Posts Tagged ‘Australia’

ROGUES’ GALLERY REVISITED | SYDNEY POLICE ARCHIVES 1912-1948

Posted: August 2, 2012 in Books, History, Photography, Uncategorized
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“Some of the photographed documents are like open wounds. A hastily pencilled suicide note reads: ‘Goodbye earth, all is lost’. Another, apparently written in blood, says ‘Be prepared, you die soon’. There are obscene drawings and messages left at crime scenes by safe crackers and burglars. One, signed ‘Apache’, compliments the victim on the robustness of their safe; another thanks the home owner for the whiskey” (John Doyle, City of Shadows)

It’s a book that gives you ideas. If you’ve got a chain-smoking drifter lurking in the back of your head, or a killer stealing your thoughts, you might finally catch them here. The photos have been exhibited in Sydney a couple of times – but their story is still worth repeating.

When a flood deluged an old Sydney warehouse back in the 1980s, The Historic Houses Trust shifted around four tonnes of boxes, cartons and crates of old Kodak neg. What they cracked open was a lost covenant of crime photos, dated from 1912 to 1960. Con-men, prostitutes, itinerants, gangsters, the aftermath of murder; all caught in the flash-lamp of bygone police investigations, details of which had been long since lost. Lives and motives cut largely adrift – not for the first time.

What remains is raw – sometimes graphic – testament to their characters. Several years ago the writer John Doyle was brought on board to salvage these moments from the glass plates and acetate. Groaning ledgers of long-since forgotten mug-shot, murder scene, mishap and tragedy could now easily satisfy any director’s casting book or story-board. Doyle has done an extraordinary job, compiling a strangely intimate tour through the under-tow of a city’s dead in his book City of Shadows.

Mr Skukerman, or Mr Kukarman, or Mr Cecil Landan, glowers from across the years. The NSW Police Gazette Sydney notes he ‘obtains goods from warehousemen by falsely representing that he is in business’.

Harry Williams, sentenced to 12 months hard labour on March 1929 for breaking, entering, stealing. The Police Gazette  reported that Williams consorted with prostitutes and ‘frequents hotels and wine bars in the vicinity of the Haymarket’.

Walter Smith after a battering, somewhere in Sydney, Australia, 1924. Smith was listed in the NSW Police Gazette, 24 December 1924, as ‘breaking and entering’. He was sentenced to 6 months hard labour.

‘Harry Leon Crawford’, charged with wife murder. Crawford was soon revealed to be in fact Eugeni Falleni, a woman and mother, who had passed as a man since 1899. In 1914 Falleni  married Annie Birkett, who later told a relative she had discovered ‘something amazing about Harry’. Birkett disappeared. Falleni went on to appear in numerous mug shots through the years, becoming the notorious ‘woman-man’ killer in the press.

Mug shot of Thomas Sutherland Jones and William Smith, 15 July 1921, Central Police Station, Sydney.

The handwritten inscription reads ‘Frederick Edward Davies stealing in picture shows and theatres, Central 14-7-21′. Police held petty theft in particularly low regard – this may be why Davies is photographed front of the toilet stalls.

Thomas Bede, Central cells, 22 November 1928. The man who refuses to open his eyes for a photo. Police had to scratch this script back-the-front on the plate – so this would have been doubly annoying.

“To meditate on the uncensored history presented in these photos is to be made aware of two things; the power, strangeness and vulnerability of all human life and the need to document, resolve and rationally explain its infinite capacity for aberration” (Peter Doyle, City of Shadows)
It wasn’t until the formation of the Scientific Investigation Bureau (SIB) in 1945 that a standard procedure was enforced for mug shots. Before then, there was an enormous degree of creative license for everyone involved. The images often capture the subject in a full-blooded moment, with no consistent mode of framing or standard composition to constrain.

“Despite the elegant formal arrangements…we are left with the impression of a black and white world that is fraught with pain and misadventure. A place that the era’s magazines, travel brochures and up-beat newsreels ritually ignored.” observes Doyle.  “Men and women recently plucked from the street, often still animated by the dramas surrounding their apprehension”

Vera Crichton, 23 (left) conspired with two other women to ‘procure a miscarriage on a third woman’. She was ‘bound over to appear for sentence if called upon within three years’. E. Walker was believed to be a vagrant. Her head was probably shaved in the cells due to lice.

Convicted of using an instrument to procure a miscarriage. Janet Wright was a former nurse who performed illegal abortions at her house in Kippax Street, Surry Hills. One of her teenage patients almost died after a procedure – Wright was sentenced to 12 months hard labour. Aged 68.

‘Tilly’ Devine sentenced to two years gaol for slashing a man’s face in a barber shop with a razor. She would become Sydney’s best-known brothel madam, her public fued with sly-grog queen Kate Leigh (below) provided endless media fodder at the time. The war between the two has since been elevated to city folklore. Aged 25

A young Kate Leigh, 1915.

Some hard drinkin’ years later. Kate Leigh as Sydney’s now notorious sly-grog baroness and underworld figure, 1930.

Inscribed Hayes, date unknown – probably early 1920s.

Alfred Ladewig, alias ‘Tiny’. Police Gazette Sept 1920 reads that Ladewig was charged with ‘stealing by trick’ the sum of two hundred and four pounds.

It wasn’t until the formation of the Scientific Investigation Bureau (SIB) in 1945 that standard procedure was enforced for mug shots – until then dance routines were obviously acceptable. Friends of the missing Rene Flowers – clearly a vaudeville performer – flaunt it.

Teenager Annie Gunderson was charged with stealing a fur coat from a Sydney department store called Winn’s Limited, in 1922. Police records do not indicate whether the fur she is wearing is the stolen item. Aged 19.

Wharf labourer William Stanley Moore ‘operates with large quantities of faked opium and cocaine’ and ‘associates with waterfront thieves and illicit drug traders’.

W. Cahill, the tough guy’s Russell Crowe, hits 1923 to do some crimes. Details unknown.

Bad boy Sidney Kelly, June 25, 1924. Offences included shooting, and assault. In the 1940s was a pioneer of illegal baccarat gaming in Sydney. This NSW Police Gazette: “Illicit drug trader. Drives his own motor car, and dresses well. Associates with criminals and prostitutes.”

Kong Lee makes numerous appearances in the NSW Police Gazette. A ‘safe blower’ and ‘thief’, and is noted in 1929 as having recently been seen riding trains ‘in the company of card sharpers and spielers’.

‘Ah Num’ and ‘Ah Tom’ some time in 1930. The ‘D’ prefix on the photo indicates it was taken by the Drug Bureau. Num and Tom don’t appear in any records – their names may have been conjured for the paperwork.

The lads busted. Not for long perhaps? Hampton Hirscham, Cornellius Joseph Keevil, William Thomas O’Brien and James O’Brien – July 20, 1921

All together now. ‘Group of criminals, Central 1921′ (unnamed). The woman on the left is believed to be Eileen Leigh or Barry (daughter of Kate Leigh). The man third from the left in that row may be the pickpocket and three-card trickster known as Frederick Mewson, and the man far left in the front row is likely the pickpocket known as Norman Smith.

“Child unknown found wandering at large”. Mid 1920s, details unknown.

Hazel McGuiness, 26th July 1929, Central cells. Details unknown.

May Russell, 31st January 1922, Central cells. Details unknown.

Ah Chong, 11 July 1928, Central cells. No listing for Ah Chong found when this photo was taken, but an Ah Chong was convicted on two charges of receiving in 1922. He also received twelve months hard labour.

Mrs Dorothy Mort was having an affair with a strapping young doctor and Test Cricketer, Dr Claude Tozer. On 21 December 1920 Tozer visited her home to break off the relationship. Mort shot him dead. She was found covered in blood with a gunshot wound to her breast, and under the influence of a narcotic. Tozer was found in her drawing room, shot in the back of the head, the temple and the chest. Dorothy Mort has rebuttoned his vest over the chest wound.  The case stirred a media sensation.

Dr Tozer visits the home of girlfriend Dorothy Mort on 21 December 1920. It didn’t go well.

Exterior, scene of car crash, from bridge onto storm water canal cover, early 1940s. Details unknown.

 

Underneath a bridge, inner city Sydney, a bottle Waterbury’s Compound – a popular tonic and cough remedy – by the dead man’s side.  It is unclear whether he fell – photographs suggest the possibility.

Probably mid 1940s, details unknown.

Published in Sydney newspapers in 1933, as a practical demonstration to a sceptical press and public that police could operate undercover. The men seen here are a mix of detectives and civilians. The figure third from the right is believed to be Sergeant Frank Fahy, aka “The Shadow” – the force’s most effective undercover operative at the time.

The International Workers of the World, or ‘Wobblies’, carried out ‘direct action’ – sabotage – in Sydney in 1916, agitating for the release of their leader, Tom Barker. Barker had been jailed for sedition after making an anti-war speech in the Sydney Domain. It was seen as the modern equivalent of terrorism. Cotton waste, turpentine, phosphorous and kerosene, were allegedly found during police raids in Sydney and the ‘IWW Twelve’ were convicted of conspiracy and sedition. All received long jail sentences.

The most popular camera with crime and press photographers was the large format 4×5 Speed Graphic- made famous by Weegee. It had a large flash unit attached that could light up an entire room. It was difficult and hard to focus in low light, with ground glass and rangefinder focusing.

Probably late 1930s, early 1940s. Details unknown.

The scene where criminal heavy John Frederick ‘Chow’ Hayes shot boxer William ‘Bobby’ John Lee, at the busy Ziegfeld Club, 22 May. Hayes shot Lee in front of friends and other underworld figures, in a revenge attack. He was reportedly provoked by the line ‘you wouldn’t do it here, with all the lights shining and all the people around’. ‘Chow’ shot Lee five times. Lee refused to identify Hayes on the way to hospital – where he died that night. Hayes was not convicted.

According to the Police Report: “Four detectives went to the flat, climbed in a window and found the bodies lying on the bedroom floor. Investigations led the police to form the opinion that while Mrs Anderson was seated on a chair in the lounge she was shot. A trail of blood indicated that as she jumped up from the chair she knocked it over and then staggered towards the door. The detectives think that Anderson caught hold of her, knocking the wireless set against a sideboard. He then dragged her into the bedroom and as she slumped dead on the floor he shot himself. He fell across his wife’s body and the revolver was found under him.

