Somehow I have a harder time believing a sort of cute looking young girl like this as a Jeffrey Dahmer type than if it was some gross sweaty adult man. The combination psychotic/cute aesthetic is fun but goofy enough to keep the horror from hitting me in the gut. Still, this daughter and father combo is really interesting. There’s a disgusting sexual tension between them. It seems like the dad doesn’t mind stabbing people and hitting them with hammers but draws the line at succumbing to his attraction to his daughter. When she starts doing suggestive or sexually abusive things to Brent right in front of him dad doesn’t stop her, but looks upset, and I’m guessing more from jealousy than from fatherly duty.

Lola, meanwhile, is very jealous of Bright Eyes (Anne Scott-Pendlebury), a seemingly lobotomized old lady who acts as dad’s date at the dinner table, and is probly her mom, but might just be somebody they kidnapped before. She’s a slightly less gross and more tragic version of Grandpa in the Texas Chain Saw movies, and here this young girl is competitive with her, always doing mean things to her and making little pointed comments. It’s great.

If this was limited to this horrific mini-prom here it would be only okay, but the larger world of the movie is what makes it good and makes the far-fetched premise easier to swallow. Without ever coming out and saying it this is a set of characters dealing with traumas in different ways. Before shit meets fan there’s a vague, unexplained joke about some “emotional breakdown” in Lola’s past. Whatever it was, her and her dad have been taking it out on a whole lot of innocent people. By my count there are 5 other characters dealing with past traumas, but most of them take it out on themselves, habitually punishing themselves for things they have no control over.

From the perspective of an ’80s teen movie, Brent’s goofball friend Jamie (Richard Wilson) scored big when he got Mia (Jessica McNamee) to go to the dance with him. They get drunk and stoned and laid. She’s angry and acting out and maybe to him it’s kinda hot but he’s also having trouble even talking to her and we see the larger context of what her and her parents are going through so the whole thing becomes sad.

These characters are linked in ways that aren’t apparent at first, and you piece it together as it’s revealed through their conversations and things. You begin to understand why one character called another character when Brent was missing, why he reacted the way he did, etc. Nothing against the old NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET type scene where the kids go to the library (now internet) and look up old newspaper articles, or the SCREAM version where everyone knows about a local crime and talks about it or sees it on the news, but this way of unrolling the backstory is more effective. It creates suspense and moments of revelation and at least once you get to discover a secret at the same time as a character does.

THE LOVED ONES is artfully photographed and scored and has good, understated performances. It doesn’t have that slick mainstream feel of the various teen horror movies that came after SCREAM. Still, the young good looking actors and the cutesy “she just wants to go to prom” premise made me feel relatively safe that it was all in good fun. Then they tied the poor guy to a chair and started carving him up with a fork, and not in a funny way. In the gory slasher movies of old the horrific moments were usually over quick, like, there’s a big buildup to when a guy suddenly gets slashed and his intestines poor out and he’s screaming and then it cuts to a new scene. This one, they got the guy captive from early on, doing horrible things that I won’t give away except for one: they literally pour salt on his wounds. Well, more like throw. But it’s alot of damn salt, and it gets worse after that. It’s grueling.

Does this say something about the brutality of modern horror, the desensitization of today’s youths, the savageness of Australia? My guess is that it’s just the age of horror we’re in. They used to call it “torture porn,” now I think they just call it “horror.” It’ll probly swing back to clean PG-13 ghost movies at some point and we’ll be begging for salt on the wounds.

I should say that like pretty much any movie like this there are parts where he gets loose and there’s a chase and stuff, that’s the more fun horror I prefer. And the “torture” part isn’t “porn” at all. It’s the story. He’s this traumatized, depressed kid, we see how he’s cut himself up a whole bunch, he thinks about suicide. Now he has to withstand other people cutting him up, and he has to fight for this life that he previously thought he didn’t even want. So he has something huge to gain from this experience if he can survive.

I could list a couple of disgusting things that happen in the movie, but it’s the little moments that stand out to me. Like the part where the dad is chasing Brent in a car and crashes into a tree. Not just because it’s given meaning by its reflection of a crucial earlier event, but also because the dad takes a moment to examine the damage to his car before he continues the chase. Or even the scene where Brent’s girlfriend Holly comes home and lays down on her bed. She’s still wearing her fancy dance dress and shoes, but she never got to the dance, she spent the whole night looking for her boyfriend, and failed. And she just breaks down crying. It’s a touching moment in a genre not usually this sympathetic toward girlie-girls who don’t have any blood on them yet.

THE LOVED ONES unfortunately hasn’t come out in the U.S., but there’s a region 2 PAL dvd that I rented. I guess “The Loved Ones” is also the name of an Australian band, I’m not sure what significance that has so maybe us Region 1ers can’t be trusted to understand the reference. We would’ve got it if it was “Men At Work” but unfortunately there was already a movie under that title.

chapter 1

released April 20th, 2001

This is gonna surprise the shit out of you when I tell you this, but CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES is what they call a fish-out-of-water comedy. The fish is Crocodile Dundee, the water is Australia, the place outside of the water is Los Angeles. Actually Dundee might be more of an amphibian, he’s somewhat familiar with L.A. and is able to show his son and his pal around and teach them some things about the urban American way of life. But also he’s from the outback or whatever so he has lots of misunderstandings that lead to clotheslining people or stabbing things like they do constantly in Australia.

I don’t know about other parts of the world, but the character of “Crocodile Dundee” is kind of a joke here. The first movie was hugely popular when it came out in ‘86, and became one of the main images or stereotypes that Americans have about Australia. This has been a point of contention between Australian and non Australian characters in TROPIC THUNDER and WOLF CREEK, but I’m sure in real life everybody’s pretty much in agreement. I’m guessing Crocodile Dundee isn’t that much more of a “national hero” in Australia than Mahoney from POLICE ACADEMY is here.

Like so many things that get hugely popular the novelty faded away and people forgot what it was they liked about the movie and just remembered that it was a thing from Australia in the ’80s. Now in our minds it’s more of a reference or an answer to a trivia question than a movie. It’s somewhere closer to “Where’s the beef?” than to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in the collective unconscious. We scoff at it without really knowing why.

