis explodes when he tries to watch some porn. In fact, one of my favourite deaths had nothing to do with the pharmaceutical company at all. A young boy has a grisly accident while roller-blading on a half-pipe, and fatally crushes his face, the camera lingering on the gruesome aftermath. The funny part is that afterwards his family never find his body or even wonder where he is. He's completely forgotten.

A couple of young guys at the beginning of the film probably get the most screen time in a sub-plot that is almost completely divorced from the rest of the film. They get lost on their way to the health spa and end up in a completely different film, a farm full of inbred freaks who like to kill kangaroos and snack on their adrenal glands. This segment seems out of place but it isn't completely unrelated to the rest of the film, since the patriarch of the family is a former employee of Vimuville and his freakish foster children are the results of failed experiments. One of the guys decides to make out with his grotesquely neanderthal daughter, which is bad enough, only for her to freak out and stab him in the balls with a pitchfork. The other suffers a more ambiguous but undoubtedly horrible fate.

One thing I liked about this film is that the cast is full of well-known Australian soap stars. There's something deliciously surreal in seeing, say, Ian "Harold Bishop from Neighbours" Smith getting his ear ripped off by a zombie or firing a gun at a family station wagon. Even a very young Lisa McCune appears as a pregnant newlywed, and I'm sure all the 80-year-old TV Week voters would revoke her 1,392 Gold Logies if they ever saw her here, giving birth to an animate, malevolent placenta that murders her husband. One of the Daddo brothers makes his obligatory appearance (Cameron, the Alec Baldwin of the Daddos) as an eager rookie cop. Even the guy from the Goggomobile ads appears as a cop. It's an all-star cast!

The gore effects in this film are plentiful and pretty decent. They went crazy with the gore and slime. There's also an extended autopsy sequence that is pretty impressive. But that's really all there is. It's fun, but not for fans of well-developed characters, comprehensible stories or cinema in general.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

"Help! My hands are caught in my sleeves
and I've spilt pasta sauce everywhere."

Turkey Shoot (aka Escape 2000 aka Blood Camp Thatcher) is another Australian genre film made for international markets, which means it's got a lot of blood, tits and explosions. It's produced by Antony I. Ginnane (duh) and directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (The Man From Hong Kong) both of whom have a lot experience with capturing all three on film. It's pure exploitation cheese, but Trenchard-Smith has enough skill behind the camera to make it watchable and generally entertaining.

The movie begins with some stock footage of riots and conflicts from around the world, which is movie shorthand for society going down the shitter. It's the far-flung year of 1995 and a totalitarian government has risen up and taken control of the country (Australia, I guess?), shipping off all youthful dissidents to remote re-education camps. Arriving at one such camp are the multiple-escapee and freedom-fighter Paul (Steve Railsback), prostitute Rita (Lynda Stoner) and the naive, wrongly-accused Chris (Olivia Hussey). They are greeted at the camp by the head warden Thatcher, who gives them a standard welcome-to-hell speech while his Chief Guard Ritter (a bald, moustachioed Roger Ward) slaps around some poor girl for failing to recite the camp rules.

Early on, this film reminded me of a women-in-prison flick. Chris is taken under Rita's wing and taught the ropes. She is forced to do menial tasks like gutting fish and dodge sleazy wardens who try to molest her while she's taking a shower. Thankfully the movie takes a different turn when Thatcher and all his bigwig cronies gather up a number of prisoners (including Paul, Rita and Chris) and send them out into the wilderness to be hunted with exploding crossbows, machine guns, bazookas, bulldozers and silly-looking cars that were probably pretty futuristic-looking back in '82. Dick Cheney would love this shit, although at one point they decide to remove a victim's pinky toe because the big toe would slow him down too much; there's no way Cheney would be that sporting.

A big problem with this film is that I found the villains a lot more interesting than the heroes. There isn't much character development, so all the heroes do is run for their lives while wearing identical yellow jumpsuits. The bad guys, on the other hand, have memorable personalities and unique costumes and weapons. For instance, one of the hunters is a sexy lesbian named Jennifer (Carmen Duncan), who is openly homosexual (despite it being a capital crime). Almost every line out of her mouth is some sort of double entendre about guns, she wields a crossbow with exploding bolts and enjoys hobbies such as customising rifles and assembling machine guns while blindfonded. Rich people are pretty different in the future.

One of the strangest elements of this film is that one of the hunters has a wolf man wrestler as a sidekick. They casually slip in a line that he picked him up at a carnival freakshow, but seriously I don't know what the fuck. Maybe one of the producers owned a wolf man as a child and only agreed to fund the film if they included one in the script to honour his memory. For hours and hours he'd play with Fido in the back yard, feeding him human toes and practising wrestling moves. Well he got his wish, and the wolf man even gets to snap a guy's spine over his knee. Unfortunately things go awry when the hunter tries to attack Paul with a bulldozer, accidentally pinning the wolf man to a tree and cutting his legs off, forcing the hunter to use a rocket launcher that he probably should have used in the first place.

Eventually Chris and Paul team up together, and after a fight with Ritter that ends with Chris chopping off his hands (which she apparently almost did it for real during shooting, misunderstanding Trenchard-Smith's shouts of "cut!"), they get control of a jeep with a mounted machine gun and stage an assault on the camp, busting out the prisoners and leading them in a rebellion against Thatcher. This action sequence is a lot bigger in scope than I was expecting (if a bit ridiculous; there appear to be more camp guards than prisoners) but it's lacking in stuntwork and the gunfire and explosions get slightly repetitive after a while. Thatcher ends up being blown apart by machine gun fire, an effect using an exploding dummy that was totally awesome. A definite rewinder.