Bedroom, with bloodstained bed reflected in dressing table mirror. Details unknown, late 1930s.

Safe break attempt at the Camellia Grove Hotel, now the Sports Bar, Henderson Road, Alexandria.

Three men demonstrating self-defence techniques. Details unknown, late 1930s.

Of the assorted types, Doyle says: “The subjects of the Special Photographs seem to have been allowed – perhaps invited – to position and compose themselves for the camera as they liked. Their photographic identity thus seems constructed out of a potent alchemy of inborn disposition, personal history, learned habits and idiosyncrasies, chosen personal style (haircut, clothing, accessories) and physical characteristics.”

So, given the passage of time, this collection reminds me a bit of the epilogue line at the end of Barry Lyndon: “It was in the reign of King George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now”.

The latest exhibition from the ongoing discoveries in the archive was Collision: Misadventure by Motorcar – featuring car crashes and traffic accidents in Sydney between 1920 and 1960.

All images (c) NSW Police Forensic Photography Archive, Justice & Police Museum, Historic Houses Trust of NSW. http://www.hht.net.au/discover/highlights/insites/city_of_shadows

A TAXI RIDE THROUGH KINGS CROSS SYDNEY | THE DIRTY HALF MILE 1970

Posted: February 29, 2012 in History, Photography
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Cab Driver Kings Cross 1970-71, Image by Rennie Ellis.

“It was raining hard in Sydney. I needed one more fare to make my night. A lady up ahead flagged to wave me down. She got in at the light” (almost the lyrics to Harry Chapin’s Taxi)

I was recently digging around some photos of Sydney’s Kings Cross and uncovered a series of photos by Rennie Ellis. They were shot over a six month period during 1970 and early 1971, when American servicemen from Vietnam jostled money through the bars and strip joints alongside bikies, hippies, oddballs and junkies. Everyone was, as Barry McKenzie might have said, “as busy as a one-armed taxi driver with crabs”.

Rennie Ellis’s 1971 work captures the Cross at its eccentric and seedy best. A mesmerising gateway into what he called “the surface glitter and underground guts of the Cross”

"The underground guts of the Cross". Bouncer, Kings Cross Strip Club, 1970, Image by Rennie Ellis.

“Sydney was, in effect, a tabula rasa. Unlike the cities of the Old World, no slow sedimentation of history lay beneath its streets. Old World centres founded in Roman or medieval times grew organically… Cities of the New World sprang into being, often at a single, identifiable moment in time” (John Birmingham, ‘Leviathan – The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney‘)

The Sydney of 1970 had not shifted far from its origins – except perhaps for a quick roll in the glitter. Back in 1788 the first freight-loads of male and female convicts were dumped together two miles west at Sydney Cove just as a terrible storm hit. It took several barrels of stupefying rum – thrown in courtesy of some relieved and exhausted Officers – to turn the scene into a full-blown squall of lightening, liquor, filth and fornication.

But the seed scattered in virile soil.

US Servicemen at the Golden Orchid, Kings Cross 1970-71, Image by Rennie Ellis.


Midnight Show, Kings Cross 1970-1971, Image by Rennie Ellis.


Between strips, Kings Cross 1970, Image by Rennie Ellis.


Officers on the beat 1970, Image by Rennie Ellis.


US Serviceman with Kings Cross girls 1970, Image by Rennie Ellis.

“The scene which presented itself beggars every description: some swearing, others quarreling, others singing, not in the least regarding the tempest” (Arthur Bowes Smyth on Sydney’s first landing, 1788)

By the early 20th century the Kings Cross district had become Sydney’s bohemian heartland. It also provided ground for a notorious turf-war in the illegal alcohol trading – known as sly grog – between Sydney’s celebrated crime matriarchs Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh.

In 1970 the neon protegee – set behind the spooling enclave of exclusive 19th century terraces -  had refined history into a red lather of lights, action, sordid glam, the eccentric and the criminal.

Snake Woman, Kings Cross 1970, Image by Rennie Ellis.


MC, Paradise Club, Kings Cross 1970-71, Image by Rennie Ellis.

Carlotta & Electra, Kings Cross 1970-71, Image by Rennie Ellis.


Carlotta, Kings Cross 1970-1971, Image by Rennie Ellis.

“Some call it Australia’s Barbary Coast – and there are a few pirates there for sure. Others call it Sin City – and here’s some of that around too. One Sydney Alderman wants it cleaned up. Another says it is worth a million a year the way it is. If you can believe what you read about it the inhabitants make their living out of baccarat, dope, witchcraft, prostitution, stripping – and selling each other salami.” (ABC TV, 1969)

By 1970 Abe Saffron – known as Mr Sin – ruled the roost. It was during his reign Jim Anderson shot dead Donny ‘the Glove’ Smith dead outside the Venus Room – now a less salubrious Backpackers Hostel. Australia’s celebrated witch Rosaleen Norton held court. Free love was for sale at the artists open residence The Yellow House. The area was a certified home to artists, writers, poets journalists and actors – including Australia’s Peter Finch and Chips Rafferty.

Property of Hells Angels, Kings Cross 1970-71, Image by Rennie Ellis.

Auntie Mame, Kings Cross 1970-1971, Image by Rennie Ellis.


The Witch of Kings Cross, Rosaleen Norton 1970-1971, Image by Rennie Ellis.


Tattoo Girl, Kings Cross 1970-1971, Image by Rennie Ellis.


Working Girls, Kings Cross 1970-1971, Image by Rennie Ellis.

Peace sign, The Yellow House, Kings Cross 1970-1971, Image by Rennie Ellis.

Yellow House Kings Cross 1970-71, Image by Rennie Ellis.


Top of the hill and left at the Coke sign, Gov. Rainy evening Kings Cross 1966 Fairfax Images.


Kings Cross 1970, Image by J Fitzpatrick.

Rennie Ellis went on to photograph bar rooms, strip joints, celebrities – with a seemingly boundless backstage pass – around the world. He also caught some great AC/DC dressing room moments with Bon Scott in 1977.

His photo gallery captures the great Australian cosmopolitan throughout the decades, from the beehives and rockers of the sixites to the hyper-colour of the eighties and ninties – with sex throughout. Ellis passed away in 2003. Kings Cross has since been tidied up some – instead it is now littered with plaques commemorating the characters who once coloured the area.

STONE RIDES ON | THE GRAVE DIGGERS REVISITED 2011

Posted: June 19, 2011 in Film
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‘Stone’ 1974. The Grave Diggers, lead and directed by The Undertaker (Sandy Harbutt) – gun in hand.


By Geoff Stanton

When Sandy Harbutt’s biker classic Stone rumbled through cinemas in 1974 few would have thought the trail would still be smoking in 2011.  But Stone’s five-gallon metamorphose of counter-culture, violence and motorcycles remains as pioneering as ever. Since 1974 Stone has galvanized a worldwide fan base, spawned motorcycle clubs such as The Vietnam Veterans (who now proudly wear the actual Grave Diggers crest across their backs) and horrified the critics.

But the world has turned since 1974. When I spoke to writer and film maker Richard Cartwright in 2010, he could attest to this. He was in fact preparing to ‘take the trip’ again and begin shooting a reworking of the iconic Aussie flick – in 3D and with a new generation of bikers.  “I am actually using the word recreation or reinvention,” he enthused. “I think some pieces of art you just don’t touch. And I think I will refer to Mr Quentin Tarantino’s line, which is that ‘Stone is just too good to remake’. This will be more of a homage”.

Dr Death (Vincent Gil) and friends relax over beer and speedballs.

Harbutt’s 1974 Stone – about an undercover cop thrown into a bikie group while trailing unsolved murders – transcends its obligatory plot to capture a vital pulse. It champions a lifestyle, a creed that challenges the establishment, charts its own moral ground, finds freedom in volatility. It is possibly satanic, definitely violent, and has a great rock n roll soundtrack. In other words, the original Stone remains as relevant as ever.

Developing the material for the 21st century was itself proving to be challenging. “The bike clubs of 1974 are not quite what they are today,” conceded Cartwright. “So there’s an element of looking at the biker legacy. I’ll also be bringing back into the script some of the original characters from 1974. The Undertaker will be reprised, as well as a couple of the other characters from the original gang. They will be older versions. They will ride into town and say ‘Hey, what the hell’s going on here?’”.


Cartwright’s approach was not so different from Harbutt’s vision. Which is fortunate, as Stone’s creator remains unwaveringly loyal to his inspirations. “You have to have a dynamic subject to make a movie in Australia that anybody is going to go and see,” Harbutt told me. “I was a motorcyclist, I’d been riding my Triumph around for a while and I had a real interest in those types of people – and the Vietnam War was on. I thought the ideal outlaw motorcycle gang would be a group of returned Vietnam veterans who had every reason to reject the current corrupt society.

“There was a lot of reason to be angry. In fact, when I was raising the money for the film I actually had to lie – until I got the money they were called The Grave Robbers rather than the Grave Diggers. Simply because it was just so controversial. And the people who had the money were the Establishment”.

Payday for the Grave Diggers

Since wrangling his film into existence Harbutt has himself kept a low profile. But the myths surrounding Stone – which confounded critics by becoming one of Australia’s most successful film ventures – have thrived. Witness Stone‘s legendary budget of beer and dope. Or the violent brawl scene outside the pub, featuring brigades of enlisted bikers who pummeled, jackknifed and beat cast members out of pulpy character and into unscripted reality. Before being paid in beer and dope.

Not entirely so says Harbutt, bringing it back down to earth.

“These stories just get a little out of hand really” he tells me, discussing the brawl scene. “What we did was invited people to come, and they came. They all took part – not including the Hell’s Angels, who didn’t take part in any of the fighting. I’m too smart for that… The fight was completely choreographed by Peter Armstrong, and the non professional guys… well, part of Peter’s skill was that he could stage huge fights like that and people would think it was for real. Peter was such a great stunt choreographer, as well as being the best stunt man in the world. But yeah, so that was completely choreographed. The only thing that wasn’t choreographed was the arrival of the Black Hawks, when the guy falls off the bike and onto his face. And then after that, basically what we did was told the guys that over the next hill was a pub called The Dry Dock and we had free beer.”