So it was kind of weird when they came out with a part 3 in 2001. It’s almost like if they tried to complete the GODS MUST BE CRAZY trilogy. I don’t think a whole lot of people were dying to find out what sort of shenanigans Paul Hogan’s crocodile hunter character would get into on the American west coast. This was not exactly an explosive beginning to the summer movie season, in my opinion.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe most people kept up with the Crocodile Dundee saga and re-watched them bi-annually to keep them fresh on their brains. Personally I hadn’t thought about the Dundeeverse since the ’80s. I forgot that he had a lady friend named Sue (Linda Kozlowski) who was a journalist or something. In this one they’re not married but still together with a son named Mikey (Serge Cockburn). Sue has to go to L.A. to look after her father’s newspaper, so Mick leaves the outback tour business behind to accompany his girl and look after the kid.

If I understood correctly there was a reporter who died, nothing suspicious but when Sue takes over the story he was working on, a profile of an independent movie producer working on the Paramount lot, she figures out something is fishy. This guy’s been producing the LETHAL AGENT trilogy of films starring Jean-Paul Chagal, but they’re not very popular, so how does he have the money to keep making sequels. “I’m sure it’s an elaborate front for something,” she says. “But what?” So Mick decides to go undercover as an extra. (In part 4 I hope they investigate the mystery of who watches new Eddie Murphy comedies.)

In case you’re thinking the movie producer might be innocent, you should know he’s played by Jere Burns, this creepy guy from ‘Justified’:

But the villainous plot is treated with the gravity of an episode of CHiPs. It’s mostly a setup for some wackiness. Mick befriends Paul Rodriguez (BLOOD WORK) as a veteran extra who teaches him not to look into the camera. More importantly he befriends a monkey who gets him promoted to monkey wrangler. When he figures out that the “elaborate front” involves stolen paintings the bad guy catches him snooping around and asks “How would the monkey guy know about the paintings?”

I guess one of the reasons they’d want to resurrect the series would be to have Mick react to things that weren’t around 13 years ago when they did part 2. They do that, but for 2001 the movie seems a little behind the times with its Seagal/Van Damme action hero, movies based on LETHAL WEAPON and TWISTER, and joke about The Clapper. They do have a flat screen TV and a remote control that must really be broken considering the amount of trouble it causes Mick.

One of the better jokes is about cell phones: back in Australia an aboriginal warrior in full native getup is talking shit to Mick and then answers his cell phone. Mick says, “I think we just found out which one of us is the white man.”

The “Hollywood is crazy” jokes are pretty stupid and obvious. George Hamilton cameos to tell Mick about the magic of coffee enemas. It’s kind of a weird joke because the idea seems to be “just think how a no-nonsense tough guy from the outback would react to people squirting coffee up their butts,” but of course you don’t have to be Crocodile Dundee to think that’s a crazy thing to do. In my opinion they didn’t have to go to another continent to find somebody to react to that one.

Of course a lowbrow comedy taking place in Hollywood is gonna have one of those wacky studio tour sequences. This is a Paramount movie so they can’t use the famous Universal JAWS ride or PSYCHO house (which I think were in JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK later in the summer). They have a fake Paramount that’s working on movies like TORNADO HUNTERS II and JUNGLE TREK II. It’s hard for me to accept that the tour would have a ride as stupid as the jungle ride depicted here or that Mick would be stupid enough to stab an animatronic snake in the head. But given that both of these things would happen I’d like to see him have to deal with security instead of comical expressions from the flabbergasted tour guide.

And hey, why not some professional tension between tour guides? Mick does this for a living too, maybe he should resent this cheeseball’s approach. I’d like to see that, anyway. But maybe this is not the time or place for the gritty tour guide movie the world has been waiting for.

If I had to choose a part of the movie that was mildly amusing in its stupidity I guess I would go for the scene where Mick and son cause a massive traffic jam and then bomb scare because they stop in the middle of the freeway to help a skunk. It’s kind of cute that the humor comes out of the Australian respect for wildlife and the characters naively assuming that it’s shared by Americans. Mick cluelessly waves to the backed up commuters to assure them that the animal is safe.

In one scene Mick is shown to not understand Picasso, thinking his painting was done by a kid. This is supposed to show that he’s a regular guy, as opposed to in TITANIC where not understanding Picasso was used to show that Billy Zane’s character was a dickhead.

This is a shitty half-assed comedy not worthy of the big screen, but I can say one nice thing about it. I was surprised that I found myself still considering Crocodile Dundee a likable character. It brought me back to 1986 and remembering why the first movie was enjoyable at that time. Not that I want to watch it again or anything, but I’m just saying I like Paul Hogan and his analog-man-in-a-digital-world or whatever you want to call him.

This was directed by Simon Wincer. He didn’t have anything to do with the other ones but is a successful middlebrow Australian director known to most for FREE WILLY and to me for THE PHANTOM.

* * *

legacy: none

datedness: They show a Tower Records (no longer in business). They use some music that sounds like C+C Music Factory or some shit. They talk about NYPD Blue alot – remember when that was a big deal show? There’s a joke about a cow flying in a tornado, a TWISTER reference that probly won’t stay in our collective conscious for too much longer in my opinion.

2001-2011 connections: This has an unexpected connection to the big comedy sequel of this summer, THE HANGOVER II: a cameo by Mike Tyson. The HANGOVER movies exaggerate Tyson’s image as a crazy maniac. CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES takes the opposite approach, having Mick and Mikey meet Tyson while he’s meditating in Will Rogers Memorial Park. They’re impressed by his easygoing nature, not realizing that he bit part of Evander Holyfield’s ear off 4 years earlier.

And remember how Mel Gibson was gonna do a cameo in HANGOVER II to take advantage of his own crazy reputation? Well, he’s not in DUNDEE 3, but there’s a scene at a Hollywood party where Mick tells people stories that they think are about Gibson’s crazy antics back home. This was years before Gibson was publicly getting into trouble with alcoholism and bigotry, so it’s a coincidence.

Another minor connection to this summer: the kid loves wrestling and yells “Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?” at one point, a reference to Mr. Dwayne Johnson, star of this summer’s FAST FIVE.

Would they make a movie like this in 2011? I don’t think so, but then I wouldn’t think they would’ve made it in 2001 either.

That’s the first line in RED HILL. It describes kind of a random, odd occurrence, but it also tells us alot. Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) is a cop, he’s just moved, his gun is as important to him as his family memories– or he thought it was, but then he misplaced it. Now he’s looking for it because shit, he has to get to his first day of work here in the small town of Red Hill and he’s gonna look like an idiot if he shows up with no gun.

Well, that’s what he ends up having to do. And we quickly learn more: his wife is pregnant, he’s from a big city, his paranoia about the locals here not liking him is completely justified. In fact he meets the sheriff Old Bill (Steve Bisley) after watching his fiery town hall speech about not letting outsiders change the town. Shane walks up to introduce himself and shake hands, but Old Bill leaves him hanging, just walks past him really fast pointing at his empty holster asking, “Where’s your firearm?” And not in a joking-around-with-the-new-guy type of tone.