According the DVD extras, the film had almost a quarter of it's $3.5 million budget cut at the last minute. Consequently the action sequences were scaled down and a big helicopter chase sequence was scrapped. They also removed some of the so-called "1984" scenes that fleshed-out the totalitarian government, so the political commentary begins and ends with the head warden being named Thatcher (although that fact probably accounted for the brisk ticket sales in the UK, which were the only thing that saved this film from being an epic bomb). Boobs are lacking, mostly confined to a single shower scene, and the movie is quite chaste around the two leading women. Hussey uses an obvious boob double during her only shower scene and they even have a sexy bathing scene where Stoner doesn't remove her jumpsuit.

I suppose I'd recommend this one, if only for the wolfman and the level of skill that Trenchard-Smith brings to the proceedings. It moves at a brisk enough pace and I can't say I was ever bored, but it definitely requires a certain tolerance for campy gore for one to derive any enjoyment out of it. I enjoyed it, but you probably won't.

Snapshot (1979)

Best coat or bestest coat?

Okay, I guess the hot streak couldn't last forever. For a while there it seemed like every Australian genre film I picked up was solid gold, or at least gold plated. All the pieces were there for this one too: Produced by Anthony Ginane; written by Chris and Everett De Roche; and directed by Simon Wincer (who also made the interesting but flawed Harlequin) but somehow it didn't work for me. Like most of the other films from this team, it was made with international markets in mind, and to capitalise on the recent success of Halloween it was renamed The Day After Halloween in the US. What the hell guys, this film is nothing like Halloween. They don't even celebrate Halloween in Australia.

The movie starts promisingly enough. Emergency vehicles gather outside an office building as firemen attempt to put out a blaze in a small room that, like my bedroom, is plastered with topless photos of Sigrid Thornton. As they spray a smouldering, blackened lump with a fire extinguisher it becomes clear that it's actually the charred remains of a human corpse. Who is it and what exactly happened here? It's a pretty great hook, but we're going to have to go back in time a few months to find out the answer.

Caught between her domineering mother and creepy ex-boyfriend, a naive young hairdresser named Angela (a 19-year-old Sigrid Thornton) is convinced by her best friend Madeline (Chantal Contouri , Thirst) to take a modeling job from an eccentric ad photographer named Linsey (Hugh Keays-Byrne, The Man From Hong Kong). During a beach shoot for a cologne ad, she is asked to splash about in the water with her tits out during a freezing Melbourne winter. She objects at first, but when Linsey assures her that her face will not be visible she complies. This scene is scored by a catchy but terrible song by Australian pop act Sherbert, which sadly intones "Angela, you've gone too far this time". Oh man, I love it when movies have theme songs with absurdly literal lyrics.

Unsurprisingly, the photos are published in a glossy magazine with her face (and breasts) clearly visible. You know why print media is dying out? Because they no longer advertise products with two-page spreads of topless women. She is kicked out of home and forced to move in with Linsey and all his bohemian artist friends. Unfortunately her modeling career does not turn out to be as lucrative as she'd hoped, especially since her mother steals all her money, and to make things worse her creepy, mopey ex-boyfriend is stalking her in his Mr Whippy van. Eventually things get out of hand; he appears to sneaking into her room to tear up her dresses and plant a hog's head in her bed. For some reason Angela doesn't call the police and her best friend Madeline is far more interested in hanging out at a nightclub with a painfully bad cabaret performer.

Come to think of it, Madeline is the worst friend in the world. She does try to build Angela's confidence and get her away from her awful mother, which is good, but she she also gets her fired from her hairdressing job by calling her boss a "faggot" and ruins her chances with a mustachioed turtleneck at the disco by jealously crushing his balls. When Madeline's sleazy husband gets Angela drunk and shoots topless photos of her under the guise of a movie deal, Madeline laughs it off the next day, saying he does that with all her friends. Wow, thanks for the concern, asshole. Eventually Madeline tries to make a pass at her, surprising no one, but Angela rebuffs her, cruelly denying us a Chantal Contouri/Sigrid Thornton sex scene.

Eventually the film reaches the fiery finale referred to in the opening scene, but the film fails to build up suspense and the big reveal is something of a let-down. I did like it when the bad guy was stumbling around on fire though, that was pretty sweet. I don't think they do that enough in films these days. The movie concludes with another twist (which includes the use of a Mr Whippy van as a deadly weapon) but it doesn't make a lot of sense.

There was a part in this film where the photographer was sitting on the couch with his friends and watching Patrick. It was a cute touch but kind of a mistake because it reminded me how much better that film was in comparison. Unforunately this film isn't written well enough to take seriously as a thriller and it isn't lurid or trashy enough to get by on pure entertainment value. For a thriller the thrills were pretty scant. It's more of a borer, actually. There were some good performances buried in here: Sigrid Thornton is great as always, Robert Bruning is good as Madeline's sleazy husband Elmer and I liked Hugh Keays-Byrne as the death-obsessed photographer. Unfortunately these, and even a rare supporting role from Sigrid Thornton's breasts, fail to save what is ultimately a mediocre thriller.

Strike of the Panther (1988)

Oh Jason Blade, you're just so dreamy.

Fans of the Day of the Panther's protagonist, the kung-fu-master/wearer-of-high-waisted-pants Jason Blade (Edward Stazak) - and who isn't a fan - will remember that at the end of the first film we were assured/warned that Jason Blade would return in Strike of the Panther. Here they make good on that promise, which probably wasn't hard since the two films were made back-to-back and released the very same year. Those of you who aren't completely up-to-date on your Blade-ology needn't fear, because the film recaps the plot of the first film in meticulous detail, a process that takes over seven minutes, even though the only thing you need to know is that Blade hooked up with a girl named Gemma (Paris Jefferson) and pussed out on killing his nemesis Baxter (Jim Richards).