“So basically we paid for the bar, and everyone went over there and got drunk and went home. We didn’t actually say if they came we’d pay them in beer. Even though some of them were drinking while it was going on we certainly didn’t want people to be drunk while they were doing what they were doing. It was just guys having a bit of a drink on a Saturday afternoon. The whole cast and crew were always paid professionally. But then, once we invited people to come for the funeral scene – 400 turned up. All we paid was their dole. The other thing was, as for paying the Hells Angels in dope – they didn’t actually smoke dope in those days. That came along a bit later.”

Dr Death (Vincent Gil) and friend with chilum.

Amanda (Helen Morse) with spliff.

Stoned. The Undertaker (Sandy Harbutt) with Stone (Ken Shorter) and... friend.

It is no secret that Tarantino is a big fan of Stone. Cartwright and the inimitable QT shared their enthusiasm at Cannes, where Cartwright was lucky enough to gain an audience with the director.  “I met with Tarantino and his exact words to me were: “Sandy Harbutt – that guy is a visionary!”. Cartwright meanwhile gave Tarantino an original 35mm print from Harbutt’s own collection.  “Tarantino’s face was like a five year old kid in a candy store! The film was in an authentic 1974 can, slightly rusted, with Goulburn Theatre and Darwin Cinema stamps all over it”. The possibility remains open that Tarantino may play a role in proceedings, although Cartwright admitted at the time that he was not precious about the capacity in which Tarantino would be involved.

Most importantly, however, Harbutt had given the project his blessing. “One thing I will say is that Sandy has not imposed his point of view at any given time. He has made some wonderful and helpful suggestions. Sandy has said to me ‘Richard, I’ve made my film – now go and make your film”. And I think that was a wonderful thing to say. And I couldn’t be more humble. It is now my goal to do justice to Sandy’s great piece of iconic Australian cinema”.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE | THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE KELLY GANG

Posted: April 25, 2011 in Film, Music
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By Geoff Stanton

 

When Mick Jagger set stirrup for the lead role in 1969’s Ned Kelly, history was meant to bear him somewhere between Billy the Kid and a ballsy Irish folk song. “The more I worked on it the more I thought I could make it by adopting a ballad, almost country and western formula” recounted Tony Richardson, the flamboyant British director behind such celebrated epics as The Charge of the Light Brigade and Tom Jones (and father of the late actress Natasha Richardson). But while the cinematography would unfurl with beautifully haunting reverie, any romantic re-imagining was swiftly ringbarked by the dramas of rock stardom, careless rewrites and worst of all (according to Richardson) – Australians. Ned Kelly is indeed a renowned tale of thuggery, violence and an indomitable mythology – and that was just behind the camera.

 
Jagger and the Iron Outlaw

“Ned Kelly?” reminisced a skull-jewelled Keith Richards to FILMINK in 2008. “With that bucket on the head!? I said, ‘Don’t do it, Mick!’. Mick’s not natural cinema food. But what he does in his spare time is up to him.”

“Having gone for Mick I should have made a very different film” conceded Richardson years later in his autobiography Long Distance Runner. “Maybe a kind of collage that capitalised on the striking contrasts of his talent, instead of trying to push Mick into being an incipient John Wayne.”

But if there is anyone who can authoritatively recount the curious left-bend Kelly took, it is veteran Australian screenwriter Ian Jones. Whilst helming legendary production company Crawfords as writer, producer and director (where he pioneered Homicide, Hunter and Division Four) Jones began helping Richardson draft the original script for Ned Kelly. Jones was (and also remains) a leading Kelly tragic and authority. Indeed, much of his interest in the dynamic between crime and authority sprang from this devotional source.

“When I was about ten I read The Complete History of the Kelly Gang, in which he was a Robin Hood figure” recounts Jones. “Then I read The True Story of the Kelly Gang, in which Ned was the villain and the police were the heroes. I realised that if I wanted to know the true story of the Kelly Gang I’d have to find it out for myself.” By the time Jones was twelve he was going through newspaper files, and by fifteen he had started going through the minutes of the Kelly Royal Commission.  By the 1950s this had inevitably lead to an amateur Kelly film.  “I spent two hundred pounds to get two hundred feet of film.” After wrangling paddle-steamers and coaches for the project was aborted midway after Jones stepped a broken bottle in a billabong. “One hundred and fifty feet and that was it – a pretty disastrous exercise”.

But it would take more than that to ultimately deter him. “At Crawfords we were actually talking about making a Ned Kelly film shortly before Tony Richardson arrived in Australia in 1968. It was a god-send to suddenly get a phone call asking me to arrange lunch with Tony Richardson to talk about making a Kelly film. We were gearing up to do Division Four, having got Homicide on the rails and Hunter – so I could only be loaned for 3 weeks. I arrived in London on New Years Eve 1968 and began working with Tony on New Years Day 1969.”

The journey began well. Richardson met Jones to begin work on the script with a flute of Moet Chandon in hand. “And a silver swizzle stick to keep it lively!” laughs Jones. “He had a bit of a hangover. He was an amazing man – incredibly flamboyant. He had a script already written, and I can’t remember who wrote it, but I remember Tony saying “I don’t want to make a film about a caveman who wants to wear a helmet!”.

 

Casting the Helmet

It is ironic that Kelly’s legend was borne from a desperate desire to be left alone. There are at least twelve films to leave the iron outlaw swinging. But between knocks Ned has roused a genre. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) (flagged as the world’s first feature) and 2003s Ned Kelly (starring Heath Ledger) bracket dozens of films (including Captain Midnight, King of the Road, Captain Starlight) that consistently ignite interest, but never the depth of passion Kelly lore evokes.

The original Ned Kelly, 1880

Ian Jones recognised the opportunity to show Kelly as he really was – a wily, charismatic Irishman. He was initially pleased that Richardson appeared to share the same view.  “Tony saw a lot of poetry in Ned and thought, as I did, that the Irish roots were very, very important and that Ned should speak and think with an Irish accent. This was revolutionary at the time. Ned was always archetypically Australian. Think of an AFL footballer with an Australian accent – typified by Bob Chitty in The Glenrowan Affair (1951).”

Casting threw a seasoned assortment of names into the mix. “At that stage it was a Columbian film, and they were coming up with names like Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris and Warren Beatty” recounts Jones. “Ian McKellen had also recently done Richard II and Tony was very impressed – so we gave him a bit of the Jerilderie letter (Kelly’s famous letter and manifesto) and filmed him in costume with some stubble in a stable somewhere – and he really gave a very very powerful Ned.”

But he could not have guessed where the tin hat would land. “There were a couple of little flashes of danger early in the piece though,” he ruminates. “Tony said ‘Ian, when you think of Ned Kelly what do you see?’. I said ‘I see a big bearded man sitting on a horse’. And Tony said ‘Ah! But the fact that he was big isn’t important! It is no more important than the colour of his hair!’”. I should have hammered home the point that part of Ned’s tragedy was that he was such an indomitable figure. To me that was an inescapable part of his tragedy. He could not escape attention. He could not avoid being drawn into a fight.”

The strutting quaver of a willowy frontman was clearly not on Jones’ list of candidates. “‘Mick Jagger!?’ I said. Tony said excitedly ‘Oh, do you know him?’.  I said ‘No, Tony!!’. And he said “Well, have you ever seen him act? He’s maaarvelous!’ I said ‘But Tony, he’s not exactly a big man, is he?’ Tony said “Christ no! He’s the smallest fucking man you’ve ever seen! But he’s got a very big head!!’”

                               Ned Kelly, 1969. Image by © Robert Whitaker     via

“I had tested some very good actors,” reminisced Richardson. “And Mick was suggested. Mick was sniffing at a career as an actor. I’d always been a fan of the Stones and was excited by the prospect. The wicked battered Irish face was perfect for Ned. We discussed the problems the role would present in terms of its physical demands. He would have to handle horses and guns. He was sure it was only a question of practice, and, astonished by his magnetism, energy and freedom on stage, I persuaded myself that there was a way his body, with the speed of an urban street cobra, could be transformed into that of an outdoor bushman. It was a mistake.”
With casting misadventure now in the wings, Richardson was also about to pass through his antipodean Ninth Gate.

 
A Mysterious and Unsympathetic Land

“The most striking impression (of Australia) was the monotony of the ubiquitous eucalyptus trees, broken only where the forests had been ring barked and burnt, the result like great black scars on the dull green land” wrote Richardson. “While Sydney seemed to combine the worst elements of Glasgow and San Francisco”.

“Tony didn’t like Australia.” says Jones. “None of the British crew did. I mean, it was a terribly tough shoot. And the English unions kicked up like hell about the number of Australians Tony was using. They virtually called a strike towards the end of filming and sent telegrams to the members of crew. Tony held them until the film was finished,” laughs Jones “which was a fairly Tony way of doing things”.

Richardson flew to Queensland for an initial recce.  “Social activity for the whole district, an area of probably 1000 square miles, was centred on one bar from four o’clock in the afternoon. There was a tiny band who bawled dirty lyrics, to the roars and leers of the clientele, who poured down beer after beer until they went outside to throw up and then returned to the bar. There was nothing to do except drink. Finally I found (our host’s friends) – they’d picked up two nurses, and their VW was already packed but somehow we sandwiched in. They hurtled off at about 120 mph. Kangaroos leaped across the road and the brothers whooped and gunned forward trying to hit the animals. When we finally got back the girls were told to “fuck off home” – another 100 miles away. We set out to devour all that remained in the freezer – frozen French fries.”

A ‘man of wealth and taste’ was on his way, however. For Jagger it had been one hell of a year. While The Rolling Stones were at the top of their game, dishing out raw-knuckle soundtracks synonymous with sixties decline, heroin was setting cracks in the edifice; Richards had been arrested for drug possession, Brian Jones was dead and Jagger’s sidekick Marianne Faithfull – now cast alongside Jagger as Kelly’s sister Maggie – was in the grip of withdrawal and frail as a leaf.  After the famous memorial gig for Jones in Hyde Park, Jagger and Faithfull skipped the funeral straight for Australia. Jagger initially seized hungrily upon the role. After starring as a self-absorbed rock star in Nic Roeg’s cult film Performance – perhaps an echo of his own spook – cinema had become another professional paramour. But Kelly was to be a different creature.