The other cops aren’t too welcoming either. They laugh at him for saying “yes sir” and make him ride a horse instead of drive a police vehicle. It’s not as bad a first day on the job as that dude in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, but it’s pretty shitty. And while his shitty first day is unfolding there’s something much more horrendous headed his way that nobody is quite paying attention to yet. First a TV report about an explosion at a prison. Then the other cops find out it’s Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis), a guy they busted, and they know he’s coming their way for revenge. Uh, could somebody loan me a gun?

It’s basically a western, a bunch of lawmen with rifles setting up strategically to take out the outlaw who’s headed their way. But he’s Like a Force of Nature (LaFoN), he just keeps plowing through, killing all the cops without saying a word. Also half of his face is burned (from the explosion? From before?) so he’s got a good villainous look. They say more than once that “he’s hunting us down like dogs!” but come on man, this guy is a killer but I doubt he goes around shooting dogs. Who does that? Nobody does that. I know I’ve pointed this out before, but it’s worth repeating as long as this phrase persists. The truth is if he was hunting them down the same way people hunt down dogs that would mean he was petting them, talking to them in baby talk and giving them snacks. In general people are nice to dogs, in my opinion.

There’s definitely a tension here, a masculinity competition. Shane’s not a burly dude or anything, and he knows they think he’s soft ’cause he’s from a city, he doesn’t know how to ride a horse, etc. But really he shouldn’t have worried about that. He’s the one that carries a wounded cop around on his back. He can handle himself, but some of these other guys can’t. One cop misses Jimmy with six shots at close range. Jimmy fires back with more accuracy.

It should also be noted that Jimmy uses a boomerang in one scene. As I have mentioned recently, I personally believe boomerangs are awesome.

There’s more to it, but it’s a simple story so I’ll hold back some details. But there are some themes going on about colonialism and indigenous peoples, small town people vs. city people, generational differences, changing times, shit like that. But nothing pretentious, it’s all there plain as day but nobody talking about it or making a speech or anything. It’s tasteful.

The filmatism is very quiet and direct, the shootouts have a realistic feel of chaos while still being visually clear. There are some really cool cinematic touches, but nothing too flashy. I liked a part where he’s breaking into a car, and the POV of the shot is inside the car, so the sound is muffled until the window breaks and then you can hear all the rain coming down hard outside. And the scene where he’s locked in the trunk of a car and watches what’s going on through a bullet hole.

This is a good movie, and the first half or so kinda feels like a great movie. There’s nothing wrong with the second half, but it pretty much goes where you expect it, no big surprises, nothing spectacular enough to take it to the next level. Well, except there’s a thing about a panther on the loose. I gotta admit I didn’t expect a panther in this movie, or most movies in general. Anyway, this RED HILL one is pretty good.

Twenty years pass, not a word. Suddenly, out of the blue, America’s phone rings.

“Thank you for calling America, how can I help you?”
“We have Australia on the line. Please hold.”
“Okay.”
“Hello?”
“Yes. This is America. To whom am I speaking, please?”
“Australia calling. We have prepared an answer re: GOODFELLAS. It’s called ANIMAL KINGDOM.”

That’s actually one of those unfair quotes, because really it’s just saying there are superficial similarities between the two movies, it’s not actually saying they’re at all equal in quality. But no matter what it actually says everybody responds the same way: “This guy says it’s as good as GOODFELLAS.” And no movie can live up to that kind of comparison, except arguably GOODFELLAS.

But I know what the guy meant. It’s about criminals, it has a bunch of first person narration at the beginning, he goes into witness protection at the end, he eats noodles. Very similar. But it’s a smaller, more modest story, much simpler. But very good.

The lead is J. Cody (James Frecheville), a teenager, kinda looks like the Australian Lucas Black, but with less emotion allowed to escape from his heart to his face. When his mom dies of a heroin o.d. he calmly calls his grandma (Jacki Weaver) asking what to do. Next thing you know he’s in Melbourne living with her and a house full of uncles that his mom deliberately kept him away from most of his life. See, they’re all criminals, and they’re constantly being followed around by the armed robbery squad, but don’t worry, those pricks won’t do anything. They just want the other uncle who’s hiding out somewhere else. They think.

J. tries to stay a good kid. He probly enjoys hanging out with these macho dudes, being one of them. They have a protective feeling toward him, and a fatherly obligation. One of them lectures him when he doesn’t wash his hands in the restroom. But he doesn’t seem seduced by their lifestyle. He’s pushed into pointing a gun at a dude in a traffic confrontation, and whatever feeling of power the experience gives him he does a good job of hiding it. I’m not sure how much he enjoyed it. I think he sort of liked it and sort of knew it was the beginning of some trouble. I gotta admit I enjoyed it though.

But of course J. gets pulled into things he wants no part of. The coolest uncle, the one that wants out of the life, of course is the one the vigilante cops decide to come down on MAGNUM FORCE style. So J gets stuck spending more time with the worst uncle (Ben Mendelsohn), has to take part in some crimes, gets his girlfriend into some bad situations, then gets arrested and questioned by the police, including Guy Pearce (now with mustache).

One thing that makes this different from other crime movies: a distinct lack of crime. It focuses on the family life and not any of the processes of their business. In fact, I’m not sure if it even specifically says what their main business is. I know there’s some drug selling but that seems to just be a side project.

One scene I really like is where his girlfriend (Laura Wheelright) brings him to stay at her house because his uncle just got murdered by the cops and he needs to hide out. At first the mom says absolutely not, she doesn’t want the boyfriend sleeping over, but the dad feels sympathetic toward J. when he hears (part of) the story. They seem very real, trying to be open-minded, understanding parents, but their daughter really doesn’t fully understand what she’s getting into here, so neither do these poor parents. Later, when J’s presence there endangers their family it just seems like a huge violation. You see this real normal suburban family, they never did nothing wrong, they’re just trying to be nice to this kid because they like him and they get royally fucked over. And he’s real sorry about it but they don’t even get an apology or an explanation from him. They just look at him in disbelief as the shit goes down.

There are lots of interesting characters here, I’ll point out two. Guy Pearce is the cop trying to get J. to testify against his family. You expect this type of character to be a liar, trying to trick him, or a blustery hothead type of guy making threatening speeches about how much trouble the kid is gonna be in if he doesn’t cooperate or whatever. No, this guy actually seems really nice and caring, and polite. It’s weird.

