Australian Post-Apocalyptic cheapie, that tells the tale of Crabs [Ned Manning], who takes his girlfriend Carmen [Natalie McCurry] to the Star Drive-In only to have the wheels of the car, a car he borrowed of his mate Frank, stolen. With the tires stolen, Crabs and Carmen find themselves trapped inside the drive in, which has been closed by the government to detain the restless delinquents within and keep them off the roads. Inside the electrified walls of the drive-in, a whole society has been erected… and held captive in this world where government control – as in feeding the kids drugs, bad movies and keeping the Sheila’s on the pill – Crabs starts desperately searching for a way out!
Because low-budget Ozploitation flicks are fucking brilliant, kicks convention ass, and Brian Trenchard-Smith was one of the greatest directors of the niche. Yes, a man with the motto “When in doubt blow it up, or at least set fire to it!” or “Fire is cheap, and gives high production value!” is a goddamned hero in my book.
Contemporary Aussie Rock Music, sinister delinquents, floozy chicks, a record breaking car stunt, climactic shootout and the most terrifying thing of the future…punks – think about it, people must have been scared shitless of punks in the eighties, as almost every goddamned post apocalyptic flick has mohawked punks in leather and boots as the thug villains of the waste lands. Although the real fear is presented in a smart piece of social commentary concerning racism. Which also works as a motivator for the community now faced with the dilemma, where The Star Drive-In once was a safe heaven free from “rice gobblers”, there’s a growing problem now that there’s non-white’s as part of the community. An intelligent reflection on Australian society in the late seventies, early eighties. See, exploitation films aren’t all about tits, ass and violence; they also want to say something.
Any movie with a 'Rambo 8' gag is worth the time watching, and inside the drive-in Escape 2000 (aka Turkey Shoot) 1982, and The Man From Hong Kong (aka Dragon Files) 1975, are screened. Both of them Trenchard-Smith flicks, and both movies that Carmen can’t take her eyes off… “I’ve got to see how it ends!” I love the balls of writing a scene like that into your movie, a scene, which shows just how damned great Trenchard Smith really was.
Where everyone else is seemingly content with being captive in the Drive-in, Crabs becomes a natural protagonist as he’s consistently trying to create change, i.e. get the hell out of the drive in controlled by Thompson. There’s a great tension that builds between Crabs and Carmen, as she becomes more and more adaptive to life within the fences, where Crabs becomes more and more determined to get the hell out.
Written by Peter Carey who you should recognize as the writer of another great Ozploitation classic, the deep dark comedy Bliss 1985, and one of the writers on Wim Wenders Until the End of the World 1991
Despite being something of a failure at the box office – but it did find it’s audience on the cult circuits later albeit the cultural elitists – the movie was nominated for a Australian Film Institute Award for Lawrence Eastwood’s production design. And I'll be damned if there isn't a drinking game somewhere in all that graffiti and detail in frame.
Dead End Drive-In get’s a four out of six as it’s a damned neat little movie. Yes it’s slow and tediously works it’s way towards the action packed climax for almost eighty minutes. But that’s part of the charm with certain cheap exploitation flicks, they are quite meditative and half the challenge is trying to keep awake whist watching them. Oh, and the Anchor Bay version has a great commentary track by Trenchard-Smith who is always entertaining to hear talk shop.
Story: A rich couple, Ro and Pia, hire a small boat for the day and plan to spent it fishing and relaxing on the seas. But a sudden storm forces them to seek shelter and they end up on an island with only one house to hide in. While investigating the house Rob stumbles upon a secret weed farm and understands that who ever lives there will not take lightly to their intrusion. At the same time Pia notices that there’s a pickup pulling up just outside the house, and the home owners are less than pleased to find them there.
Me: At first you will feel that this is just another one of those set em’ up, knock ’em down, movies going along for yet another torture porn ride. But then you'll start to get drawn in, and you don’t really know any longer what to think, and then at the end of the movie you will feel satisfied.
Jamie BlanksStorm Warning is indeed a very interesting movie, which after an initial viewing actually had me feeling quite satisfied, something I never expected as the narrative started to unfold. Being a wild blend of outback/hillbilly slashers like Texas Chain Saw, Hills Have Eyes, and Razorback meets modern torture porn in the style of the Saw, Hostel and Wolf Creek, Storm Warning toys around with gender roles and comes up with a few interesting surprises. And straight off the bat it has to be made known that this movie, even though it is made at the same time as those other T.P. movies (I hate that terminology and refuse to use it any more in this review.) it was in fact scripted by master of Australian genre cinema, Everett De Roche with movies like Link, Razorback, Harlequin and Patrick on his resume some thirty years ago when the Australian Exploitation genre was at it’s height. Also at one point in time, the movie was supposedly going to be helmed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Worth pointing out before we get started is that director Jamie Blanks is one of those multi talented John Carpenter-ish creators who directs, edits and scores his own movies. The score for Storm Warning does it’s job and works with the movie, some parts are perfect, others less. But it’s not the score that is the main ingredient for making this a successful movie, it’s the cunning twists that are within that original script. It’s also a pleasure to see a director who has previously made a few lesser impactful movies like the decent Urban Legend and the tame Valentine, finally hit the nail right on the head.