“I’ve never done many parts, only one really; and this isn’t as difficult” reasoned Jagger initially. “I’m playing someone very different from myself so it’s much easier going. It won’t look like anything like me, with hips swinging and so on. I will look very Victorian. As far as the role’s concerned, I’m taking it very seriously. It’s not a joke, otherwise it’d be a bad movie.”
“Will it be hard with Marianne Faithfull playing your sister?” quipped one reporter.
“No” retorted Jagger.  “I’ve always wanted an incestuous relationship.”

Daily Mail's image of Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull after fronting court over the drug bust, 1969.

Australian media had not lapped at rock dignitary this thoroughly since The Beatles tour of ‘63. For publicity it was a major coup. But for Jones it was having a profounder effect. “The notoriety of the Rolling Stones was a hell of a hurdle. Not helped by the fact that Marianne Faithful was about to have a disastrous drug overdose upon arriving in Australia”. Faithfull had been “fatigued” by the journey, the press conference was told, and was now resting. She had in fact swallowed one hundred and fifty barbiturate tablets and was now within a tailcoat of Brian Jones. Journalists were soon wise.

“The Australian press behaved like a ravening pack of hunting-dogs” recalled Richardson. “The hotel where we were staying had to have massive security to prevent them breaking into Mick’s suite. There had to be massive security at the intensive care ward. The security was eventually broken by a pressman who disguised himself in a white coat as an intern. Escaping when discovered, he managed to knock over the IV equipment of a dozen dying patients. Nevertheless, in triumph, one of the papers boasted its scoop – a huge front page out-of-focus photo of an unrecognisable Marianne with blurred tubes in her mouth and nostrils.”

“That rock n’ roll image was already being reinforced” says Jones. Columbia had already dropped their support following the casting decision. “But fortunately the character of Maggie wasn’t going to be used for some time and the lovely Australian actress Diane Craig swung in – and played the role beautifully.”

 

Welcome to Kelly Country

With lurid dramas percolating the fringe, other aspects came together extremely well. In terms of viscerally creating Kelly’s rustic world the film succeeds beautifully.  “Jocelyn Herbert (the designer) was absolutely wonderful. She trod the tightrope between Mick as Ned Kelly and Mick as a pop figure. The interesting thing was that flares were in, and flares were also very big during the Kelly period. Putting him in flares was really quite accurate – although giving him a sort of lacey affair to rob the banks in was possibly going a bit far.”

“Jocelyn’s Kelly homestead was an awesome creation. Tony had found this old site way out somewhere near Braidwood that was virtually just a chimney, so he decided this was where he wanted to film because this was where people had lived and died – had children and suffered. Jocelyn borrowed slabs from around the place to build the Kelly homestead. It was perfect. When I arrived there I thought ‘how did they get this slab hut intact like this – this is amazing!’ When I went inside I was still fooled. I thought Good Lord – it’s still got newspapers on the walls! I glanced at the newspapers and noticed there was an evening Ballina Standard and a Murray Advertiser – she’d had newspapers specially printed and then aged them. The calico ceiling looked like it had been there forever. It was astonishing. We were just a couple of hundred feet from the snow line, it was the middle of winter and it was freezing, so we had a blazing fire going the whole time”.

The Kelly homestead by Robert Whitaker, 1969

The silky landscape was conjured masterfully by Australian cinematographer Gerry Fisher.  “It had a wonderful feel of the past about it,” says Jones. “It was an absolutely revelationary vision of Australian landscape. It was shot in winter, and that helped to capture the Irish mood of the story. Fisher used antique Ross lenses on the film, all of which added up to a terrific physical impact.”

The old Melbourne jail where Kelly was actually hanged was also given a make-over, with gallows rehinged and a prop beam put in. “A lot of the props are still there actually” says Jones. “The door, the trap and the beam are still there from the film. It was also the first time I saw Mick. It was his first day of filming. I said g’day to Tony, and then on cue, out of a cell half way down the gallery, came the execution procession – including Mick with a beard but no moustache. I said to Tony ‘Why hasn’t Ned got a moustache?’ Tony said ‘We tried several moustaches – but they all looked too weak!’ So that was it. We had Mick with those amazing lips blazing from his face and this trim beard, which, if anything, accentuated his trademark lips”.

 

The Wild Colonial Stone

Jones admired Jagger, but knew the weight of celebrity couldn’t hold the film’s centre. “I think Mick unbalanced the thing, and that’s the pity of it. For all the value of casting someone his age and playing him with an Irish accent it is inescapable. It revolves around Mick Jagger and everything that he was. It was almost impossible not to be conscious of the fact that you were looking at Mick Jagger.”

Promotional shot of Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly, 1969

“Though fire and energy snake out of Mick like electricity in concert, he can’t produce them cold as an actor” admitted Richardson later. “It’s a problem with many rock performers. Another problem is that great artists – singers, dancers, sportsmen – don’t carry their public with them when they cross over into a different, often alien, situation. The face was great, but the body seemed frail – at times spastic. But the mistake was mine.”

While staying in a small grazing property thirty kilometres out of Canberra in Queanbeyan, Jagger worked hard at the role but was finding it demanding. “Mick did try for a while” said Richardson. “He rode, he shot guns, he learned how to improvise. But, for all his exceptional intelligence (I often thought he was far too intelligent to be an actor) and imagination, he couldn’t understand the dues he would have to pay to look at ease in the saddle – or maybe he just got bored. He couldn’t suspend himself and become a character. And probably if I’d tried to tailor the character more to him he’d have resisted it.”

“Tony had a remarkable intellect” says Jones. “He knew we were dealing with a young rebel of the 1870s. And Mick was a youth rebel of the 1960s – one hundred years later. But Mick is a very different sort of rebel from Ned. And the fact that Tony didn’t understand the central physicality of Ned’s nature in the destiny of Ned Kelly – that was a fatal flaw. I blame myself for not hammering it home more strongly. But Tony and Mick make a good fist of it, like that seminal twenty round bare-knuckle fight with Wild Wright – however incipiently ridiculous Mick looked in the outfit as a boxer. And the gunfight at Stringy Bark Creek. Tony could get very gritty. He captured the important aspects of Kelly – but in other ways Mick could never be Ned Kelly.”

Jagger and Richardson on set, by Robert Whitaker via

While Jagger was losing interest, the story itself also beelined it for the hills. “The story was starting to go all over the place” says Jones. “I had major problems with what was going on; Tony was doing the most bizarre things with the script! When I arrived in Braidwood for a few days and discovered some of the things Tony had done I threw a wobbly. I was actually meant to be in the film, but I said ‘I don’t want to know anything about it’ and marched off. Tony was absolutely incorrigible. He’d get an idea and suddenly improvise something. The scene where the gang accidentally burn their dinner and then jump and flap about in the water… it’s not the way bushman behave! That was all down to improvisation. Tony would rehearse a scene and then suddenly have an entirely different idea and do another take and print it. He would completely wing the whole thing.”

Jagger’s Irish dialogue coach had also started providing some of the dialogue while Richardson’s friend Jim Sharman (who went on to direct The Rocky Horror Picture Show) also began dabbling with the script. Eventually Australian playwright and author Alex Buzo also joined the party, eventually claiming the screenplay as his. “I thought it was very brave of him. I have always stressed that I wrote the first draft of the script, and this was all I’d admit to – even though Tony and I got the credit for the whole thing”.

In one rare turn though, the film admirably imitated myth when Jagger was actually shot.  “They were using authentic firearms” begins Jones. “I can’t remember if it was a revolver or a rifle – but one of the firearms had a lead adaptor inside it to take the blank. This adaptor was blown out and hit Mick in the hand while they were doing the last stand. He was literally shot. They wanted him to stay away and knock off for a few days, but he wouldn’t. In the end they got someone to pinch his clothes so he couldn’t come onto location. And that is why he wears gloves in several scenes. Because of the wound on his hand. He was a very gutsy fellow”. Mark McManus, who played young Kelly Gang member Joe Byrne, also narrowly escaped death when his horse-drawn cart overturned.

Let it Bleed. Mick in the helmet, image by Robert Whitaker via

It’s a shame Richardson couldn’t harness some of the mayhem and corral it into the film. The wrap party, for instance, rivalled the Last Stand. “Drunkenness was endemic in Australia,” commented Richardson. “One or two beers were enough to send anyone off in a violent and destructive way.” Richardson pre-emptively prepared for the party behind a ten-foot-tall barbed wire fence designed to protect the property. “During the shoot we rented a very beautiful 1820s sheep ranch near Bungendore, outside Canberra. With its cool wood-panelled rooms, it was too lovely to risk beer bottles flying at mouldings or into mirrors.”

The next morning people lay passed out and bleeding across shards of broken glass. “Not a single cup or glass or receptacle survived. Even so, we considered ourselves lucky, as a local gunning club whom we’d used in the film brought their 19th century cannon and tried to lob shells at the house – one of the few authentic period houses remaining and a famous landmark. This time the alcohol was on our side – their aim was off.”

 

Such is Life

“Ned Kelly was like having a still born child” said Richardson on the final film. “The shape and features were all there, but without a breath of life”.

“I was thrilled by some things and appalled by others” recounts Jones. “It wasn’t Ned as I knew him and it wasn’t the story as I had tried to tell it. Visually I thought it was superb and some moments which were unhistorical but worked quite well. Stringy Bark Creek was very well done. The Last Stand was beautifully handled. The railway cutting and the misty dawn theme – it was just terrific. A hell of a lot of work went into that. But it was very hard for me to be objective. There was enormous disappointment. It didn’t work as a piece of cinema as a whole. Even if I divorced all my conceptions of Ned the story was simply not well told.”

Reviewers were less circumspect. “When Jagger puts on his home-made armour he looks like a cut rate sardine” commented one. “About as lethal as last week’s lettuce”. Jagger himself boycotted the Premier. “I didn’t know the film was going to be shit” was his parting shot.

“I liked Mick” says Jones. “I found him a very honest sort of character. He was a very straightforward in his way. But he behaved very badly when he realised the film obviously wasn’t going to be a success. He just walked right away from it – ditched it. He ditched Tony, and Tony was quite hurt by that. Because Mick had become and absolute obsession with him”.