But the grandma is my favorite character. She seems like kind of a phony, with a phony smile, but J. says at the beginning that he thinks she just wanted to be with her boys, wherever they were. You get the idea she’d be there with them if they working as garbage men or as animators on HAPPY FEET 2 or anything. She just loves her boys unconditionally, and her husband is dead, and she likes hugs, so she’s there in the house taking care of them even though they’re a bunch of thugs. (SPOILER ALERT: RED/SEVERE – SEVERE RISK OF ME GIVING SHIT AWAY AND MAKING YOU REGRET READING THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET) But right about the exact moment that I was thinking she was a nice lady she turned around and started flying in the other direction. Like a boomerang.

(note to Australians: please don’t take that as condescending, my friends. I know it’s a lame Australian reference, almost as obvious as kangaroos or CROCODILE DUNDEE. And I remember what happened to those kids in WOLF CREEK after one of them started joking about CROCODILE DUNDEE. But you gotta understand, boomerangs are fucking awesome. You throw them and it hits a guy in the face and then it comes right back to you. That is fucking great. Also that part in MAD MAX 2 where it cuts the guy’s fingers off. Boomerangs fascinate us. They’re Australia’s answer to nunchakas or ninja stars. Take pride in your boomerangs. Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi oi oi!)

First time movie actor Frecheville is really good as this stonefaced, enigmatic kid. In fact, everybody’s really good in this. One guy I thought was particularly charismatic was Joel Edgerton, who plays Barry. I was kind of thinking this guy is really cool, he could be another big Australian export like Sam Worthington or Eric Bana.

See, that’s the guy there, the cool uncle. And he looked familiar, I was trying to figure out what I’d seen him in before. Turns out he was in SMOKIN’ ACES, I apparently saw him in that. And he was the voice of the bad guy in GUARDIANS OF GAHOOLE. He’s in some upcoming movies, like the prequel to THE THING, and this possibly crazy movie called WARRIOR where Nick Nolte trains Tom Hardy to be an MMA fighter.

But also…

Oh shit! This guy was Luke Skywalker’s uncle, prequel edition. That’s gotta be where I recognized him from. Oh well. He’s grown up now. He’s been through alot. He made the owl movie and everything.

ANIMAL KINGDOM is not gonna replace your copy of GOODFELLAS, but I think the two can co-exist peacefully, even if ANIMAL KINGDOM is just a little baby being carried around in GOODFELLAS’s marsupial pouch. But it’s a really top-to-bottom well made movie by rookie writer/director David Michôd. Good job, Australia.

In my review of the original LONG WEEKEND I linked to an interview with De Roche where he mentioned a more elaborate ending they failed to pull off:

“A large slab of the script was omitted because of the difficulty of working with animals. I wrote an enormously complicated sequence for near the end where the animals give Peter a second chance. They want him to wise up, and he is at the point of doing so when he hears a truck in the distance. He dashes off to the highway, and the animals decide there is no hope. Poetically, they leave it to another man to kill him.”

So I was looking for that, but if they did it, I didn’t get it. It didn’t seem like the animals were trying to give him another chance. There was a snake in a tree. I think an owl hooted at him. There were no subtitles, it’s hard to know what he meant.

Anyway, Jim Caviezel (playing Australian) is Peter in this version, Claudia Karvan (DAYBREAKERS) is Marcia, only I guess she’s called Carla. That’s one of the major departures from the original. Updated for the 2000s. Who the fuck is named Marcia? That’s not something this generation can relate to. The dog is still named Cricket, but it’s a different breed. A nice twist.

Like PSYCHO the modernization is minimal. There is a mobile phone at the beginning, but no texting. Instead of $3,000 he spent $10,000 on the camping equipment. And there’s a part where they talk about Gnarls Barkley. Nah, I’m just fucking with you on that last one. The closest thing to a dated reference is when Peter’s hunting ducks he starts doing a Christopher Walken impression for a little bit. That was a good reason to update it because when the original was filmed they didn’t know anybody knew who the fuck Christopher Walken was. I mean he had been in ANNIE HALL, but I’m not sure most people would get the reference. By the time LONG WEEKEND came out here THE DEER HUNTER had been out for a year, but there was no way they could’ve known. So in the remake they were able to fix that.

I don’t know man, I don’t really get why they made this movie, but I don’t got nothing against it. Even watching it a few days after the original it was pretty entertaining. But I’m the guy who kind of likes watching the PSYCHO remake, so what the fuck do I know? It’s interesting to me to see two different sets of actors doing the exact same shit. It shows how great the script is that it can be done with different people in a different style and an entirely different era and still work. The characters still work, the situation still works, the abortion and nature themes are still relevant, it’s still funny when he points out that he just got attacked by an eagle.

I think Caviezel might be a little more sympathetic in the role than the O.G. Peter, but he’s still an asshole. One part that struck me is when they’ve seen this black shape in the water threatening him while he surfs, so he gets out the rifle and shoots it, and later Carla says it could’ve killed him. He says no, it was “probly just a dolphin.” And it doesn’t bother him that he might’ve shot a fucking dolphin! It’s like don’t worry dear, everything is okay, I just shot a dolphin, that’s all. Murdered an intelligent, endangered animal capable of communication and using tools. Don’t be so upset.

Maybe that is a dated line, or maybe it’s a good example of why the koalas and spiders and shit want to give this prick the business.

And the second time around I really noticed that geez, this guy is way too angry about her spilling sugar. So what if the ants get into it? This is not something an adult should be yelling at another adult about. That wasn’t the last sugar in the world, dude. Calm down.

I realized this time that the husband disrespects nature by shooting, chopping, littering, running over, etc., but the wife disrespects it just by not liking it. She doesn’t enjoy the beauty at all, she locks herself in the tent. When she does lay out there it’s face down to get a tan on her back. She says “this place is horrible” and calls it “this awful place” and I don’t think it’s just because all the animals hate her. She just doesn’t like the outdoors. Or eagle’s eggs.

Cricket didn’t turn on them in this one. That was a little disappointing. If anything I think that aspect should’ve been played up more. It’s a major betrayal when man’s best friend conspires with snakes and eagles. Taking away that blow makes it feel a little soft. But they make up for it by giving Peter a more gruesome death, I guess.