After the proceedings of the first film, Baxter is sent to Fremantle prison but, fueled by a burning hatred for Jason Blade, manages to escape by, uh, climbing a sheet rope over a wall. A fittingly retro escape for a prison built in the 19th century, but such lax security was probably a contributing factor to the prison's decommissioning a couple of years after this film was made. Zucor, the criminal mastermind from the first film, is nowhere to be seen so I guess Baxter left him to rot in jail. I can't really blame him since he was kind of an asshole, but this means that the villain of this film is basically the hired muscle, like if there was a sequel to Enter the Dragon where the villain was Bolo Yeung. Actually that sounds pretty awesome.

Meanwhile, Blade has found work in the West Australian police force, training up a new criminal task force in the supposedly top-secret Panther school kung fu. A criminal psychologist from Interpol, Sgt. Lucy Andrews (Rowena Wallace), shows up to lend a hand and Blade is given the assignment of retrieving a politician's crack-addled daughter from a high class brothel. Going undercover, Blade infiltrates the brothel and finds the girl, but with the madam busting into their room every five minutes to distribute fresh towels, it's not long before his true identity is discovered. This gives Blade a great excuse to rip off his shirt and beat up some thugs, all the while dodging pervs in full-body chicken suits (Blade's incredulous response: "You're sick!!") and Angus Young schoolboy outfits.

Gemma is also up to her old tricks, seducing Blade with her sexy dance routines while he impresses her with his shirtless kung fu and frequent work-out sessions. There's also the kind of cultural exchange that is a hallmark of a burgeoning relationship; Gemma learning some kung fu moves and Blade awkwardly step-kick-stepping his way across the dance floor. It's not all leotards and sweaty pecs though. It seems that Blade is having trouble committing. Blade claims that he doesn't want to put her in danger, and he's got a good point because the next morning Gemma gets kidnapped by a couple of Baxter's hired goons.

Also returning from Day of the Panther is veteran Australian actor John Stanton as Blade's mentor (and Gemma's uncle) William Anderson. He gets hit by a car while trying to save Gemma and is stuck in a hospital bed for the rest of the film. Luckily he's still able to provide Blade with fighting advice ("Jason! Above you!") thanks to a telepathic ability that isn't explained but I guess is part of their secret Panther School training. I wish I had a psychic link with Jason Blade. Or John Stanton for that matter.

Baxter holes up with Gemma in the old Fremantle power station and demands to see Blade by 6pm that night or he kills her. Usually in a movie like this the hero would just strut right in without hesitation, but Jason Blade is a prudent man and gets Sgt. Andrews to stall Baxter while he finds out some more information. After tracking down some of Baxter's goons, it turns out that Baxter has assembled a team of expert martial artists to ambush Blade as soon as he enters the power station. Baxter has dressed them up like ninjas with hockey masks and armed them with knives, swords and kamas as well an very un-ninja-like weapons such as butterfly knives, baseball bats and blowtorches.

Thus armed with information, Blade busts into the power station while a SWAT team, led by Sgt. Andrews, breaches from the opposite side. The ninjas try to freak them out by flitting about in the shadows and one particularly brazen ninja, no doubt hearing about Blade's woeful dance moves, tries to intimidate him by break-dancing and moonwalking. Blade triumphs, thanks to the telepathic advice of his mentor, but the SWAT team get completely wiped out save for Sgt. Andrews.

Eventually Blade finds Gemma and has his final battle with Baxter while Andrews nervously defuses the time bomb that Baxter has planted on the station's transformers. After an appropriate amount of back-and-forth fisticuffs, Baxter gets kicked into a junction box and electrified, despite the fact that the power plant had been shut down years ago. This film is directed by the stunt-obsessed Brian Trenchard-Smith, so you'd think Baxter would burst into flames like in a (fellow former stuntman) Craig R. Baxley film, but here he is disappointingly restrained and Baxter simply thrashes around and expires with some cheesy sparks and smoke.

Actually this film doesn't have a lot of the awesome stunts you expect from Trenchard-Smith. There's a pretty cool moment when Blade chases a guy up the side of an apartment building and down again, only for him to get creamed by a passing car, but there's no real good car chases, explosions or gun fights. Granted the first film didn't have a lot of that either, but the action/non-action ratio seems a lot lower here too, even after cramming in some unrelated fight scenes such as Blade beating up some punks who are trying to steal his car. Like the first film, the fights are nicely choreographed and edited, and Stazak has some great moves. Probably not as good as Day of the Panther, but it's still the second best West Australian kung fu flick of 1988.

Harlequin (1980)

Never trust a clown

Yep, another Australian horror/thriller produced by Anthony Ginnane. I can't get enough of the damn things. The plot is a mixture of political intrigue and the supernatural, basically a clever reworking of the Rasputin story. It's written by Everett De Roche who like always manages to inject some depth and ambiguity into the script, putting enough twists on the historical tale to make things mysterious even for those intimately familiar with the story. He does gloss over some of the more ribald and potentially entertaining aspects of the Rasputin legend but I guess this isn't that kind of film. It's directed by Simon Wincer, who also directed the De Roche penned thriller Snapshot and went on to do a lot of American TV and a few movies including, uh, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Well, they can't all be winners.

David Hemmings (Thirst) plays up-and-coming politician Senator Nicholas Rast (I see what you did there). When Deputy Governor Eli Steele disappears under mysterious circumstances while swimming in the ocean, Rast is thrust into the shady world of high-stakes politics. His long working hours add considerable tension to his relationship with his wife Sandra (Carmen Duncan), a marriage also strained by their son Alex's terminal illness. Late one night they are visited by a mysterious faith healer/magician named Gregory Wolfe (Robert Powell, who spends most of the film dressed like an extra from Star Trek) and the next day their son makes a miraculous recovery.

