The Screengrab : walkabout

Ozsploitation! The Best Australian Road Movies

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:30:00 GMT

The Guardian claims to take a look at Australia’s best road movies, but they don’t even mention Roadgames, so how seriously can we take them? And there’s another Australian movie that prominently features cars and driving…it’s on the tip of my tongue…Mel Gibson…dog…leather…oh yes, a little something called The Road Warrior. Seriously, The Guardian, what are you trying to pull here?

OK, in fairness, the accompanying slide show does feature The Road Warrior (or Mad Max 2 as the Aussies insist on calling it), but still…no Roadgames. Instead writer Anneli Knight brings the love for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and its director Stephan Elliott, whose latest film is another road tripper, Easy Virtue. “The beauty of a road trip is that you get to pass through so many different stories. Your standard Australian films are set around the kitchen sink but in a road movie you can visit, cause chaos and then move on,” Elliott says.

Novelist Nikki Gemmell (Cleave) sees the pitfalls of the Outback road trip. “Always in Australia you've got to be careful because there is not only the Wolf Creek scenario, there is the Walkabout scenario - you get lost. You have engine trouble, your car breaks down, particularly as you head up into Coober Pedy and head into roads in the NT. It could be days before a car comes past."

There’s also the Roadgames scenario…but alas. No love for it here.

Ozsploitation! “Mad Dog Morgan” (1976)

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Inspired by the terrific documentary Not Quite Hollywood (now available on DVD in the UK, but sadly, not in the U.S.), the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

The bushranger movie is the Australian equivalent of the American western, and the earliest such films date back at least to 1906’s The Story of the Kelly Gang, which is considered by many to be the world’s first feature film. (It runs about 60 minutes, if you want to nitpick.) It’s true that there aren’t quite as many classic Australian bushranger movies as classic American westerns, and it’s also true that most of them turn out to be about Ned Kelly. But let’s at least give them credit for longevity.

Mad Dog Morgan is a bushranger movie from the Ozsploitation era that turns out not to be about Ned Kelly. Instead it’s about Dan Morgan, who was never known as Mad Dog Morgan and, as it happens, wasn’t even really named Dan Morgan. Born John Fuller in 1830, this Irish-Australian horse thief, mean drunk and all-around desperado would churn through such aliases as John Smith, Sydney Native and Down the River Jack before settling on the name that became legend. Or if not quite legend, at least a Dennis Hopper movie from the mid-70s.

Director Phillipe Mora, whose work I’ve encountered before in the form of Howling III: The Marsupials, brings a short attention span to the early scenes of Mad Dog Morgan, in which the titular character fails at gold mining, is arrested for armed robbery, serves hard time in chains, is released back into the wild and goes on a crime spree with the assistance of his Aboriginal sidekick Billy (David Gulpilil of Walkabout and The Last Wave). It wouldn’t surprise me to learn there’s a three-hour version of Mad Dog Morgan somewhere, and that Mora turned in this version under duress; the edits and scene transitions often seem abrupt and arbitrary to me, although it would be equally unsurprising to learn that this is a stylistic choice meant to convey an impressionistic, kaleidoscopic approach to Morgan’s story. Either way, it sure got on my nerves.

I could never quite get a handle on how the movie regards its central character, which may have something to do with the fact that Morgan is played by Dennis Hopper at the peak of his drug-fueled wild and crazy period. Boasting a now-you-hear-it, now-you-don’t Irish accent and an impressive array of weird beards, Hopper often comes across more like a crazed hippie on an extended LSD binge than an outlaw who could manage to keep himself alive in the bush, let alone terrorize half of Victoria and New South Wales. It’s not an uninteresting take on the material, to be sure, but overall I think Mad Dog Morgan is best viewed in 1976, which unfortunately is no longer an option.

Previously on Ozsploitation:
High Rolling in a Hot Corvette
Dead End Drive-In

See Bardot's Ass, Bowie's Junk in Blu-Ray

Paul Clark — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:27:00 GMT

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but for all of you movie lovers longing for the day when you’d be able to take some honest-to-goodness classics (by which we don’t mean The Sixth Day) for a spin in your shiny new Blu-Ray player, your wait will soon be over. In an e-Mail sent to members of the Criterion Collection mailing list, the Criterion powers that be have announced the release of thirteen titles from the Criterion Collection beginning in October, encompassing classics and newer films, foreign and English-language. Here’s the complete list:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

According to the e-Mail, “these new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.” Criterion also plans on rereleasing the standard DVD of Walkabout featuring a new transfer and features, for those so inclined. But just as exciting is that it looks like Criterion has new DVD editions of Bottle Rocket, Chungking Express, and El Norte in the pipeline, which is cool even for those of us still rockin' old-school players.

Meanwhile, Facets has announced that they plan to continue their plans to move ahead with a new line of HD-DVDs. David Huddleston was not amused.