The film received praise from some surprising quarters however. “I was at the premier in the Glenrowan Hall and I sat next to Gwen Griffiths – who was related by marriage to the Kelly family and who had actually lived in the Kelly homestead. When the film was over I said ‘What did you think?’. And she said ‘I thought it was marvellous!’. So I said ‘What did you think of Mick?’ and she said ‘I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role!’. She had grown up with people talking about ‘the boys’, the old timers always talked about ‘the boys’, and that was the gang. And they were boys. Ned was dead before he was 26. Dan and Steve were still teenagers. All the problems of the film were unimportant to her.”

Robert Whitaker's still of the final shoot out.

Jones maintains Ned Kelly has its place in the Kelly canon. “With historical drama you are walking a tightrope between authenticity and drama. The interface is very delicate. English writer Vera Brittain said the idea of historical fiction is to invent nothing but imagine everything. The same applies to film. That is the problem of having a historical vision of any character – it’s going to be subjective”.

History may show that Mick Jagger is more comfortable making it rather than retreading it. But he did leave his mark on the Kelly armour.  The initials MJ are still visible in the body-suit displayed at the Queanbeyan City Library. In the meantime, Richardson made a break from the colony by fleeing for the charms of India – where he subsequently spent time in a locked room after having his tea spiked with acid. It had been a hell of a journey from the silver swizzle stick. Jagger’s Kelly headpiece, meanwhile, has since been stolen.

Published in Filmink Magazine 2010



APOCALYPSE THEN | ‘ON THE BEACH’ AND THE MAKING OF A LOST CLASSIC

Posted: April 5, 2011 in Film
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Published in Filmink Magazine 2010

In the late fifties Hollywood came to Melbourne in the form of producer/director Stanley Kramer’s haunting post apocalyptic classic ‘On The Beach’ starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson. That collision is now the stuff of legend…

Geoff Stanton

It’s now fifty years since American filmmaker Stanley Kramer – a producer and director of note who would come to define the concept of social commentary in cinema, with credits like ‘The Defiant Ones’, ‘Judgement at Nuremburg’ and ‘Guess who’s coming to Dinner’ – arrived in Melbourne to film the big screen adaption of local novelist Nevile Shute’s ‘On The Beach’. Set in the shadowy aftermath of a nuclear war, the film locates the distant Australia as the planet’s last vestige of society.

With the rest of the world destroyed or dying, Australia will soon fall prey to the winds that carry lethal doses of nuclear fallout and radiation. Looking over the precipice into destruction, the population continues on in a kind of living eulogy, grimly aware of their collective and fast approaching fate. The powerful delivery of the film’s cautionary and apocalyptic tale was unprecedented. But the Melbourne based production of the film eventually became epic in its own right.

 Stanley Kramer directs extras out the front of the Melbourne State Library as the radiation cloud moves in. As published in Philip Davey’s ‘When Hollywood came to Melbourne’, from The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA (Los Angeles, California).


“When you see such a dire warning of apocalypse filmed in your own city with familiar every day surroundings it is extraordinarily close to the bone” says Philip Davey; historian, cinephile and On The Beach authority extraordinaire. Davey’s research has faithfully followed the footsteps of production, the ghost of Aussie Newsman Ted Madden (editor and publisher of News Weekly) his spiritual guide. American Director Stanley Kramer coaxed Madden into the engine room of Hollywood then inviting him along for the ride. “Kramer originally approached him to do a feature, and ended up inviting him to become part of the crew. Madden wrote a blow-by-blow description covering the 3 months. It must have been sensational.”

Kramer’s constellation of luminaries – Peck, Gardener (knuckle-swinging Sinatra in tow), Fred Astaire (in his first dramatic role), a young Anthony Perkins and starlet Donna Anderson – certainly alighted our shores with the bombast of a highball. The myths and folklore surrounding the convergence of two wildly different frontiers – and the hauntingly poignant film created – continues to fascinate. For Australia in particular the experience of Kramer’s masterpiece stands as rare vision.

 

 

Rum, Radiation and Death Sweats

It is one of the more lighthearted moments in the Pastoral Club as the city slowly winds down:
“How much of this Gould Campbell have we got left?” one old gent asks the barkeep.
“About four-hundred bottles, sir.”
“And in its prime. Shocking. Four-hundred bottles of vintage port in the cellars and barely five months to go. How can the club members be expected to get through four hundred bottles with five months to go?”
“I think it needs another year actually” replies the other gent, sipping on his port.

Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire on location at Canadian Bay, Melbourne. Photos by W.John Haysom, from the W. John Haysom Collection, La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria.

Nevil Shute’s story is strikingly devoid of the violence and mayhem implicit in most post-apocalyptic neighbourhoods. In fact, in 2009 On The Beach could almost be a nostalgic portal onto an Australia of the 1950s. Ice tinkles about the clubhouses, pool cues clatter. Downtown shoppers in high heels and pillbox hats swarm about Flinders Street Station. People frolic at the beach and yacht races are skippered in the sun. Some critics were initially scathing of the denial inherent in the characterisations. Davey says this was a fundamental misunderstanding. “To me the story of a nuclear war without any obvious destruction or carnage or anarchy just made it more realistic. The idea that people are carrying on and planting a garden that will never come actually makes it more devastating.”

It was Donna Anderson’s first major role. She and Anthony Perkins play Mary and Peter Holmes – a young Australian couple with a newborn, striving to carry out daily rituals in the face of imminent doom. As the radiation cloud draws nearer their predicament becomes heartbreaking. Perkins is forced to decide whether to issue his young family the suicide pills or wait for the inevitable. The slow unravelling of routine turns the pitch from brooding ominous to near macabre. The wilting quaver of signage (“There Is Still Time…Brother”) in front of Melbourne’s State Library, and the ever-diminishing Salvation Army band beneath it, brilliantly convey the double-edged tone characterising this remarkable film.

Stanley Kramer directs Donna Anderson and Anthony Perkins.

Anderson vividly recalls her memories. “I had been under contract to Stanley Kramer for 3 years,” she tells Filmink. “He saw me in a dance show when I was 15 and signed me to a contract, and I continued my dance classes and studied with my drama coach Nina Moise. I had occasional meetings with Stanley for him to review my progress. At one meeting he mentioned he was going to do a film called On the Beach and he was thinking of casting Debbie Reynolds in one of the parts – or he might consider me for that role. The story was incredibly powerful – we truly believed it might happen. People were buying and building bomb shelters all across America. I believe it is as powerful today – an analogy of man’s relentless self-destruction.”

“Shute based his experiences on the Blitz in London” says Davey. “They got on with things regardless of the awful blitz and carnage. He wrote about good people who had something forced on them who had done absolutely nothing to deserve this”.

Kramer felt that it was a perfectly crafted expression. “Tension between the US and the Soviet Union was constant and ominous” commented Kramer later in his career, “Many people expected nuclear war to begin at any moment and end within half an hour. The world and everything in it is either dead or doomed to die”. Kramer had in fact acquired the rights for the book before it had even been published. Australia was to be the place where a final ensemble ruminate their loss. Living as an expatriate near Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula it was probably not an incredible flight of imagination for Shute to imagine the outside world had gone silent.

From this mute world family man Captain Dwight Towers (Peck) charters the Swordfish into Melbourne’s final pocket of humanity; where scientist Julian Osborne (Astaire) rues the stupidity of mankind, the garden of Mary and Peter Holmes (Anderson and Perkins) wilts before it has sprung and Moira (Ava Gardner) – former beau of Osborne, soon hopelessly hooked on Towers – drinks to forget.

Gregory Peck as Captain Dwight Towers. From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

As Astaire immortally tells Perkins (after Perkins admits he has been trying to persuade his wife to kill herself and their baby): “I envy you. You have someone to worry about.”

If you’re going to make a film about the end of the world – Australia’s the place to do it

It was journalist Neil Jillett from the Sydney Sun who penned the controversial line famously attributed to Fiestress Ava Gardner. But, to be fair, it wasn’t wide of the mark. “You have to remember that for them at the time, it was being on the moon,” says Davey. “It was the other end of the universe”.

It was amongst the middling jostle of tramlines and churning pub belts that the Trojan behemoth of Hollywood wheeled its wares. At the time Melbourne was something of a backwater – barbells jangled for last drinks before 6pm, the meat pie with fish and chips provided cornerstones and the calendar hinged upon Cricket, footy and horse racing.

Donna Anderson remembers it fondly. “This was my first experience away from home and family and I found Melbourne fascinating. I seem to remember sheep running right down the middle of a city street! I loved all the fresh fish at from the small cafes. I was surprised at some of the whinging from colleagues longing for the easy comforts of home. I thought they were missing the adventure of this new experience. I also remember the different expressions like “I’ll ring you in the morning”. Tony and I assumed our driver meant he would telephone us, but he always ended up ringing the doorbell! I was treated so well by, but the celebrity part was sudden and strange. We had a lot of interviews. It was hard to figure anyone really wanting my opinion about anything.”

Hollywood heavyweight Gregory Peck agreed it was a story that needed to be told. He was also fascinated with the character of Dwight Towers – a man of duty who desperately missed his family. Peck saw many possibilities in this conflicted character and immediately began working on the script, sending incessant notes to Kramer. Casting the dance legend Fred Astaire as nuclear scientist Julian Osborne was, on the other hand, an inspired but risky choice for Kramer. It was one that would pay off. Astaire is a revelation.

Anderson: “I First I met Fred on the plane to Melbourne. He went out of his way to make me comfortable. Anxiety, and maybe the sleeper berths on the plane, caused me to have laryngitis so when we arrived in Sydney he did all the talking. Which was fine by me! We had a week of rehearsal and I met Tony at the studio. Tony was also staying at the Savoy Hotel. I was in a suite and he had taken a humble single room at the back. I was overwhelmed by all the space, especially after growing up and sharing a bed with my sister. Tony and I enjoyed sight-seeing Melbourne together – we ate constantly.”

From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

Peck meanwhile stayed with his family in the lavish confines of the Kurneh estate in South Yarra. The sprawling house contained antiques formerly owned by Napoleon. “Gregory Peck seemed short on humour to me,” admits Anderson “although I spent very little time with him. But the cast and crew found his over-long pauses between his lines abundant material for good natured imitation.”