Sandra and Alex immediately become enchanted by Wolfe, who becomes a constant presence in the Rasts' life. Nicholas becomes increasingly creeped out by Wolfe's influence over his wife and son. Can't really blame him; Wolfe's weird dress and habit of dangling his son over a cliff is positively Michael-Jackson-ish. Plus there's his relationship with Sandra which starts like a gay-best-friend kind of deal ("Everybody should have their own Gregory" she says) but soon turns uncomfortably amorous. Nick also has to deal with his political rivals and the machinations of the slimy chief political advisor Doc Wheelan (Broderick Crawford). What are Wolfe's motivations for helping his family, are his powers genuine and who is playing whom?

It's a great premise for a film but I've got to admit that it drags a little at times. The scenes of political intrigue in particular can get a bit tedious. However, when this film is good it is very good. There's a great score by Brian May (I think it would be easier for me to note when an awesome score for an Australian film is not by Brian May) and great performances that manage to sell the film even when it gets a bit silly and melodramatic. Early in the film Sandra Rast is preparing her terminally-ill son for bed and he asks whether the clown can come to his birthday party next year; the look on her face is just heartbreaking. Of course special attention must be paid to Robert Powell's fantastic performance. Wolfe is a character that could have easily been overplayed but Powell makes him charismatic, enigmatic and subtle.

This is one of Ginnane's films that was made specifically for international distribution. It was shot in Perth (the exterior of the Rasts' home is actually that of famed/disgraced Australian businessman Alan Bond) but in the end the film was scrubbed clean of any traces of Australia-ness, dubbing over several actors and sound effects to give it a more American feel. Unfortunately they did a really lousy job. About half the cast have Australian accents and there are many weird incongruities, such as cars with Western Australian license plates, cars driving on the right hand side of the road and so on. There's also the subplot about the drowned Deputy Governor, which seems to mirror the death of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt. It could have been a uniquely Australian film but the half-assed Americanisation only makes it awkward and confusing. Out of national pride, I'm going to have to take a few points off.

Day of the Panther (1988)

Yet another person falls victim to swine flu

From Brian Trenchard-Smith, the stunt-obsessed Australian director who brought us Stunt Rock and The Man from Hong Kong, comes Day of the Panther, an Australian attempt at the kind of martial-arts-heavy, revenge-based entertainment product that flooded the cinema and home video market in the 1980s.

After the most 80s credits sequence ever made the movie starts, as all movies should, with a monologue featuring the soothing, radio-friendly voice of John Stanton. Stanton is a Australian actor known for his commercial and voice over work so seeing him here as a martial arts master is really weird, like if the movie phone guy played Mr. Miyagi. It seems that Stanton is one of just three whiteys to be accepted into the Secret Panther School, an exclusive kung fu school that works for the Hong Kong Special Branch or something. The other two white Panthers are Stanton's daughter Linda (Linda Megier) and her partner Jason (Ed Stazak) and the movie opens with his initiation into the brotherhood.

Jason's full name is Jason Blade, which is pretty much the best name ever and the movie knows it. Normally when you go undercover you'd use some sort of alias. Not Jason Blade, he's got an awesome name and he's going to use it as much as possible. He'll even wear a ridiculous jumper stolen from Bill Cosby's closet and acid wash jeans when he's stalking the back alleys of Hong Kong with his partner. He doesn't give a shit. This must be why, as Stanton puts it, "Undercover surveillance is the most dangerous game we play". Naturally their operation goes tits up and Blade has to fight off a bunch of henchmen while Anna tracks the drug courier back to Perth, Western Australia. She calls Blade to tell him that she's tracked them to an abandoned warehouse, but before he can say "wait for backup" she hangs up.

After poking around the warehouse, Anne gets attacked by three masked henchmen, most notably a hairy, machete-wielding man in a pig mask. These are pretty dedicated disguises too, when she peels a skull mask off of one of the goons his face underneath is painted like a skull as well. It's got some good stunts but it's a long, long chase scene, made longer by the fact that it's inter-cut with Blade arriving on his plane from Hong Kong, checking into his hotel, being tracked by the local police force etc. By my estimation she has been chased around by these guys for at least two hours. Eventually she defeats the goons but is cornered by the drug courier from earlier and killed.

Blade is lounging around in a pink shirt in his all-pink hotel room when he hears the terrible news of her death. Determined to seek revenge, he visits Perth's top drug kingpin/boat salesman Zucor (Michael Carman, who looks kind of like Nic Cage) with the aim of infiltrating his organisation and ferreting out Anna's killer. Blade's idea of a job application is heading out to Zucor's boat showroom and beating the crap out of all his goons, but it works surprisingly well. Blade is invited to Zucor's pool party where he is introduced to Zucor's second-in-command (and Anna's killer) Baxter (Jim Richards) who dresses like a cross between Don Johnson in Miami Vice and Wham-era George Michael. He's an asshole to boot, he pushes a girl in the pool just for smiling at Blade. Blade is offered a job as exchange man in a drug deal but when he gets there it turns out to be a test, which Blade passes by dishing out roundhouse kicks to all present.

Blade also seeks Stanton's rich spiritual wisdom at his Asian-inspired country home, where he partners up with Stanton's niece Gemma. Later she seduces Blade in the gym with a sexy aerobics dance routine which he counters by making his sweaty pecs dance horribly. This is followed by a softcore sex scene, sax music etc. Ah, romance. There's also a comedy subplot about a couple of bumbling cops which follows the Last House on the Left rule of cinema by never, ever being funny. Why did they include this, did they really think there was some tension that needed relieving? Hell, seeing John Stanton walking around in a silk robe like Hugh Hefner is funny enough.