In the U.S. this was dumped straight to DVD with the title NATURE’S GRAVE, and what is that supposed to mean? It doesn’t sound like Nature is creating a grave for you. NATURE’S has an apostrophe, it’s possessive. Here lies Nature. This is the grave where Nature is buried. But by definition if you bury Nature aren’t you covering Nature in dirt, and isn’t dirt already Nature? Well, maybe it’s buried in jelly bellies. Or those plastic balls the kids play in at Chuck E. Cheese. I don’t know.

I do know that this does not look like a cover designed by professionals:

It’s weird because Jim Caviezel is always known for having played Jesus, people even just refer to him as Jesus instead of Jim. And like the fucking Romans the Hollywood decision makers won’t give the guy a fucking break. I’m not gonna cry over this one, but despite the chronically literal-minded knuckleheads on IMDb messageboards (yeah, I know, don’t read ‘em. But they’re just sitting there. Sometimes you get curious) I feel like some people would enjoy this movie if they knew to give it a chance. It really didn’t need to be mocked and beaten and forced to wear a crown of thorns like that fuckin cover.

I guess HIGHWAYMEN and OUTLANDER weren’t treated as badly, but those are legitimately good movies he stars in that they failed to get people to see. They forgot to tell people how unusual HIGHWAYMEN was, or that OUTLANDER is a movie that exists and that you could watch.

Maybe there really is a McCarthy style blacklist against conservatives in Hollywood, like the AIRPLANE! guy said when he made that horrible piece of shit movie. I didn’t know it but I’m reading up on Caviezel here, it turns out he doesn’t believe in doing sex scenes, and did an ad against stem cell research (rebutting an ad by Michael J. Fox – like an anti-Marty McFly dis record), and donated money to notorious gay-hating douchebag former Senator Rick Santorum.

That last one is hard to forgive. On the other hand I kind of feel sorry for him because he got struck by lightning, and because a crazy guy threw a bike at him and made him crash his Harley. Plus he adopted two Chinese orphans who have brain tumors, so he can’t be that bad. After you hear that it’s hard to really hate him, unless you’re an animal or a tree or something. So I doubt somebody said “this prick gave money to Rick Santorum, just wait til’ you see how shitty we made the DVD cover!”

Anyway, it’s okay. I think he works good as an under-the-radar actor.  I feel like I got my money’s worth out of this one, but I don’t think I can recommend it to most people. If you haven’t seen the original you should see it, and if you have seen it you’ve already seen it. The slick digital photography here looks really good and I guess it was filmed in a part of Australia where a feature has never been shot before. But the original was even more beautiful, and I prefer that grainy ’70s film look. And let’s be honest, so do you.

The movie is dedicated to the memory of Colin Eggleston, director of the original. If you’re paying attention you’ll also notice a hotel called The Eggleston Hotel. So, wait a minute. Carla, when she correctly suggested that they should stay at the hotel instead of sleep in the car, wanted to go back to Eggleston. As if she’s saying to go back to the original version, instead of the remake. Hmmmm.

Maybe the real purpose of this movie is to sharpen Jamie Blanks’s directational teeth. It’s good practice for him, studying how the classics are put together. He does a good job, he works with these actors and gets some nice footage of nature and what not. And I guess if there’s anybody out there that has a fetish for women masturbating in tents who get interrupted by the cry of a sea cow, well, now there are two movies for you to work with there. Merry Christmas.

Here's a really awesome painted poster for the movie.

Like LONG WEEKEND this is about a married couple put in an extreme situation together, but this time they get along better and the threat is not Nature, it is Man. (Full disclosure: Nature does give Man a hand by trapping them on Man’s isolated island.)

See, Rob (Robert Taylor) and Pia (Nadia Farès) go out fishing in a little sail boat. Again like LONG WEEKEND it’s more the guy’s thing than the lady’s, he’s kind of pushing her into it and showing off and she’s a little worried about it but going along with it to be nice. And again the guy doesn’t really know what he’s doing and gets lost and then it gets dark and stormy and they’re kind of fucked. But they see a light on this island so they go try to get some help.

(I’ve noticed this sometimes happens in horror movies.)

Nobody’s home, but they’re able to get inside, and it looks more like a squat than somebody’s house. It’s filthy and there’s garbage everywhere and a blowup doll. It’s hard to really tell if somebody will be back or if the place was abandoned. They don’t check to see if the blowup doll is warm.

They look around and there doesn’t seem to be a phone or anything. At least there’s a roof. Then Rob finds where they grow the pot. And oh shit, a truck just pulled up.

I like this one too, it really captures what's going on in the movie and seems like a cover I would've had to rent immediately in the VHS days.

To make a long story short Rob and Pia end up guests/prisoners of one of these families of degenerate outback rednecks we know from the movies. It’s two brothers, Jimmy (David Lyons) and Brett (Mathew Wilkinson), their dad Poppy (John Brumpton) and their dog Honky. Turns out there’s no phone and nowhere close that they can go to get help, and since the brothers know that they know about the pot there’s some threatening going on here. The guests have to pretend like they appreciate the hospitality even though the hosts are being openly sarcastic and hostile about it, and when they let them use the shower they steal their clothes. Then they make the poor lady kill an animal and show them her ass. And if you think Rob and Pia are gonna go easy on this place when they review it on yelp.com you are sorely mistaken.

The director of the movie is Jamie Blanks, who did the dumb SCREAM ripoff URBAN LEGEND. But free of Hollywood and the 1990s he’s a completely different director. This is nothing like that all, much more naturalistic in its acting and photography, more believable characters, no TV stars, no pop songs and much simpler. Blanks actually co-edited and even did the music himself (modern electronical stuff, mostly pretty effective).

So the Weinsteins used this for the DVD cover.

The script uses more than one classic type of horror movie tension. Obviously you got the trespassing tourist protagonists, an old favorite from TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. We identify with this couple so we feel uncomfortable about breaking into these people’s home, invading their privacy, wasting their water and electricity, tracking dirt around (or so the guy claims – considering the condition the house is in that one seems like he’s just being a baby).

Then you got the class tension. Rob is a lawyer, Pia is an artist, the brothers consider themselves workers on “a working farm.” They call Rob “Slick,” “city butt-stain” and “fuckin yuppie tort rat.” Then he admits he drives a Volvo and that becomes his name from that point on. When Pia talks and they realize she’s French that seems to bother them even more than the Volvo. Her name becomes “Oui-Oui” and they make her show them “some of that frog talk.” They’re real resentful so they assume these yuppies look down on them for not having a phone or indoor plumbing, and get all offended about insults that never actually happened.