Gardner meanwhile had recently been released from a five-year contract with MGM and was keen to re-establish her career with a suitably powerful role. Her involvement was an exciting but potentially fraught venture. Aware of the signature tumult that followed Gardner, Kramer wrote a morals/penalty clause into her contract in which she could be dismissed for any indiscretion bringing the Stanley Kramer Corporation into disrepute. Following her rejected income-tax application, he also sent a legal team to Canberra to explain why the star’s involvement was in Australia’s economical interests.

From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

Donna Anderson remembers Gardner fondly. “I didn’t spend much time with Ava either, but I did spend one looong night with her and one of our still photographers – bar hopping. She kept one bar open all night where I did a table dance, if I remember correctly, before going to her apartment where she made scrambled eggs. She suddenly wanted no more pictures taken and developed a change of attitude toward the photographer. She threw him out before breakfast after which I went back to the Savoy for much needed sleep.”

Ava Gardner fronts the crowds while at work. From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

Not surprising, according to Davey. “The media treated Gardner appallingly. They’d be outside her flat at about five in the morning when she came out with her hair in rollers, ready to be made up on set. She had a clause in her contract that said all photos had to be vetted by her. But rags like The Truth would have people hiding in the Tea Trees at Canadian Bay taking distorted photos of her, so it’s little wonder that she reacted the way she did. She actually went to Sydney a few times to escape it all. But then again, it was there that she threw a glass of champagne over a reporter.”

Madden concurs: “I was particularly appalled by the attitude of some of my colleagues at the press conference Ava held at Essendon Airport. This is the one thing about this assignment so far that is getting under my skin.”

Tony Charlton, Kramer’s Australian Media Liaison Officer, (later celebrated sports commentator) recalled the press conference in Davey’s When Hollywood Came to Melbourne: “Ava stepped off the plane looking gorgeous and went into a less than pretentious VIP lounge. One of the first questions was “Are you still in love with Frank Sinatra?”, which nearly ended the press conference as Ava went bananas (Gardner had recently divorced Sinatra). It was then a difficult job trying to get her and the media together. She wouldn’t talk to anybody after that”.

Davey comments: “There was a pub where they were filming in Berwick, and the story goes that they were making these gin cocktails by the bucket load for her. But she was a consummate professional and never turned up drunk on set. She did her job and she was well liked by most of the team. It was just that the media got up her nose.”

Hollywood heavyweights – Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire. From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

Gardner’s ruffled state-of-grace probably wasn’t aided by Frank Sinatra’s fleeting visit, in which he famously punched a journalist. Davey recalls: “Frank still had his attachment to her at the time, when he came to do his 1959 tour. I was actually chatting with Gardner’s chauffeur and he told me that he took her to the Chevron – which was where they had a bit of a big night that ended up in Frank decking one of the press. That was just before the show Sinatra did at Melbourne’s Festival Hall, which Ava followed him to. Sinatra said he wanted to dedicate a song to someone in the audience. The song was ‘The Lady is a Tramp’”.

Spectacle was clearly in the can well before any camera was mounted.

You mean to tell me this whole damn war was an accident?

The mammoth infiltration and mobilisation of Melbourne remains testament to Kramer’s tenacity. As he worked his way through echelons of authority he gradually roused not only the interest, but the support of institutes such as The Royal Australian Navy, The Victorian Railways, The Victorian Police and Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies.

Due to the grim anti-war sentiment of On The Beach’s, efforts at acquiring armed carriers, a nuclear submarine and naval officers from the US Navy had fallen unsurprisingly shy. Firstly, the US Navy told Kramer, he would have to get facts straight. If there were atomic apocalypse only 500 million would die – not the entire world. One of Kramer’s prime contacts in Australia was Victorian Promotions Committee member Don Chipp (who later founded The Australian Democrat Party). While showing Kramer about town Chipp introduced the director to a wide range of influences.

Peck relaxing in Canadian Bay. From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

Prime Minister Menzies was at first reticent about helping Kramer. But he soon realized the value of having such a high profile film with Australia as the backdrop. “There is no doubt,” Menzies wrote to the Minister of the Navy “that some decent measure of co-operation is called for when a reputable company makes a reasonable request. If the company is prepared to meet all the Navy’s out of pocket I cannot see why full co-operation should not be extended.”

Kramer meanwhile succeeded in recreating the Swordfish using several gargantuan metal shells and a structure of plywood within the generous brackets of Melbourne’s Royal Showgrounds.

“Moving a Hollywood production to the backwater of Australia to produce a film of this quality was amazing,” says Davey. “At the time the Australian film industry was right down the toilet. There was no infrastructure, and Kramer had to bring most of the equipment in by ship. He also had to turn the Showgrounds into sound stages, which was almost a hopeless cause because of all the noise to contend with. You had an airport up the road, and a train station in the Showgrounds. And then there was the dog racing and trotting calls going on the entire time. By all accounts the sound guy was tearing his hair out.”

And there were other pressing problems. Despite screenwriter John Paxton’s faithfulness to the novel, the relationship with author Shute rapidly had hit an irredeemable low. Shute vehemently objected to the script’s insinuation that Towers and Moira become more than friends. But Kramer knew that he would be “lynched” by cinemagoers if he didn’t offer them something more emotionally substantial amid the gloom. Peck agreed. Meanwhile, Shute fought tooth and nail to regain control of the characters and reinvest them with moral fibre.

Kramer’s driver Robert Brown recalled Shute’s final meeting with Kramer at the author’s home in Langwarrin: “There was a hell of a blue. Kramer blew his top. I think it was the way Shute was talking.”

Says Davey: “Most people suggest that Shute was a very difficult man. Madden’s widow showed me an arch file of several hundred reams of notes – they suggest Shute never appeared on set because of his unfortunate relationship with Stanley Kramer.”

The Beach of Destruction

From a local perspective the groundswell of interest was unprecedented. “My father was actually working at the Showgrounds building phone boxes there, and one day he saw Fred Astaire” continues Davey. “Dad had grown up in the era of Fred and Ginger Rogers so he was completely blown away.”

One of the biggest problems soon became crowds of onlookers. Gregory Peck’s Personal Secretary drew a glimpse of madness in his diary: “The people here are most demonstrative when the personalities of Hollywood go anywhere. They applaud and cheer and practically tear the house down. It’s heart warming to see and hear but it can also be frightening at times. They have never had anything like this here, and the people are in a mad frenzy trying to get a glimpse of one of them.”

Peck and fans outside the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital. From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

“The experience had a kind of ‘other-worldliness’ to it,” says Anderson. “I was suddenly in a strange country and experiencing sudden celebrity. At first, rather than enjoying it, I found that it was kind of frightening. The only person I have seen that seemed to have accepted it with relish was Cary Grant. Fred Astaire seemed quite uncomfortable with the attention.”

One woman who skirted this nexus of stardom was Rena Pope (now Rena Grantham). Australian model, society figure and Chief Instructress at the Elly Lucas School of Elegance (charges included Olivia Newton-John in the 1970s) Grantham had been cast as an extra in the pivotal party scene alongside Peck, Gardner and Astaire. “Firstly, to be an extra in that movie at the time was like being a movie star today” says Grantham. “Melbourne had nothing in it at the time, and to be involved in a big movie like this with all these movie stars was fantastic. The atmosphere was electrifying.” Grantham found Gardner particularly enchanting. “She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful.”

Evidently so was Grantham. Within a day she was being courted by Astaire. “I remember Fred came and sat next to me and introduced himself. And I said ‘No need for introductions!’. He was very charismatic, but also very lonely. His wife had died and he was also worried that he would have to go back home to his daughter who was ill at the time. When sat next to me and said “What lovely soft hair you have”. I was taken aback. I said to him “your hair is very nice too”, and he leaned over and said “It’s a toupee!”. Gregory Peck saw him with me and he was very pleased to see Fred talking to somebody.

After enjoying several evenings dining with Fred Astaire at the salubrious Hotel Ciros, Astaire asked Grantham how she would feel about accompanying him back to the US. It was an offer she declined – but often wonders what fate may have had in store had she accepted.

Astaire and Perkins in the infamous club scene. Rena Grantham is to the right in the background. From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

“I couldn’t go along with him to the US when he asked me. Unfortunately the Finishing School where I worked was my religion at the time, so I missed out on a lot, which I later regretted very much. But at the time I thought – what can you do? At least I was in one of the most important scenes of the film.” Grantham also recalls the gruelling shoot days. “At the time I thought ‘Goodness, is this how movies are made?’ It was very tiring and exhausting. For one whole day we were shooting a particular scene with Fred where he had to recite one particular line.”

Casting opportunities meanwhile provided a doorstop for a range of colourful Australian talent. Nancye Yeates, Director of The Australian Casting Agency in Melbourne, recalled: “One persistent, stout, grubby lady of about sixty, had a cardboard suitcase of ‘jewels’ for props. Another fellow, clearly disturbed, demanded an audition with Kramer. After being told for the second time Stanley was not holding auditions he pulled a knife and threatened to cut my throat. I talked him out of it on the basis that he would never get the role if he was jailed for murder”.

Last dance? Peck and Gardner. From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

It was in a Kings Cross Bar in Sydney that Kramer met the more established spectrum of Australian TV, Film and Radio, including hard-edged theatre legends such as John Tate, Harp McGuire and Guy Doleman (Dangerous Summer, Shiralee and Thunderball). John Meillon, subsequent Aussie treasure in over forty-five films (continuing to haunt as the “hard earned thirst” voice for VB) was cast Peck’s Navy Ensign Ralph Swain.

The Swordfish makes a reconnaissance of a desolated US coastline. It is this breaking-point that eventually turns Towers into Moira’s arms and Swain into madness. Swain breaks from the submarine, swimming towards the radiation-soaked ghost-town of San Francisco. For contractual reasons this was doubled by Bill Hunter. Hunter went on to play Prime Minister in the dubious On The Beach 2000 (starring Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward. “Which was awful,” says Davey). Another cut scene featured a drunk Swain wrecking a bar. With Meillon on hand this was destined to be authentic. Six prop mirrors were set up. Meillon hurled his beer bottle. He smashed a real one. The set had to be rebuilt.

From The Karen Sharpe Kramer Private Collection incorporating the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.(Los Angeles, California).