There is much discussion in the film of a massive annual martial arts tournament that Zucor runs, complete with illegal gambling. Baxter wins every year, so Zucor starts a rumour that Blade bested him in an unofficial match in order to drive up the bets. Naturally you'd expect the tournament to be the climax of the film right? Wrong! I don't know if they couldn't afford the extras or what, but instead Baxter does some snooping around Stanton's home and discovers Blade's true identity, forcing Blade, Stanton and Gemma to go on the run.

Blade learns that Zucor has hidden his stash of drugs under the outdoor amphitheater where they are holding the tournament, so the three of them head there to find the evidence that will bring Zucor's operation down. The final battle between Baxter and Blade is pretty cool but it keeps cutting away to the boring antics of Anderson and Gemma, ruining the fight's flow. For some reason Stanton lets Zucor get away and Blade pusses out on killing Baxter so we can have a sequel. As a title card at the end of the film states, "Jason Blade will return in Strike of the Panther".

A lot of this film is pretty terrible, especially the fashion (knitted mesh tank tops, really?), but the fight scenes are actually very good, superior to most of what was coming out of America at the time. Stazak is pretty talented as Blade and the battles are clearly edited and well choreographed. Sometimes it gets pretty ridiculous, such as when Blade beats up a gaggle of henchmen using what is clearly a plastic broom handle. Even Stanton has a brief fight scene, which is pretty terrible but bless him for trying. It's full of mistakes like when a crew member's hand appears quite noticeably in frame during a stunt. Still, if the idea of a jacked up dude named Jason Blade roundhouse kicking thugs while wearing high-waisted slacks sounds like a good time to you, then I'm sure you'll find something to enjoy here.

Thirst (1979)

Dame Edna... nooo!

Here is another Australian horror film that I liked. I don't know how much longer this hot streak can last. It starts with a great opening scene: A woman suddenly wakes up in a Gothic crypt straight out of a Hammer movie. As she screams and pounds on the door, begging to be let out, some mysterious voices discuss her "conditioning", one of them stressing that her "sanity is close to breaking point". Flashback to a week ago and we discover her name is Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri) a successful ad executive with an awesome 70s pad who spends her time rolling around in front of her big open fireplace with her hairy boyfriend. After discovering a mysterious cartoon of blood in her fridge she is kidnapped by an international secret society and taken to a remote compound called The Farm.

There she is confronted by the sinister Mrs Barker (the great Shirley Cameron) and Mr Hodge (Max Phipps). They tell her that she is a direct descendant of Elizabeth Bathory and thus part of a royal vampire bloodline. Naturally they can't kill her, all they can do is try to get her to accept her destiny. Mr Hodge wants to marry her and merge their bloodlines but I don't know how he can hope to compete against the 70s machismo of Kate's boyfriend. He doesn't even have an awesome mustache.

Not only that, The Farm is actually a blood processing plant, like a dairy. The "blood-cows" wander around in a drug-induced stupor, occasionally corralled into a factory where their blood is drained, processed, packaged and shipped around the world. It's a great and really creepy idea. There's even a funny part where a tour guide cheerfully touts the factory's high levels of hygiene and blood purity to some vampire tourists, who snap away with their cameras happily. You know vampires would be pulling this shit if they were around today, the fuckers. Obviously Kate doesn't respond well to this information, so after a failed escape attempt they begin a process of systematically toying with her and breaking her down mentally so she succumbs to her instincts.

They begin by locking her in a crypt and when that doesn't work they drug her into a hallucinogenic state and try to brainwash her. Some really good dream sequences follow. A romantic picnic with her boyfriend is spoiled by a blood-filled chicken drumstick. She tries to have a drink only to find the mug filled with blood. She tries to relax with a hot shower at home and what do you think comes out? Blood, and lots of it. Soon she finds herself locked in a library while an enormous beast (the "thirst") tries to get in from outside, shaking the walls and knocking over furniture. This seems to do the trick and they think their conditioning has taken, but when they release her to the outside world she immediately chows down on a co-worker and tries to bite her boyfriend. Dang, time for some more conditioning.

I'm not sure exactly what powers the vampires in this movie have, except for extreme assholishness. They make some vague references to power and eternal youth but the vampires in this film seem just as susceptible to fatal injury and the ravages of age as normal humans. Blood drinking for them just seems to be, as they put it, "the ultimate aristocratic act". They don't have any of the traditional vampire weaknesses either and sunlight doesn't do shit, they don't even sparkle. They don't have fangs and have to wear falsies, but even then it's only for special ceremonial occasions. I loved this grounded, realistic approach but then they have to ruin it by giving the vampires a cheesy red-eye effect whenever they are about to feed.

The movie runs out of steam a little towards the end and the plot gets a bit muddled but it's a great concept with some really good scenes. Performances are generally good and there's a few notable actors I haven't mentioned such as David Hemmings who is a sympathiser to Kate's predicament and Henry Silva who's spectacular death is a highlight of the film. Even Patrick (Robert Thompson) appears as one of the senior vampires, and like that film this one was produced by Antony Ginnane. He financed quite a few low budget Australian horror films in the 70s and 80s. It's directed by TV veteran Rod Hardy who does a good job here and it's got a soundtrack by Brian May who scored every Australian film ever and is not the guy from Queen.

Thirst mixes Gothic atmosphere with a grounded and scientific approach to the vampire myth, resulting in a solid film that works on multiple levels. Also you get to see Chantal Contouri's boobs in one scene. I thought it was pretty good.

Long Weekend (1978)

Oh, the huge manatee.

Marcia (Briony Behets) and Peter (John Hargreaves) are a bickering married couple who take a long weekend camping trip as a last ditch effort to save their crumbling marriage. On the way to the campsite they are so busy bitching and arguing that they get lost and I mean really lost (there's a Tasmanian devil wandering around even though they're supposed to be in New South Wales). The next morning Marcia wakes up to find that they've made it to the campsite and Peter is busy chopping down a tree. When she asks him why he replies "why not?" Why not, indeed.