Also I think they might’ve said the wife was a vegetarian at the beginning, or at least she’s squeamish about watching her husband kill a fish. And if you’re up on your cannibalism slang you’ll catch a reference to the brothers eating human flesh. So there is some dietary culture clash there too. I like these kind of conflicts in a horror movie because they get you off-balance and uncomfortable before the knives come out.

The story is pretty basic. It doesn’t go in too many directions that you don’t expect. It seems to me it has a non-judgmental view of Rob and Pia having to turn savage to survive. It’s not necessarily saying it’s bad, like Wes Craven’s takes on this subject. De Roche sets up some subtext early on with Rob saying he had to drop a case he was trying to prosecute and Pia being mad that some criminal is getting away with some injustice. During their ordeal she starts to feel he’s being wishy-washy and goes Old Testament on that ass. But Rob is sympathetic so it doesn’t seem like it’s mocking him. It’s not all black and white and throwing the book at them. He tries to smooth things over by saying even he smokes weed sometimes, he doesn’t consider it a major crime. Kidnapping, though… come on, fellas.

The point that makes the movie laughable – but also kind of awesome – is when Pia realizes her way to overpower her foes is with boobie traps. She says, “My father said to me once, ‘To catch a mad dog you must think like a mad dog. Only madder.’”

I mean come on, man. I know in movies everybody had something wise said to them one time by a relative, but let’s think this one through. What kind of a thing is that for a father to say to his pretty artist daughter? What kind of conversation could they have been having where that would come up? Were they literally talking about capturing mad dogs, or was he also using it as a metaphor? I’m not sure which one would be weirder.

Or was this just some crazy shit her dad ranted about. Oh, you know Papa, always talking about catching mad dogs, and then he writes letters to the local newspapers about the Jews and embarrasses her at school. Was it always a source of great shame to her, and if so, how does she feel at this moment when it has given her life-saving inspiration? Has she gained more respect for her insane father, or does she have a “broken clock is right two times a day” attitude about this?

Well, before we’ve had a chance to consider any of these things she’s weaving a complex web of fishing line and metal implements she finds in the barn to create a boobie trap that would give Jigsaw a boner. I mean she doesn’t just cause a hammer to hit him in the head like Nancy did to Freddy. It’s like a full-on HELLRAISER “Jesus wept” moment for one of the brothers. I know she said she was an artist, but where the fuck did the inspiration come from for this one? Everything else in the movie has been very plausible and down-to-earth, so this part is questionable.

Then again, it’s memorable. It makes it stand out as something other than a well-executed version of a common story. Points also for her invention of the Chinese penis trap. And what the dog does when he encounters it.

This is what you would call a small horror movie. If you’re somebody who just watches a couple horror movies a year that everybody says are good you would probly be underwhelmed. But for a guy like me that likes seeing many variations on the classic scenarios this is a solid and impressive one, especially considering my expectations for this director.

Shit, you know what? I think this calls for a ribbon:

I think my favorite part is when the eagle attacks Peter right after he was joking about using its egg to make an omelette. It doesn’t hurt him too bad but Jesus, who the fuck wants to be clawed and bit by an eagle? I’ve had crows peck at my head before, it gets your heart pounding. Maybe it’s different in Australia, but even with the eagle as our proud national symbol we Americans in general try to prevent and avoid eagle attacks.

Peter is from the suburbs but sees himself as this guy who’s at home with the great outdoors. With his thousands of dollars worth of camping equipment, his guns and crossbow, he thinks he can conquer nature. But he’s not really a very natural person. He likes surfing and camping but he doesn’t respect the forces he’s up against, at least not enough to satisfy said forces.

I’m guessing most of us can relate to this. If nature wanted to, we know nature could fuck us up. What happens in this movie is ridiculous on the surface, but underneath we know it has a truth to it. If you think about it too literally you’re gonna laugh at it, but to me it works on kind of a poetic level. I respect the simplicity. Nobody ever explains it. No scientifical bullshit like THE HAPPENING, no ancient aboriginal curse or anything like that. It just happens. We see what they do, we see what then happens to them, we just make the connection ourselves, and I’m sure the characters do too. We all see it but none of us wants to say it out loud. It would sound too absurd.

Even Peter knows it’s absurd. Right after the eagle attacks him he says, “An eagle attacked me!”

At first he’s trying to show his wife that it’s no big deal, they can handle it, but thing after thing after thing goes wrong. Too many different animals have flipped out on them for it to be a coincidence. Eventually Peter’s dog Cricket even starts growling at him. Must be feeling alot of pressure to come back to the home team. He’s been putting up with this asshole for years and finally he’s like “fuck this shit” and for the other animals it’s probly a thrilling stick-it-to-the-man moment like when Darth Vader throws the emperor at the end of Star Wars 3 (SPOILER) or at least when Ogre becomes an honorary nerd.

The filmatism is top notch. Lots of quiet, atmospheric scenes with sounds that make you feel the nature surrounding you. It’s all very nicely photographed with some good closeups of ants and spiders and crabs, and footage of wild animals including koalas and tasmanian devils. I know what you’re thinking – does the tasmanian devil have sunglasses and a leather jacket like on my tattoo? And is he standing next to Betty Boop? (SPOILER) No he is not. But otherwise you will have few complaints with this movie.

The director, Colin Eggleston, did a few movies I recognize but haven’t seen, like SKY PIRATES and INNOCENT PREY. His last one was the ‘87 vampire movie THE WICKED. I’m more familiar with the writer, Everett De Roche, who seems to be the master of Australian horror screenwriting. He did ROAD GAMES, RAZORBACK, LINK… and a bunch of stuff I haven’t seen. But with a track record like that I’m definitely gonna have to watch some of the other ones.

Here’s an interview where De Roche explains what he was going for with this one. “Yes. Nature is supposed to be the hero of the piece. The two characters, Peter and Marcia, are pretty unsympathetic. They invade the bush, and the bush deals with them… LONG WEEKEND is not supposed to be a heavy environmental statement; it is just a very condensed way of saying that nature is capable of looking after itself if man gets too out of line.”

So thank you Al Gore, thank you Forest Taft, thank you Lorax, but the animals and trees can take over from here.

In my opinion there have already been too many experiments in terror. Come on scientists, I'm sure there are other areas worth exploring sometimes besides just terror.

Link is the biggest, he’s a former circus ape who wears clothes and smokes cigars. When Jane first shows up he pretends to be the butler and shows her to her room.

Oh, I get it. Jane like Tarzan and Jane. It’s all coming together now.