Anyhow, the movie chugs along at normal pace to start with, and you know from the setup that these two wealthy characters Rob [Robert Taylor] and Pia [Nadia Farès] are going to wind up in some strange place, and meet even stranger people, and have some really strange terrifying shit happen to them. It’s the premise for that genre. And they do, some fifteen minutes in, as they seek shelter from the sudden storm that darkens the sky, forcing them into land, or rather a small island. During this set up, an ordinary day out in a small boat fishing and taking up the sun, Blank’s establishes two important character traits that are going to be shattered during the course of the movie.
Aussie bloke Rob is a no crap guy, a barrister who after being forced to drop a case, tells his wife Pia that he’d in the blink of an eye “take the bastards outback and give them a good beating” if he only could. We now know that Rob is prone to violence. Then as the storm hits and the boat has to be dragged through a ditch to safety, it’s Rob that gets in the water. He’s not only prone to violence; he’s also a man of action. At the same time Pia, Rob’s French artist wife, makes very clear arguments that she is sickened by the system that let’s criminals walk free, and as they catch a fish, she is appalled by the way Rob clubs the fish to death with a champagne bottle. We now understand that Pia objects to unfairness and violence, even if it’s just as simple as killing a fish on a hook.
Both those statements are twisted around and shattered later in the film as they stumble upon the house and the warped family that live out on French Island. All along you think that Rob is going to rise to the occasion and bring about the downfall of the three family members that hold them captive, threaten to rape Pia, and take their lives. But he doesn’t. He’s all talk and no action when push comes to shove and as he lies passed out with a broken leg on the floor of the barn Rob is certainly not the hero character we have been led on to believe. Instead it’s Pia who takes it upon herself to find that inner strength to fight her way out of this nightmare. She’s just killed a small wallaby to prove that she loves Rob, as the bad guys where about to cut off his balls unless someone killed the little animal for dinner, so she has now put her values at stake, she can kill if she needs to. And she will. In a nutshell it’s Pia who takes out the villains and makes their escape possible, and she does it in three very, very innovative ways that had me right on the edge of my seat twice. One guy is strung up in a terrifying trap made of fishing rods and hooks, and as he hangs there Pia beats him to death with a hammer, she runs one guy into the back of a giant propeller as he tries to smash the window of the car she’s trying to escape in, and Poppa, the lead baddass in this movie is first castrated by the most vicious vagina dentate ever, as she crafts her own anti-rape device with the help of a jar and it’s cap. If you are male you are going to squirm in that sequence.
Movies like this are nothing without their villains, and the villains here are all top notch. They are pretty far down the road of insanity and their strange relationship to each other is important here. Poppy is the father of the family. Fiendishly portrayed by John Brumpton, he certainly makes for a menacing father figure. It’s quite obvious that the two sons Brett [Mathew Wilkinson] and Jimmy [David Lyons] are terrified of him, and that’s also why there is a natural pecking order between the two sons. The father takes shit out on Jimmy, Jimmy beats Brett.
Let me linger for a moment as I talk about Jimmy. David Lyon’s performance as Jimmy is stunning. He is just fantastic, and the way he made this character come to life on screen is fantastic. He little twitches, the fast replies to the other characters dialogue, his teasing of Pia, throwing in French gargles here and there is wonderful. I’m sure that if there was ever a plan for a Storm Warning 2, the Return to French Island, Lyon’s Jimmy would have to be back, resurrected from the dead to continue his trail of death and sadism. It’s also hilarious that Lyon went from this sinister murdering psycho to end up as a regular on the last season of the TV show E.R. From menacing killer, to helping doctor that’s a transition that made me laugh the last time I saw him on E.R. and it was tricky not to see him just as Jimmy in a lab coat. But what a performance. Great stuff indeed. But then again the acting in the movie holds a very high level, and all the actors are very impressive, perhaps that one could have wanted more from Nadia Farès character, but being semi nude with an all male cast may have been intimidating. Especially when three of them are telling you that they are going to rape you and then kill you, acting or not, it’s definitely a menacing scenario.
