After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
- Jarvis
- (as Slim De Grey)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis film went out of circulation for many years, in large part due to the dissolution of the two production companies involved: NLT Productions was liquidated soon after its failed release, and Group W's assets were absorbed by CBS in 1999. As a result, the original film and sound elements went missing, sparking an international search. After nearly three years search, in 2002, the film's editor Anthony Buckley tracked the film down to CBS' Iron Mountain archives in Pittsburgh, where an initial 60 cans of film were found in a shipping container marked "For Destruction". By September 2004, a further 263 cans - several of which contained the original camera negative - were recovered from the vaults, allowing for a full digital restoration.
- GoofsAs Grant leaves the hotel bar in Tiboonda, he takes one last swig of beer - leaving his glass half full. In the next shot, when the camera focuses on the interior of the bar, his glass is now empty.
- Quotes
[a stranger has just given John a ride in his jeep and dropped him off at a bar]
John Grant: [grabbing his suitcase] Alright, thanks a lot.
Van Driver: Come and have a drink, mate.
John Grant: No thanks.
Van Driver: Come on, have a drink!
John Grant: [wearily] No, I'm just not at the moment...
Van Driver: It'll only take a minute. Come on, come and have a drink!
John Grant: [angrily] Look mate, I've given up drinking for a while.
Van Driver: What's wrong with you, you bastard? Why don't you come and drink with me? I've just brought you fifty miles in the heat and dust, and you won't drink with me! What's wrong with you?
John Grant: What's the matter with you people, huh? You... sponge on you, you, burn your house down, murder your wife, rape your child, that's all right! Not have a drink with you, not have a... flaming bloody drink with you, that's a criminal offence, that's the... end of the bloody world!
[storms off]
Van Driver: Yer mad, yer bastard!
- Crazy credits[Australian version] PRODUCERS' NOTE: The hunting scenes depicted in this film were taken during an actual kangaroo hunt by professional licensed hunters. For this reason and because the survival of the Australian kangaroo is seriously threatened, these scenes were shown uncut after consultation with the leading animal welfare organisations in Australia and the United Kingdom.
[International version] PRODUCERS' NOTE: Photography of the hunting scenes in this film took place during an actual kangaroo hunt conducted by licensed professional hunters. No kangaroos were killed expressly for this motion picture. Because the survival of the Australian kangaroo is seriously threatened these scenes were included with approval of leading animal welfare organisations in Australia and the United Kingdom.
- Alternate versionsThe international TV version that, until 2009, replaced the uncut Australian version in circulation, runs approximately 101 minutes (97 minutes on most copies due to NTSC to PAL conversion), roughly eight minutes shorter than the original. The changes are as follows:
- When John awakens the morning after the two-up game, an alternate take of the scene is used: instead of being naked, he is wearing underpants.
- When Janette is seducing John, the scene fades to black when she nuzzles her head against his groin and cuts to Doc's handstand. In the original, she then unbuttons her dress and kisses John, who drunkenly vomits; disappointed, she wipes his face and leads him back to the house.
- The entirety of John's conversation with Doc outside his shack is missing.
- The daytime kangaroo hunt lacks most of the brief scene in which Doc cuts off a kangaroo's testicles, and only shows the shot of Joe handing his knife to Doc before cutting to John's bemused close-up.
- The night-time kangaroo hunt is severely truncated: only the first two kills are shown, and prior to the sequence in which Joe fights the one-eyed kangaroo, the sequence consists entirely of close-ups of the actors firing at the screen. Similarly, the shot of Joe slashing the kangaroo's throat and a lingering shot of kangaroo carcasses post-carnage are cut.
- During the bush pub fight, Joe's line "You bastard!" is cut, as is Doc rising from his chair saying "You bloody bastards!"; Doc's further utterances of the phrase in this scene are cross-faded so that only the first vowel is heard.
- After Doc grabs John by the neck during their post-hunt "tryst", the scene fades to white when the ceiling lamp swings toward the screen and cuts to the following morning, thereby eliminating Doc's suggestive mounting of John (curiously, the part of this scene featured during the montage of John's mental breakdown remains intact).
- The following have been removed from the montage of John's mental breakdown: Doc spitting beer into Janette's mouth; Doc playfully slapping Janette; John breaking into a run; both shots of Doc having sex with Robyn. John Scott's music is cross-faded over the penultimate crescendo so that the final sting is still synchronized with the reversed shot of the two-up pennies over Doc's eyes, although much of Dick, Joe and the two-up patrons' howling laughter is eliminated as a result.
- ConnectionsEdited into Terror Nullius (2018)
- SoundtracksShe'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain
(uncredited)
Traditional, based on a Negro spiritual song known as "When the Chariot Comes"
Sung by passengers on the train
There have been other films with similar subject matter in alternate settings of cultured men reduced to a kind of forgotten primitivity, but I think the thing that sets this movie apart is the fact that director Ted Kotcheff remains completely neutral toward all of the characters - both the cultured schoolteacher as well as the locals. By the end of the film, no character remains unscathed, and yet no character is completely without sympathy, either. It must be quite difficult for a director to remain impartial, especially when most stories require audience sympathy for a protagonist versus an antagonist for story momentum. This impartiality establishes an incredible realism in the film which is difficult to shake off. Here, as in life, things just happen to the main character organically - whether there is any rhyme, reason, or moral to any of it is the complete burden of the audience to figure out.
Another key aspect to the film is its universality. Most people would like to believe that in the modern world, and especially a modern country such as Australia or the U.S, that such ugly colloquial primitivity has been largely purged from polite society, but they would be quite wrong. I can equate some of my own personal experiences with those of the main character in this film, and so felt an uncomfortable recognition as I was watching this. Moroever, virtually every scene in the film I could envision actually occurring - something I cannot say about any other I can think of. Sam Peckinpah's filmic explorations of perverse masculinity, some of Samuel Fuller's work, and "Deliverance" are the only movies that achieve something close to the kind of effect this movie has, and even Peckinpah felt the need to resort to flashy cinematic stylistics to get his points across.
This movie has not aged one bit, and probably never will. It is a tragedy that it has all but disappeared even in its own country of Australia. Director Kotcheff displayed an amazing early talent; it is too bad that his career never reached another peak like this - even in "First Blood" and "Uncommon Valor" - two of his other films with similar themes. And that the same man ended up directing "Weekend at Bernie's" and episodes of "Zalman King's Red Shoe Diaries"!!! The world is a crazy place, and one need only watch this film to realize this fact.
- Sturgeon54
- Aug 20, 2005
- Permalink
Details
Box office
- Budget
- A$800,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $50,394
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $6,761
- Oct 7, 2012
- Gross worldwide
- $219,472
- Runtime1 hour 49 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1