They are definitely obnoxious and unlikable, but not in an annoying way. They aren't typical horror movie assholes, their dialog is realistically written and well acted. I especially liked the way that the history of their relationship is dished out in bite-sized pieces. Early in the film you get hints of a traumatic experience in Marcia's past, but it's not until much later that the truth comes spilling out, something that may or may not have something to do with their current situation.

I also liked that they aren't completely villainous in their disrespect for nature. Marcia loathes the outdoors and surrounds herself with the amenities of civilisation. Peter treats it like his own personal playground, arrogantly stomping through and destroying anything in his way. They could have easily made this too broad and cartoonish, but mostly they are just so absorbed in their relationship problems that they take their superiority over nature for granted. They litter, they flick their cigarettes out the window, they spray everything with insecticide. Normal stuff.

As tensions fray their crimes against nature become a bit more felonious. Peter orphans some ducklings when he starts firing his shotgun aimlessly into the bush and in a fit of frustration Marcia smashes an eagle egg against a tree. Worst of all, Peter shoots at a menacing dark shape in the water only for it to turn out to be a harmless dugong. Subsequently a bunch of spooky shit starts happening. The nights become filled with strange noises, possibly the dugong's orphaned offspring, each morning the dugong's bullet-riddled corpse appears to be closer and closer to the camp and a frozen chicken goes moldy within in a few hours. Okay, maybe that last one isn't so scary.

Most of the time it's just subtle things like that, although Peter also gets attacked by an eagle and a possum. Fucking possums. The couple aren't the only victims of nature's sudden uprising either (some campers further up the beach suffer a mysterious, off-screen death) but they are definitely the focus of the film. The final twenty minutes are virtually dialog free, just the spooky sounds of nature and Michael Carlos terrific suspenseful score. The film ends with a deliciously ironic death that bring things full circle.

There were so many of these nature-fights-back films in the 70s, the unloved bastard children of 70s environmentalism and Hitchcock's The Birds, that I really wasn't expecting much from Long Weekend, but it really surprised me. It's sharply written by Everett De Roche (Road Games, Patrick, Razorback, pretty much every horror film made in Australia at the time) and directed by Colin Eggleston. Thanks to the great, moody cinematography, the film locations are alternately picturesque and threatening. I don't have a lot to say about this one, except that it's fuckin' good.

Patrick (1978)

She could at least take care of that monobrow.

Okay, I finally broke down and rented Not Quite Hollywood, last year's hit documentary about the history of Australian exploitation film. Aside from the coining of the stupid term "ozsploitation" it was very good, but as I predicted I ended up with a bunch of films on my DVD rental queue. First in the list is Patrick, a 1978 film by Australian Hitchcock fanatic Richard Franklin, who directed the quite excellent Road Games. Franklin was a student and personal friend of Hitchcock, and ol' Hitch didn't just leave his fingerprints on Franklin's work, he left three forms of ID, a copy of his birth certificate and a blood sample, so Franklin has managed to turn out some great suspense thrillers.

From Hard to Kill to Kill Bill to Til Death, there is a rich cinematic history of coma/revenge films. Patrick is unusual, however, in that it's about a guy who seeks revenge while still in a coma. It all begins when Patrick flips his lid after hearing his mother fucking her asshole boyfriend next door. When will mothers learn that after they give birth they are supposed to live a life of wholesome celibacy? Patrick wanders into the bathroom where they are having a post-coital bubble bath and dumps a lamp into the bathtub. They get fried while Patrick somehow falls into a braindead coma and there he remains for the next three years.

Enter Kathy Jacquard (Susan Penhaligon), a former nurse who is returning to work after a recent separation from her husband. During an extremely awkward job interview, Matron Cassidy (Julia Blake) gives an incredible speech about how their small, out-of-the-way hospital attracts all kinds of undesirables and perverts; lesbians, nymphomaniacs, enema specialists, zoophiliacs, algolagniacs, necrophiliacs, pedophiliacs, scoptophiliacs, exhibitionists and voyeurs. Wow. She is assigned to look after Patrick, which seems like a pretty cushy job at first. All you have to do is inform the doctor of his bowel movements and periodically spritz his wide-open eyeballs (apparently they aren't allowed to suture his eyes shut, Matron's orders). Sure there are downsides to the job too. He's got a nasty spit reflex and did I mention the homicidal psychokinetic powers?

Sure enough Patrick falls in love with her, leaving every male in her life vulnerable to his seemingly omniscient psychic attacks. Dreamy neurosurgeon Dr. Wright (Bruce Barry) almost drowns during his swinging pool party and her husband Ed (Ron Mullinar) gets some nasty burns from a casserole dish. Patrick also jealously trashes her apartment and fucks with her typing. Things start getting out of hand. Naturally nobody believes her story, so when Kathy is discovered giving Patrick a handjob under the covers (long story) the Matron punishes her by assigning her to more Patrick duty. A pretty inappropriate punishment under the circumstances, no wonder the hospital attracts so many sexual deviants.

A few secondary characters flesh out the proceedings, including the sinister Dr. Roget (Robert Helpmann) who is using Patrick as a test subject to determine the existence of a soul. He also likes to eat/mutilate frogs. Don't ask. There's also Captain Fraser (Walter Pym), a grumpy old man who likes to jump out at suspense-filled moments and shout at people. Don't expect a huge body count, this is very much a slow-burning, character-focused horror film. There's only a few deaths, often off-screen and mostly amphibian, but this is a film that is more about suspense and atmosphere than death and destruction.