I don’t want to explain the plot in too much detail. It’s just kind of an unfolding of weird events and circumstances with this poor girl never being instructed what she’s expected to do. I don’t think anybody is evil here, but they’re not trustworthy either. The professor doesn’t mean bad but he’s a shitty boss and host, never really explaining to her what he’s up to, so when he disappears she (and we) can’t be totally sure if he just took off or if something happened to him. I mean, we got an idea. But by not giving us the definitive answer it keeps us on our toes.

Remember when I reviewed FROZEN recently I complained about the wolves being more like monsters than just animals? That’s pretty common in horror movies and often a mistake because it seems dishonest. We in the audience know that’s not a normal animal behavior so we feel like we’re being bullshitted a little and that makes it less scary. I like that LINK doesn’t do that. Link is a potential threat but he’s also as much of a goofball as Clyde in ANY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE. He does as many funny things as threatening things. Luckily he doesn’t talk so he’s not going around making wisecracks and puns.

So he’s not a monster, but he is a brat. Jane can’t even take a bath because he comes in and stares at her and refuses to leave. He locks Imp in a well. He gets jealous. He cooks the phone in the microwave. We also know he’s ten times as strong as a man, so all the little things he does have an implicit threat to them. But also he becomes protective of her and that’s a threat in its own way because she doesn’t want him hurting somebody on her behalf. All this is why Michael Jackson had to give away Bubbles. He probly saw this movie, actually.

When Shue is (sort of) being told what the job entails she says she can handle it because “I used to babysit.” I thought that was a little joke about her starring in ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, but then I found out this came first. So I guess ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING is a prequel meant to show what she went through that made her strong enough to handle Link.

At first I thought Shue was a little stiff in the role, a little too goodie-goodie to be likable. Early on there’s some banter with the professor that seems like it was written as funny but not performed that way. But she’s so good interacting with the apes that she really grew on me. You might expect this to be the kind of girl who’s gonna do alot of running around screaming, but actually she stays pretty in control. It had to be a tough role for Shue because about half of it is just interacting with apes, no people. And she picks them up and talks to them like kids, scolds them, reasons with them. I mean, just doing the movie must’ve been in some ways like having the job her character has. She coulda had her face eaten off if she pissed them off somehow.

The apes in the movie have been trained to communicate by pushing buttons that represent a small selection of words. One creepy part is when Imp writes “LINK DIRTY BUG.” You get the basic idea of what he’s trying to say (”Link is a fuckin asshole”, maybe), but what exactly is he trying to say? What does he know about Link to make him dislike him so much? And what does it mean to him to call an ape a bug? In my opinion LINK is in the upper echelon of movies that exploit the mystery of how well apes comprehend metaphor.

It’s these little ambiguities that make me really like the movie. There are hints that Dr. Phillip is using experimental drugs on the apes that could be the cause of anything bad they do. But I feel like most of this could happen without any mad science being involved, so I like that they don’t push it on you too hard. And there are unanswered questions at the end. For example the opening scene – when you go back and think about it it’s probly not what you assumed at the time. And how much did Dr. Phillip know? Does he know one of his apes is sneaking out into civilization, killing birds, etc.?

The story is credited to Lee David Zlotoff (creator of MACGUYVER) and Tom Ackermann, script credited to Everett De Roche (RAZORBACK, THE LONG WEEKEND, ROAD GAMES). Richard Franklin is the director. He was the Hitchcock-obsessed Australian who gave us the excellent PSYCHO 2 and even better ROAD GAMES. LINK is looser and weirder than those two but Franklin still has a strong sense of suspense and a cleverness about setting up the pieces and moving them around: the property is out in the middle of nowhere, there are attack dogs over here, the phone doesn’t work, her boyfriend is worried, the doctor called a guy about meeting him, Link likes to play with matches, etc. Our brains try to store away these various pieces of information and they slowly move toward and weave through each other until they all plug in.

During all this Jane doesn’t react like she knows she’s in a horror movie. She doesn’t panic. She just tries to do her job. We’re more scared than she is. In fact, if she needs this for a letter of recommendation I give her permission to use it. She deserves a better job.

This movie didn’t make me think about the morality of revenge so much as it made me think about the morality of enjoying revenge movies. I mean, I liked the DEATH WISH movies, all five of them. I liked THE EXECUTIONER and THE EXTERMINATOR. I even liked the revenge part of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE after enduring the first, less likable part. But somehow some of these modern ones like this, HARRY BROWN and DEAD MAN’S SHOES seem a little too sadistic to me. A little too self righteous. I kind of feel like I’m supposed to feel happy about these guys being tortured and dying, but I just feel kind of depressed.

I think maybe it comes down to how seriously I take the movies. DEATH WISH 3 may be meant every bit as seriously as THE HORSEMAN. I doubt it, but let’s say it is. Well, I don’t take it as seriously. It’s a cartoon. Larger than life villains getting blown through the side of a building with a bazooka, because they murdered his loved ones. But the pests in THE HORSEMAN aren’t exaggerated villains, they’re these regular seeming guys who don’t think they did anything wrong (some of them did no more than be in a porn video) crying and begging for their lives. DEATH WISH is based on westerns, with chases and shootouts staged for suspense and thrills. THE HORSEMAN is shakycam sloppy, staged to seem real. The fights are messy and brutal, not cool.

This brings up the question of whether an ugly, unpleasant revenge movie is better than a cool, enjoyable one, because it’s not cleaning up and glamourizing vigilante murder. It’s not Hollywooding it up. It may or may not side with the avenging horseman, but it doesn’t make him look Charles Bronson awesome. Well, I think that’s a legit point of view morally, but a weak one cinematically. Because I don’t know about you guys, but I already got the message that revenge lowers you to their level a long time ago. I got it from the first DEATH WISH. I got it from two of Wes Craven’s movies and one of their remakes. I got it from DEATH SENTENCE. But most of these were able to get the message across while feeling more like an entertaining story and less like a punishment for something I didn’t even do yet. Not that THE HORSEMAN seems preachy at all. I’m just giving it the benefit of the doubt, assuming this stuff is supposed to be disturbing and not cool. Because if it’s supposed to be fun escapism somebody fucked up.

In fact it makes me reconsider that question about whether or not Bronson was miscast in DEATH WISH. Of course Bronson as a liberal architect is a bit of a stretch, and in the book he’s supposed to be the last guy you’d expect to kill a motherfucker. Bronson is definitely not the last one. He would be in the top three guys you’d expect, I think. And there’s that story about how Sidney Lumet almost did DEATH WISH as a black and white art movie starring Jack Lemmon. Could’ve been amazing. Brian Garfield, the author of the book, thought Bronson was horribly miscast, not believable.