Grantham also remembers one scene featuring another iconic Aussie. The scene was later also cut – possibly because it was a little too light-hearted in tone. “It was a moment in the party scene where Gregory Peck lights my cigarette and everyone is dancing. Graham Kennedy was talked into coming along and he sat at the table near where Gregory and Ava dance, where everyone was having a good time”. Kennedy ended up chatting with Astaire about dancing, vaudeville and films.

The performances from the cast are remarkable. Peck’s immersion into his character contributes to one of the film’s most heart wrenching moments with Gardner, right on platform one of Frankston Station: “In the navy during the war” he struggles “I got used to the idea that … I might not make it. I got used to the idea of my wife and children being safe at home, no matter what. What I didn’t reckon on was in this kind of monstrous war something might happen to them and not to me. But it did. I can’t cope with it.”

The End is Nigh

Final word should rightfully go to Gardner, who claimed the ‘consummate’ kiss with Peck at the end of the film (following suicide pill handout and blackout of Melbourne) is one of cinema’s finest. “As I run towards him on the dock you can see our two profiles come together as the sun sets between our lips. It was a shot that everyone had said was impossible as the cinematographer was shooting straight into the sun. But he made it work. I personally think it is one of the greatest of all time.” A special filter was also to cast an iridescent hue of radiation around the 360-degree shot. Haunting images of deserted St Kilda Road and Swanston Street were filmed early one morning, a wind machine whirling their autumn leaves. The final shot of an empty city was shot from the top of the Carlton Brewery.

The film’s Premier was as sprawling as its production. Celebrities, dignitaries, and politicians participated in a co-ordinated screening with Peck in Moscow, Gardner in Rome, Astaire, Perkins and Kramer in LA. Shute stayed at home. Meanwhile, back in Australia, the Salvation Army actually counselled people disturbed by the film outside the cinema. Following the 50th anniversary interest in On The Beach remains a powerful classic with interest still riding high. It’s dark message, and the riveting story of a time when Hollywood met Melbourne, has meant it is sometimes regarded as a curio. But there is no doubting the message is as significant and relevant as ever.

With many thanks to Philip Davey. Images sourced from his book ‘When Hollywood came to Melbourne’. Please email me for any queries.

THE DEAD HEART | A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF AUSTRALIAN HORROR

Posted: March 6, 2011 in Film
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When ‘Wolf Creek’ was brought for over $4 million in 2005 by a US distributor, horror was quickly seen as the new vanguard of Australian cinema. But from what dark kernels does this inheritance stem? The history of the local horror film is cross-pollinated by various demands, from overseas audiences to distributing requirements to shoestring budgets. But the arcane total creates an interesting prism through which to gaze not just across a passage of Australian cinema, but into the heart of our somewhat darker preoccupations.

They lie somewhere between the murderous Datsuns of Peter Weir’s Cars that Ate Paris and the carnage of Terry Bourke’s 1971 slasher Night of Fear. This is a land dominated not by a vengeful God, but by ocker madmen and dark mystic edges. Its players drift lonely across the megafauna. The vast hollow of the outback provides a captivating stage for what horror author Robert Hood has called the “alien meaning that heralds a predetermined, apocalyptic end”.

Greg McLean acknowledged as much when he stepped onto the barren crater of the Wolf Creek location: “The implication is that there is some force in this place and it potentially manifests itself through dark, lonely characters who are thinking about things they shouldn’t be thinking about”.

For McLean Wolf Creek was a return to the ground zero of horror – tracing the legacy of films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. “Whether you look at Wolf Creek as a crappy horror movie or as a thriller, it does focus you on an extremely uncomfortable moment and allows you to dwell on the darkest kind of human transaction you can imagine.” says McLean. ““Heads exploding is uninteresting by itself. There are so many crappy crime shows with killers and serial killers and they gloss over the unbelievable horror of the transaction at the moment of someone being killed.”

While Australia’s horror films may have been occasionally laconic (Incident at Ravens Gate), sometimes chilling (The Last Wave), frequently bizarre (Howling 3: The Marsupials) – they are all rooted in the sturdy disquiet and abhorrence that have stalked the land since colonial times and, more often than not, kept the Censorship Office open for business.

SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS (1900)


It may come as a surprise then that Australia’s first quasi-horror fest was pioneered by the Salvation Army. Limelight Productions was, in fact, one of the world’s very first production houses. Designed specifically as a recruiting tool, this department ultimately gained notoriety for a different reason. Soldiers of the Cross, a 1900 Limelight Production, was a skilful weaving of 200 beautiful limelight slides with 3000 feet of freshly pressed kinematographic film. It was also a brutal cavort through the fundaments of Sainthood. For two hours audiences watched Christian soldiers being shredded by lions in the wastes of the Coliseum; being beaten, crucified, mauled and beheaded before being turned into smouldering strips of human torchlight for the Emperor Nero. “The martyrdom of the saints is fascinating in its reality” commented one dazed parishner.

The show was a triumph

Soldiers of the Cross was just north of horror, but it cast its shadow. Within church ranks there was unease about this restless medium stirring on the horizon. The Church no doubt realised it had raised a golem. When the Salvation Army was taken over in 1910 by more puritanical commandants the film department was quickly dismantled. Full kudos must be given to the Army’s new insurgents: they clearly understood the genre’s potential.

THE BLOODY BUSHRANGER

Meanwhile, in lieu of burning saints, a mad parade of bushrangers, scoundrels and assorted villainy flocked to fill the breach. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), apocryphally noted as the world’s first full-length motion picture, retrieved the blood scent. A 1907 edition of the Bulletin says: “By the time the railway scene comes on the public have had their taste for blood so freely whetted they have no enthusiasm for the schoolmaster who spoils the Kelly arrangement”.

While the Bushranger does not strictly haunt Australia’s horror canon, he was critical to the development of its code. In the compendium of early bushranger films ferments the root note of the classic killer. While the mystic native has long belonged to the land (The Last Wave, Walkabout, The Dreaming), the madman has traditionally been the flip-sider who haunts the Big Australian Empty (along with powerhouse crocs and bristling hell-hogs).

It is no coincidence that this aspect of our heritage lent itself so supremely to the horror film and its (occasional) box office returns. By 1907 the bloody bushranger film was so popular one nettled preacher warned: “These films do for children all that strong drink does for the drunkard!” So when this high-calibre screen violence was banned from NSW cinemas in 1911 there was, naturally, an outcry. But this time it was the Government, not the Church, who pulled the curtain.

The famous postmortem of Joe Governor; minor celebrity and celebrated bushranger, a criminal whose violent exploits inspired a flourish of Australian "pictoral horror" - and hastened its censorship.

The banning of “pictorial horror” severely hampered the local industry, which had already found its niche in “representations of gore and galloping cut throats”, as one impassioned fan letter to the Bulletin put it. This protester suggested the reasons for the prohibition were disingenuous: “It is easier and cheaper to import the American gorescape than to make a local one. The puritan denounces the bushranger and hasn’t got a word to say against the Indian horror with the turkey’s tail around his savage cranium. Which showman is game enough to adopt the motto: ‘Only Australian Blood Spilt Here!’”

But it was to be more than seventy years before the bushranger was resurrected in such incarnate splendour as Phillipe Mora’s magnificently violent Mad Dog Morgan (also notable for the Dennis Hopper’s method-channelling of dead Irish bushrangers via a breakfast of rum and cocaine).  They also, in part, inspired the contemporary macabre of John Hillcoat’s excellent prison-based Ghosts of the Civil Dead, described by the UK Time Out Magazine as “presenting some of the most horrifying images ever shown on screen. A masterpiece in the order of Goya.”

Violence in Cinema: Part 1

The screen, like nature – and prohibition – abhors a vacuum. But for many years the Australian Film Industry languished in one. Over the next forty years Australia saw other moments of early on-screen horror, but they are sparse and few between.

By 1960 the Australian film industry had veered dangerously close to extinction. Between 1959 and 1966 not one Australian feature film, horror or otherwise, was produced. Amongst some more interesting documentaries, cinema reels were largely motion sound grabs lauding the British Empire, lyricising a golden age of prosperity. A generation of directors, writers and technicians practiced their art through the production of these newsreels. But the tightly sutured reality of post-war Australia was about to undergo a well-documented haemorrhage.

If there was a clearer reaction to this industrial film-mill than George Miller’s 1971 Violence in Cinema: Part 1, it is hard to find.  The film begins with a Professor (Arthur Dignam) seated at his desk, talking to camera about violence on screen. It comes as a shock then when a gunshot splits his head apart like pink fruit. Splattered in gore, Dignam rattles on, gabbling like a human metronome, while further desecrations commence to shear him down to bloodied pulp. The abhorrent sense of relief felt through this overt violence is palpable. The film was a short explosion; it tore a cavity open and exposed a heartbeat. The critics didn’t know what to do with it. At the 1972 Sydney Film Festival it was placed it in the documentary category.

THE HORROR PUSH

By the 1970s television had begun opening the eyes to the abominable. With political assassination buried in the collective conscience, Vietnam unfurling in the living room, and idealistic abandon exploding like a land mine at every step, what television couldn’t handle cinema dined on. In the US cinema screens were now luminous with gore. ‘Grindhouse Cinema’ was famously churning out its low-grade product. So when the new Whitlam Govt offered a subsidy to the Film Industry in 1970 we fixed our hands on grimier reels. By the mid seventies what Robert Hood calls the ‘Australian Horror Push’ was in full bludgeon.

Terry Bourke

“Horror films have suddenly become the best money making vehicle” Producer Rod Hay told the Daily Telegraph in 1973; “They also provided an excellent opportunity for technical excellence by photographers, make up artists and effects experts.”

Inspired by the gorier flicks now coming out of the US, Australia had its share of purveyors ready to dip their hand. The inimitable Terry Bourke was one. Bourke’s first feature had been a ‘soft-core sex romp’ set in Singapore, but after judiciously eyeing the US market he set to task creating a more salacious brand of outrage. Bourke teamed up with producer Rod Hay to form the Company Terryrod Productions, and together they conceived their first project.

Night of Fear was a homespun shocker – in the every sense of the word.  An inchoate story about a stranded woman stalked by a bush dwelling maniac, this low rent slasher was filmed in scrubland on the outskirts of Sydney, and drew heavily from elements of Herschell Lewis US-styled gore. It was rolling red with screams, rats and deliriously wide-eyed close ups.