The film was written by Everett De Roche, who wrote a whole bunch of great Australian films, including the excellent Jaws rip-off Razorback, ecological horror film Long Weekend and the trucker thriller Roadgames. The DVD included a De Roche penned script treatment for a sequel to Patrick, but I'm kind of glad they didn't go through with it because it looks pretty bad. There's also a really nice score by Brian May, who is not the guitarist from Queen but the composer for Mad Max, Roadgames and many other Australian films from the 80s.

Patrick is a solid and underrated little suspense thriller. Hitchcock's influence is so strongly felt that when Universal Studios saw this film they selected Franklin to direct the surprisingly good Psycho II. It was the inspiration for Uma Thurman's comatose spit reflex in Kill Bill and there was even an unofficial Italian remake/sequel called Patrick Vive Ancora (Patrick Still Lives), which in true Italian horror fashion trades the careful suspense-building of the original for tits and violence. If you're ever in the mood for a 70s style, slow-burning, Hitchcock-ian suspense thriller about psychokinetic powers and Carrie is unavailable, this would be a great backup choice.

The Man From Hong Kong (1975)

Sorry, I didn't get a screenshot, but I think this poster art
should give you a good idea of what the film is about

I've been feeling a bit patriotic lately so I've been digging my way through some Australian genre films. The Man From Hong Kong is an Australian/Hong Kong co-production, coming courtesy of Brian Trenchard-Smith, a stuntman turned director who made a bunch of cool Australian stunt films before escaping to America to make action and horror films. I believe this film was mentioned in a documentary about Australian exploitation filmmaking called Not Quite Hollywood, which I've been avoiding because I know that if I see it I'll end up with a hundred new movies on the end of my DVD rental queue.

This film opens with a drug exchange going down at Uluru (then Ayers Rock). If you've ever been to Uluru you'd know it's way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere. Probably the least practical place for a drug exchange ever, except for maybe the bottom of the ocean or inside an active volcano. What's wrong with a train station in Cabramatta? The exchange man is played by the great Sammo Hung, who also did the fight choreography, so naturally when they're busted he runs up to the top of the rock and has a fight scene with copper Bob Taylor (wrestler-turned-actor Roger Ward). The other exchange man jumps in his car and tries to drive off (good luck mate, it's 450 km to the nearest town) but is pursued by a helicopter and somehow flips his car and blows himself up. Sammo isn't speaking to no whiteys so it's time to bring in... The Man from Hong Kong.

The Man from Hong Kong is a man (from Hong Kong) named Inspector Fang Sing Ling, played by badass Jimmy Wang Yu from the One-Armed Swordsman films. In his very first scene an Australian reporter (Ros Spiers) asks him what's so special about Special Branch and it then cuts to them totally doing it. "Do you often take white girls to bed?" she asks. "Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays." he replies. He's like the Chinese Shaft! When he finally gets to Australia he meets up with his contacts Bob Taylor and his exceptionally hairy partner Morrie Grosse (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Fang interrogates Sammo Hong Kong style which is to beat him half to death, while the two cops handle the situation Australian style, which is to look the other way and bugger off down the pub. Unfortunately Sammo gets assassinated on his way to the court house (by legendary stunt man Grant Page) and everything points to Jack Wilton, expert Martial Artist and drug kingpin of Sydney.

Wilton is played by one-time Bond George Lazenby. In his first scene he whips the asses of all his students, but in the end it's revelealed he has an iron bar concealed in his fist. So it establishes him as both a master of kung fu and a cheating scumbag. Economical storytelling. He's even got one of those swinging 70s pads with bright orange decor and an enormous safe filled with drugs, guns and explosives. Like a Bond villain's lair if he were a bit strapped for cash and had to live in a Sydney apartment building. He's also a big racist (the word "yellow" gets bandied about, which is weird for a guy so into Chinese culture) and he likes to show off at parties by playing William Tell with hot women. He's a huge asshole, in other words.

Basically the rest film is just this crazy Chinese dude tearing ass through Australia and beating up everyone who gets in his way. There's a pretty impressive fight scene that starts in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant and gradually works it's way into the main restaurant, leaving no piece of crockery, furniture or pane of glass intact. Later on he crashes Lazenby's party, fights all his henchmen and kicks over the buffet table. So he leaves a pretty hefty trail of destruction and hungry people in his wake.

One of the best fight scenes is where he climbs up the side of a building and breaks into Wilton's martial arts studio. There he fights an entire class of students with spears, swords etc, although what they were doing there in the middle of the night isn't exactly clear. Afterward he is picked up by a hot girl and nursed back to health. This is where he sleeps with his second white girl of the picture (must be a Tuesday or a Thursday). He even has a musical love montage, and sure, she makes a slanty-eye joke during their romantic picnic lunch, but nobody's perfect. So when the bad guys show up and run them off the road, killing her, you know they've opened up an extra-large can of Whoopass, Hong Kong style. This leads to a superb car chase which cuts a path of destruction right through a house. After running him off the road, Fang rams the bad guy's car until it breaks in half and when the driver catches on fire he just stands there and watches him burn. That's cold!

After hang-gliding onto his apartment building, Fang has his final showdown with Lazenby. During the fight he kicks Lazenby into a convenient open-air fireplace in the middle of his swinging apartment. The sound designers got a little overzealous here, it sounds like he fell into a deep fryer, but it's an impressive stunt that injured Lazenby. If you believe the rumours, he punched Trenchard-Smith afterwards. In the end Fang forces an illegal confession from him by shoving a live grenade in his mouth. Nobody seems to mind Fang's questionable methods though, so when he blows the shit out of the apartment with Lazenby and nearly all the evidence still in it, everybody has a good laugh. Ha-ha-ha, that man from Hong Kong, always murdering suspects and circumventing due process. What a joker!