All three of the antagonists are very menacing, and do their best to come off as evil, vile sadists, and it works, they really are despicable. And the fouler you antagonists are the more violent deaths you can give them. It’s psychologically validated, unless you let them kill off all the protagonists which will leave you with a valuable anti hero instead! This is also the second important ingredient for the twist that comes when Pia starts to fight back. Usually you have your protagonists trying their damndest to make it to the end of the movie alive, but still they are one by one picked off and finally you get the lucky survivor making a final successful dash for it. But what differs De Roche’s screenplay and Blank’s movie from the rest is that all male characters in the movie are impotent! They never kill, maim or butcher anyone (Well there is that guy in the red tracksuit early on in the movie, but that’s mostly off camera, and more of an indicator to set up how potentially dangerous they can be.) Instead it’s Pia who kicks ass, tortures, maims, beats and murders the victims in this movie. The single white female pushes genre convention aside and from the moment when understands that she can’t rely on her dope of a husband becomes the Femme Fatale Killing Machine. She even leads the antagonists on before lureing them into death. Just like a praying mantis. And that was honestly surprising; I never could have seen that coming. I was certain that she’d be the survivor, but not before witnessing her hubby being killed and her at least raped, beaten and put though hell before she would make her last dash. It’s a refreshing move, even though the script is 30 years old, and could quite possibly be what makes Jamie BlanksStorm Warning one of the best movies in this genre so far.
Image: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, dts 5.1. English language with optional Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish subtitles.
Extras: Interesting commentary track with director Jamie Blanks, screenwriter Everett De Roche, lead actor Robert Taylor and the set designer. A 23minute EPK with behind the scenes footage and cast/crew interviews. Trailers for Rambo, The Mist and REC also available from Noble Film.
Story: In a not so distant future, prisoners are sent to camps for re-education and behaviour modification. Radio Freedom host and wanted man, Paul Anders, with three previous successful escapes on his record, is placed in the dreaded Camp 47 together with Chris Walters and Rita Daniels because of their political opinions. There they quickly learn that you play by the rules of Camp Commander Charles Thatcher, and if you don’t you will be punished in front of all the other inmates by big bad Chief Guard Ritter. After a harsh introduction to the atrocities that take place at Camp Thatcher; Chris is abused and practically raped by the guards before being saved at the last moment by Paul, just released from being stuck in a cage and hung up in the burning sun upon arrival just because of his list of previous incarceration escapes, Paul lets partners in imprisonment Chris and Rita in on his plan to escape! But unbeknown to the brave freedom fighters, fiendish Warden Thatcher has planned a little game for his acquaintances in high government positions. A terrible game where selections of the inmates are to be hunted down and killed, just for fun.
Me: Don’t you just love “not so distant future” movies that are supposed to have near future feeling to them when they where first released (in 1982) but then some thirty years later just makes you laugh because of their “campiness”? Brian Trenchard-Smith’sTurkey Shoot, is no exception, but still an interesting piece of Australian cinema. Getting in on the “future” trend in Australian genre cinema of the time Turkey Shoot is a decent re-imaging of Irving Pichel/Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1932 movie The Most Dangerous Game, it makes great late night entertainment as they weave in minor subplots, violent death, obligatory “shared gender shower room” nudity and some really campy super villains to the gritty movie. That, shared gender shower room, perhaps it’s a kind of “all criminals are of the same low value” sort of statement? Anyhow Turkey Shoot is a wild ride indeed, and you have to agree that Alph the Apeman [Australian Wrestle Icon Steve “Crusher” Rackman]who takes part in the hunt as Tito’s [Michael Petrovich] choice of weapon is one of the true highlights of this movie. Anyone who could ever have come up with the idea of an ape-man in a shredded tuxedo definitely gets a round of applauds from me. It’s one of those creepy, hilarious images that make this movie stand out from the rest. As we are presented to the three lead characters, the tone of the movie is set firm when we witness two violent public executions held in front of all the other inmates as to scare them into submission, Thatcher and his high society friends start plotting out the details of their coming hunt. They watch over the inmates and choose their target subjects. Ever the smarmy politics man Thatcher gives them the fake deal; if you take part in my little game and survive the day I’ll let you go. He even hands out identity cards that they can use back in the free world. This is obviously received with various reactions. Then the day of the chase comes and the hunted are given twenty minute head starts before the hunters are going to start tracking them down. And that’s where the movie really gets going, as the chase proceeds and the violent carnage begins. Running through he jungle unarmed being chased by goons armed to the teeth is definitely exciting entertainment. There’s a excellent sequence where Thatcher takes shots at Paul on the other side of a ravine with a sniper rifle, Chris encounters the vile warden who previously tried to rape her, but as there’s no Paul around to save her this time she’s forced to kill him, hence abandoning her pacifist values and become a killer herself. And no film is complete without a final showdown, where the bad guys get pay their dues in violent graphic deaths one after the other before the camp is trashed by death from above as bombers take out the remains of the camp during the last shoot our between convicts and jailers.