Bourke’s Night of Fear had originally been intended as the pilot episode in a series called Fright, and for a while the concept had the press crowing: “Australia’s 4 Television Networks are scrambling to buy a locally made horror series featuring some of the most terrifying scenes ever filmed for television” bayed the Herald. But in 1973 the project was banned by censors on grounds of “extreme obscenity”.  Producer Rod Hay indignantly claimed it was yet another example of “victimisation of local product”. Although he did concede to the Mirror that the film was “horrific and bizarre and that children should not be allowed to see it.”

Having tossed Night of Fear among the pigeons, Bourke and Hay bravely followed up with their 1890’s fable Inn of the Damned; a gregarious mix of sex, carnage and a bit of Cobb & Co. history. The Grand Guignol gothic is set loose around the traps of an colonial Inn, but not helped by dialogue evidently dictated upon the slips of delirium. Yet the film’s indulgences are a frothy addition to that 1970s cocktail of terror – by today’s standards its conceits seem almost luxurious. Outlandish sex, violence and thuggery; all phrased in a sort of mismanaged opulence – the kind that beguiles but never quite bores. It is an intriguing work, shackled somewhere in the pantry of the greater gore masters. Bourke passed away in 2002 and while his work has also sunk into relative obscurity Night of Fear and Inn of the Damned can be found on DVD.

Peter Weir

It wasn't all about rats, rape and cannabalism. Or was it?

Others were meanwhile crafting different curios. The esoteric Picnic at Hanging Rock has virtually been touted as Australia’s answer to the Sistine Chapel.  But Weir’s lesser-celebrated visions lend some seriously black gravity to Australia’s horror heritage. The Last Wave, in which a lawyer involved in an Aboriginal murder case inadvertently discovers Sydney is to be obliterated by the ocean, is sheer apocalypse. It perfectly translates the eerie spiritualism of the outback to the blank canvas of the city. David Gulpilil is mesmerising as the aboriginal man haunting Richard Chamberlain’s head and slowly undoing his life. The film exudes disaster.

By contrast Weir’s surreal 1974 film The Cars that Ate Paris – about a car-obsessed town where locals slaughter passing motorists – is an absurd gem. It is set in a small NSW country town where doctors perform brain surgery on crash victims, turning them into ‘veggies’, while the rest of the community scavenge their car wrecks and cobble together the hybrid hot-rods that ultimately run riot in the blood fuelled finale. This was the first film to ever be funded by the Australian Film Development Corporation, and it made a good start of things by receiving acclaim at The Cannes Film Festival. Channel 4 Films recently claimed Weir’s vision of Australian isolationism “paved the way for Mad Max and countless other pictures.”

Everett DeRoche

Patrick: The man that inspired the spitting scene in Kill Bill.

“It wasn’t until Carrie and The Exorcist came along that the horror really began to take off in Australia,” says scriptwriter Everett DeRoche. “That was what got the investors interested. It wasn’t until those films came out that things began to heat up commercially for horror movies.”

If there is anyone well placed to talk about the emergence of Australian horror during this period, it is DeRoche. Together with Producer Anthony Ginnane he helmed what must be regarded as Australia’s most prolific periods of cinema by any standard. DeRoche’s list of work includes Patrick, Long Weekend, Harlequin, Snapshot, Razorback, Roadgames and Link amongst others.

“Horror always came naturally to me” says DeRoche. “I’ve always been fascinated by the dark side. And all my kids are the same way. They put it down the fact that I’m actually from Maine. There’s something innately creepy about Maine. Stephen King has captured it quite well in his work.” Having grown up in the US Everett believes he may have had a certain advantage at the time through noticing the fears and obsessions taken for granted in the Australian lifestyle. “I tended to think the best Australian films were made by outsiders. Things like Walkabout and Wake in Fright. Maybe immigrants tend to notice things that locals miss or something.”

Patrick (1976), directed by Richard Franklin, remains one of DeRoche’s most memorable excursions. “One hundred and sixty pounds of limp meat hanging from a brain!” lectures the doctor, plying his scalpel through the skull of a squirming frog to illustrate the point. “Can you imagine anything less aware than that?” This is, of course, the story of a sexually repressed psychotic wreaking havoc from the grips of a coma. But while the film (hopefully) embraces a more universal theme, DeRoche says that living in Australia did ultimately inform the way he approached his work. “I probably ended up having more knowledge of Australia than I did of the United States. Growing up in Southern California, if we went anywhere we’d go to Southern Mexico to go surfing. Consequently my geographic knowledge of the States was very limited, whereas I’d seen quite a bit of Australia. And I think that’s changed the way I’ve approached some of my stories. I’ve always been impressed by the fact that you can jump in your car and drive for half an hour and get seriously lost. I guess this happens in other places too, but it somehow seems more apparent in Australia.”

None more so than in Roadgames. Penned by DeRoche shortly after Patrick, this film is considered by many to be director Richard Franklin’s Hitchockian masterpiece. Essentially Rear Window recalibrated to the windscreen of a truck crossing the Nullarbor, the film is a triumph of suspense and menace wrapped in the brooding mettle of the outback.  It is a testament to the sadly unsung talents of late Franklin, who eventually based himself in the States to direct the genre films for which he demonstrated such flair (among them Psycho II). “All of these films did better overseas” says DeRoche. “They weren’t well received in Australia at the time. I don’t know how long they lasted at the Box Office. But it wasn’t long.”

Which brings us to Razorback. Jaws-meets-Priscilla when a rabid boar tears the bejesus out of a threadbare desert community. The schizophrenic play between Hollywood and Australian sensibilities was never more evident than when the beer-swilling locals prove scarier than the beast. But DeRoche has grown fond of Razorback over the years. “At the time I wasn’t that thrilled with the script” he reflects. “I actually wasn’t all that excited about doing a movie about a giant critter. But Russell Mulcahy came along and gave it a kind of style that wasn’t there in the script. So it’s kind of gratifying when I’ve written a less than brilliant script and it’s able to be made into something more than it was.” Razorback has gone on to become a cult classic.

THE 1980s AND BEYOND:  HELL AND HIGH WATER

By the mid 80s director Brian Trenchard-Smith had also became a notorious name, creating such splatter pieces as Turkey Shoot in which prisoners from a futuristic prison were turned loose in the scrubland for a frenzied manhunt. “A sadistic, ultra-violent catalogue of sickening horrors” dourly noted David Stratton. Tarantino agreed – he is a huge fan. Dead End Drive In, in which marauding cavalcades of youth are barricaded in an old drive-in cinema by the government, remains his favourite Trenchard-Smith outing.

Other notable horror films from this time include Rolf De Heer’s Incident at Raven’s Gate where aliens invade a farm (perhaps our answer to Repo Man) – the engaging script and performances, particularly from young Steve Vidler, make this an overlooked entry. As is Alex Proyas’ Spirits of the Air, Gremlins in the Clouds, where a brother and sister wandering a bat infested, post apocalyptic desert while being dogged by a ‘stranger’. Cassandra, a film about a psychic girl whose subconscious memories raise hell in Melbourne, is also memorable.

Melt.

Outback Vampires (vampires set up terrifying shop – in the outback!) and the slasher-derivative Nightmares signalled the more sardonic arrival of the 80s and 90s.  Thickly glossed in schlock, often pushing social parody to the point of comedy, a host of splatter films stick to this era like mud; Body Melt (a flesh eating virus sets a community into literal melt down), Bloodlust (three vampires sluice their bloody way through Melbourne’s criminal underbelly), Bloodmoon (schoolgirls carved up), Cut (actresses carved up) and, lastly, the disastrous bluster of Houseboat Horror (everyone, including rock band, carved up).

Wolf Creek perhaps marked a grittier convergence of this disparate lineage. While the story could have come from the frontal lobe of Terry Bourke, it is the dark weaving of the land as a character that makes the film so chillingly effective. Says McLean: “Horror has to keep being reinvented. It keeps needing to be transformed. You wait for horror movies that test how scared you can possibly be and that use cinema to show you something terrifying that you’ve never seen before, and suddenly the bar is set at that level.”

That new level has resulted in an overwhelming resurgence of passion from a new generation of writers and directors. And that apocalyptic stage has now gone global. Shortly after Wolf Creek was brought by the Weinsteins, Saw found its offshore funding and on to make more than $55 million in the US alone. More recently, after a successful debut at Cannes, Andrew Trauki’s Black Water  (an intense, lean tale involving three people and a salt-water croc) has sold to 76 countries. “The horror market provides the perfect resources for the new film maker to plunder” says Trauki. “You don’t need big stars, and a lot of the time you don’t need a huge budget. For new talent it’s an accessible entry genre.” Released around the same time as Greg McLean’s similarly themed Rogue, Black Water unfortunately received minor local release.

Other screwturners from the new guard include the colonial cannibalism of Michael Brougham’s Dying Breed and Jamie Clink’s Storm Warning, a DeRoche story about a couple tortured by out-of-towners. Clink has also just finished shooting a remake of his 1976 horror classic Lost Weekend, with Claudia Karvan and Jim Caviezel playing the holidaying couple terrorised by wild bushland. In a testament to the original, Clink asked DeRoche not to alter the script. “Although I had to find the original script first” adds DeRoche. “There was only one dog-eared copy – this is long before computers – with pencil notes all through it. But the acting is probably the most dramatic thing to have changed. The standard has been raised quite a bit since the 70s. Having Claudia Karvan has been a real bonus. Also, the location is a lot better. One thing I didn’t quite like about the original is that it looked too pretty. This time around we used Wilson’s Promontory. The weather is a lot darker and more changeable.”

This renewal of interest may indicate that our horror cinema is finally getting the reappraisal generally reserved for Italian, European and American varietals. “I’d like to know were all these people were thirty years ago!” laughs De Roche. One senses that it has indeed been a long road. And amongst the pitfalls, screams and general plundering of obsession, from the sublime to the perverse and derelict, the plight of the Australian Horror Movie has itself endured tremendous adversity. Is this the real overarching ‘tradition’ spanning the lengths of our horror screen heritage then? Perhaps. Regardless, until the retrospective festivals finally catch up, many of our national horror obscurities are definitely worth digging from the vaults. Or at least the dustier shelves of the video shop.

By Geoff Stanton