They were obviously having a bit of fun with whole cop-on-a-rampage genre, so a lot of the dialog is pretty terrible, intentionally so. Could have done without the racist jokes, but it was made in Australia in1975 so to be honest I'm surprised there weren't a lot more. To be fair, Wang Yu's character is far more capable than any of the whiteys in the film, plus he's not afraid to mouth off to any assholes when necessary ("Hey, don't give me any SHIT!"). It was all dubbed in post-production (like an onion on your belt, it was the style at the time) with Jimmy Wang Yu given a pretty deep Western voice.

Cheesy dubbed dialog aside, this is a Brian Trenchard-Smith film, so you know it's going to deliver some kick-ass stunts, and it doesn't disappoint. Jimmy Wang Yu climbs up the side of a building, kicks a guy off a motorcyle etc. As far as I could tell, he also did a lot of his own stunt-driving too, including a great one where he screeches to a halt on the edge of a cliff, stopping right in front of Ros Spiers. There's some nice explosions, especially when the car explodes in the opening action scene. A car door whips right towards the camera making for an incredible shot, but it's clearly accidental and scared the shit out of the camera crew (on the commentary track Trenchard-Smith says they learned to chain the doors to the car after that). There's also a lot of hang-gliding, for some reason.

Enter the Dragon had been released a couple of years earlier, and this film was Australia's attempt at bridging Eastern and Western action styles. It's certainly not as polished as Enter the Dragon and the fight scenes definitely don't compare, but it's got some fantastic stunts that still hold up today. Definitely worth seeing for fans of Australian cinema, incredible stuntwork or garish 70s fashion.

Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior) (1981)

Post-apocalyptic fashion is fucked up. And awesome.

This film opens exactly the way it should, with Max screaming down the highway in his Interceptor, pursued by punks in a dune buggy. Not only is an awesome car chase, but there's no dialogue for first ten minutes or so, except for battle cries and screaming. Actually, I lie, it really opens with a bit of narration, explaining how the world ended up as such a dog's breakfast. Frankly I don't think this was necessary, George Miller creates such a rich and involving world, you don't really need to know why it is the way it is.

Max isn't a cop anymore, and seems pretty content to chase people down so he can steal their fuel, so he can chase people down etc. Quite a cycle of dependency he's got himself into. In one part Max is opening a can of dog food and his dog looks up hungrily, but Max gulps it down like it's a gourmet meal. People are reduced to eating dog food but they're still fighting over petrol, (they use the word "gasoline" for the American audience's sake but it's set in Australia, so fuck it, it's petrol) and it's one part of the film that really rings true to me. People's priorities really are that fucked up.

Anyway, after this confrontation he comes across this crazy gyro pilot (Bruce Spence), who leads him to a compound where they are refining petrol. He is trying to decide how to rob them when he witnesses a group of raiders attack a vehicle when it tries to cross the wasteland. They critically wound the guy and rape and murder his wife. When Max carries the dying man back to the compound he announces that he was promised some petrol as a reward. So yeah, he's not exactly heroic. Unfortunately for Max, the guy dies before he can collect so instead he is held prisoner for a while and gets caught in the middle of their battle with the raiders. It should be noted that one of the guys in the compound is played by veteran Australian character actor Syd Heylen. I like to imagine he's Cookie from A Country Practice, who managed to escape Wanden Valley before it was consumed by nuclear fire (Bob, unfortunately, didn't make it). So the leader of the raiders gives them two options: Leave the compound and everything in it and their lives will be spared, or stay and die. They decide to make a break for it with their tanker of petrol, but they want Max to drive. He doesn't want to help them, but then the raiders shoot his dog and blow up his car so he changes his mind.

So yeah, it's a simple story of redemption, but it's got such great and memorable characters it doesn't need a complex plot. You've got the gyro pilot who rears poisonous snakes and wears yellow tights. You've got Wez (Vernon Wells), the crazed punk with a male sex slave chained to his motorcycle. You've got the "Ayatollah of Rock'n'Rolla" himself, the Humungous (Kjell Nilsson), who looks like a post-apocalyptic S&M Jason Voorhees. With these films George Miller basically defined the template for post-apocalyptic fashion, outfits comprised of leather and chains and scavenged sports equipment. Don't know how they style all those mohawks though, maybe they raided a tanker full of hair gel. The cars are the kind of awesome junkpiles you can imagine nomadic scavengers putting together, full of jury rigged armour and metal spikes and stuff.

There's also the feral kid. Now, this is one of the rare instances of a kid sidekick that doesn't make my want to puke out my intestines. That's probably because he only speaks in grunts and growls and likes to dismember people with a bladed boomerang. He hangs out with Max and saves his ass during the climax, but thank Christ the kid doesn't teach him how to love or anything like that. The closest thing to an emotional connection between the two is when Max gives him a music box, and he doesn't have tears welling up in his eyes or anything, he looks like he doesn't really give a shit. He even gets the kid to crawl onto the hood of a moving truck to retrieve some shotgun shells. The hero risking a kid's life, that's not something you see in most films.

Of course it ends with one of the best car chases ever made, over fifteen minutes long. Watching a dozen crazy vehicles zipping to and fro and fearless stuntmen leaping all over the place, I realised that there's no way they'd do a scene like this anymore. It's just too complicated and dangerous. They'd ruin it by filling it full of quick cuts and shakycams and computer generated bits where you travel through the gearshift, down through the engine and out the exhaust like in The Fast and the Furious. And you can forget all the dangerous stunts, it's far easier to have actors sitting in front of a green screen and let the computer guys fill it all in with ones and zeros. Anyways, George Miller really knows how to crash some vehicles. Then they had to crap it all up with towns fueled by pig shit and Tina Turner, but whatever.