Although in some way’s there’s not quite as much empathy for the band of rouges trying to stay one step ahead of Thatcher the tyrant and his band of happy hunters, as they mainly are only basis for gory deaths, apart from perhaps Olivia Hussey’s Chris and slightly Steve Railsback’s Paul, but he’s just a tad to smarmy for me to really identify with. Don’t get me wrong he is a chilled hero character very true to exploitation measures, and he makes the most of the part, but still I never quite like him enough to root for him. Perhaps it’s due to the selfish attitude he has during the first part of the film. If he really was a true freedom fighter, wouldn’t he want to break everyone out of the camp? Then again he more or less does in the grand finale, so there’s some sort of justification here. Back to Hussey, she made this one right after completing Ivanhoe, and she is really low key and naïve in this movie which can be somewhat annoying, remember she is only arrested for objecting to the beating Paul gets when he wounded runs into her store and falls on the floor before the “police” rush in. as she objects she’s accused of sympathising with the dissidents and is taken into custody. But her naivety makes that character arc in the end so much finer when she together with Paul blasts her way through the guards of the camp with that heavy machine gun, freeing all the prisoners.
But the most entertaining characters in this movie really are the villains, led by Michael Craig’s Commander Thatcher, he’s vile, evil, sinister just as your tyrant’s should be, and he sees no problem in making paradoxical statements as he runs his camp, twisting and bending just to prove his point. Like the rules you get the feeling that he makes up as he goes along just to yet again find opportunity to torture the inmates “Freedom is obedience, obedience is work, work is life. Well, now understand once and for all that the reverse is also true, Disobedience is treason, treason is a crime, crime will be punished!' But no evil commander is complete with out his band of henchmen, and Thatcher really has a great ensemble of evil subordinates to back him up. The immense threat that actor Roger Ward makes as the sadistic guard Ritter is great, he really stands out as one of those guys you wouldn’t want to be around because you might get a punch to the back of the head at any moment. Just the sinister sneer on his face topped off with that Prussian moustache just makes him a perfect evil warden. Then there’s the sadistic and lethal femme fatale Jennifer [Carmen Duncan] who takes to horseback during the hunt and armed with her arsenal of crossbow arrows tracks down the hunted before going one on one with Chris in a very tense scene where her S&M tastes are on display “You’ll be safe here! I’ll take care of you!” as she thrusts an explosive crossbow arrow towards Chris face!
Two things that have to be pointed out with Turkey Shoot is its executive producer (one of them) , or more know as the actor David Hemmings. You will know probably him from movies like Antonioni’sBlow Up or Vadim’s camp epic Barbarella. Anyhow after a run of films in Italy (among them Argento’s majestic Profondo Rosso and Castellari’sHeroin Busters, he followed these up with a decent batch of movies in Australia and New Zeeland, where he not only acted but also held executive producer roles and in a few cases directed a whole bunch of them. (He later directed a whole load of TV series like Magnum P.I., Airwolf, Murder She Wrote, The A Team etc. and was no novice to directing at this time either.) You have to make note of the great soundtrack by the late Brian May who also composed the soundtracks to several other great Australian Exploitation movies, Patrick, Mad Max, Thirst, Harlequin and Mad Max 2 to name but a few.
It comes as no surprise that director Trenchard-Smith gives a few pokes at the old motherland while shooting films in Australia, hence the main villain being called Thatcher , a somewhat political allegory to the at the time current state of the U.K. This is made very clearly in his use of authentic riot and political clash footage in the opening of the title sequence. Then there’s the obvious comment on the state of things where the “dissidents” being persons who hold different belief’s i.e. Paul, the radio Freedom fighter, Chris, the pacifist who objects to the needless violence and Rita, [Lynda Stoner – what a great name!] who refuses to being labeled a whore just for making a living, are carted off to be re-educated and reprogrammed to fit into society, only to be confronted by homosexuality (is it only me or does Thatcher have that vibe?), sadism, masochism, the perhaps worse crime of all the lack of respect for human life as they are chased through the jungles like animals for blood sport. It’s a great irony that many of the contemporary movies lack.
Image: 16:9, 2.35 Widescreen
Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish subtitles optional.
Extras: A great audio commentary by director Brian Trenchard-Smith who discusses what he calls “A Train Wreck of a Film!” and gives a very entertaining insight into the movie, an alternative opening sequence, a poster gallery, stills gallery and the original trailer. Also there are trailers for Patrick , Pariah, Last Hunter, New Barbarians, Blue Sunshine, SS Experiment Love Camp and SS Camp Woman’s Hell.