But as I’m watching these gloomy no-fun-allowed, rubbing-your-nose-in-it vigilante/revenge pictures I’m thinking shit, maybe the unbelievability is part of what I like about it. Maybe if it was a weakling feeling empowered by murder it would only emphasize the ickiness of the concept and play down the awesomeness. Kevin Bacon was more fitting as a regular dad getting pushed into murder in DEATH SENTENCE, but his victims were as far-fetched as in any DEATH WISH. Cartoon punks with silly tattoos and John Goodman with a ridiculous accent. I don’t know, I’m thinking maybe I need that for it to work.

But after an hour in THE HORSEMAN gets away from the revenge formula, mixes it up a little. That’s when it gets more interesting. Most of the movie has been told in flashback while he gives a ride to this teenage runaway. (SPOILERS comin up.) I started worrying he was using this girl as bait for the porn guys or that her friend she’s going to meet is somebody he’s after. Instead he just has a sweet moment giving her advice. It seems to help her, and that seems to help him. He seems to decide to end his revenge spree. He’s gotten a reasonable amount of revenge and doesn’t want to overindulge. And then he gets pulled over.

This is a good moment because for a minute anyway it destroys any illusion of him being a righteous horseman. No, he’s a maniac wanted for six murders. You see him through the girl’s eyes now as she’s hearing this. After that it goes off in other directions that are arguably less interesting, but at least the setup changes. Now instead of avenging someone who died he’s protecting someone who’s alive. Also something ambiguous happens that makes it seem like it’s gonna turn into DEATH WISH 2 before it’s even finished with part 1.

So it’s a pretty interesting movie and it’s a well made one by a young rookie director. But you Australians do me a favor and keep your youngster directors in line. You have a grand tradition of powerful filmatism. You make movies with energy but without spazzing out. You got your George Miller of course, your Richard Franklin, your transplanted Brian Trenchard-Smith when he’s on good behavior, your early Russell Mulcahy. Their lessons have passed on to newer directors like Greg McLean and probly Andrew Dominik, but maybe not this Steven Kastrissios. Believe me Australia, you don’t need to go down our road and have a bunch of young dudes with handheld cameras fucking it all up for everybody with this “it’s not important to use the art and language of cinema because it’s more realistic if the camera wobbles around and nobody can tell what the fuck is going on.” Fuck realism. Make movies. If you can’t do that I’m sending you to the outback to make you beat up a kangaroo and get fondled by Donald Pleasance.

Nobody needs to suffer that fate. The choice is yours. I believe in you, Australia.

[ratings]

Mostly this is a movie about feeling you don’t belong, not relating to the people and the place around you, but figuring “what the hell?” and trying to dive in head first. He goes to a huge bar with some strange rituals (everyone has to stand up and pay tribute to fallen comrades at one point). It’s funny, because I feel like maybe I don’t understand what they’re doing because I’m not Australian, but this guy doesn’t understand either. He’s too middle class or maybe he just had to be raised in this mining town to get it. But he tries to fit in. You know what they say, “When in The Yabba…”

He has some conversations with some different people, and lots of dudes buy him beer. Everybodys’ shocked to find that he doesn’t like The Yabba. They all think it’s the greatest place this side of Slicedbreadia and anybody who doesn’t see it must just be a complete weirdo.

In this place there’s a huge racket for gambling on this coin-flipping game that I swear I saw in some other Australian movie. On a whim he tries to understand it and makes some money. Then he starts to really get wrapped up in it. He comes one bet away from the money he he needs to get out of his teaching contract, but of course he blows it and gets down to one dollar to last the rest of his trip. Whoops.

There’s some real class tension here. THis guy wears sunglasses and a white button up shirt, looks like Robert Redford. What the fuck, man, trying to make the locals look bad. Everybody’s nice to him but you can sense there’s traces of him looking down on them and also being afraid of them thinking he’s a sissy. He keeps trying to not accept their charity, but people in The Yabba like buying people drinks like it’s their patriotic duty. If you refuse their drink it’s like you took a shit on an Australian flag.

So he takes their drinks and the next thing you know he’s spending days hanging out with some random dudes he ran into. They drink, gamble, wrestle, shoot guns. He almost screws one guy’s daughter (I thought it was the wife, though) but then he breaks the romantic mood by puking. Speaking of romance, at one point it’s heavily implied that sweaty Donald Pleasance molested him in his sleep. When they first introduce Pleasance he seems like the most thoughtful guy of the bunch, but pretty soon he’s chugging beer while doing a headstand, and then wrestling Gary Bond, ha ha ha, just joking around, whoops, accidentally copped a feel, oh no, now I am passing out in a way that just happens to look like unsolicited cuddling. What was that? Why did you wake up with your pants undone? Man I don’t know, what am I a zipper expert?

Oh well, it’s like that other thing they say. “What happens in The Yabba stays in the Yabba.”

The craziest scene is when they go kangaroo hunting. It shows real kangaroos being shot, but at the end a producer’s note says not to worry, all animals were harmed by professionals. Anyway, after they’ve shot some they start wrestling them. Somehow our teacher gets peer pressured into fighting a kangaroo. Kids, just because it seems cool to brawl with a large marsupial doesn’t mean you have to do it. Stand up for yourself. But this guy does it and although he’s wincing in horror he’s also putting all his aggression into it, punching that thing in the face, beating it to death, dragging its corpse over to the fellas. Unleashing the angry beast beneath the school teacher exterior.

(According to a plot summary I read he stabs him, but it looked bare-handed to me. I’m gonna go with that ’cause it’s cooler.)

By the end he’s a complete mess, a dirty, sweaty savage. He’s drawn blood, tasted it, he’s been deflowered by Dr. Loomis, he’s lost time, he’s walked through the desert and done a poor job of hitchhiking. He’s learned about himself, but mostly he’s wasted away his vacation on beer. And now it’s back to the grind. Shit.

Well class, open your books to page 13. Oh jesus, what is this, kangaroo blood on my shirt? God damn it.

I guess the movie was once considered lost, they couldn’t find any good prints of it so it was never on video or played on TV between ‘71 and ‘09. But then they remastered it, re-released it and put it on the various disc formats over there in Region 4.

By the way, I can’t imagine any way to interpret this as an action movie. I doubt it went over too good at Actionfest. Especially if they showed it at night and people were tired out from all the other movies, it would seem like an endless flu nightmare. You gotta be in the right mood, and not looking for anything resembling thrills. I doubt there’s any way to re-edit it into KANGAROO PUNCHER.

[ratings]

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