Turkeys
published
in FilmViews No. 133, Melbourne, 1987
I
suffered the 70mm trailer for THE LIGHT HORSEMEN about three
times in the month it played. Like most offspring from the
Australian Film Industry/Australian Film Culture (Siamese
twins who share the one damaged brain) this film's trailer
even smelled bad. It ominously concludes "The Light Horsemen
are coming ..... and nothing can stop them!" Each time I
saw this trailer in relatively packed theatres, and each
time the audience groaned. Those groans signified heaps
- not just the recognition of a dud movie (not even Hoyts
airconditioning could quell the smell) but also the desperation
of a film culture trying to convince us of its determination
to construct a national identity : "AUSTRALIAN FILMS keep
coming .... and nothing can stop them!"
THE
LIGHT HORSEMEN is typically `Siamese' : a professional product
of all the hegemonic, hierarchical and heroic craft of `our'
industry, and the cultural product of all (all?) we value
as some essential `Australianess'. The cultural part of
this genetic phenomenon signifies that ole desperate search
for an Australian identity (we'll return to this later).
The industrial part is now an undeniable facet of Australian
cinema. Most Australian films reinforce and restate our
industry's ability to make films comparable to international
standards - but not suprisingly end up simply demonstating
skill in fulfilling narrow mandates. Industry and Culture
service each other in one continual back scratch without
ever siting the itch outside of their own domains. The point
is that we've proven to ourselves a thousand times over
how `good' we are at making films, but we all too quickly
forget that someone has to watch them. It's as if the industry
(spawned from the advertising industry) does nothing but
advertise its own ability to advertise itself. And they
say art is self-centered!
Who
really gives a damn whether THE LIGHT HORSEMEN is glossy,
slick, impressive or breathtaking? Whilst official (government
and private) bodies commend such a film (as an example though
never as a specific) the powers and artists to be rarely
acknowledge that an audience couldn't give a hoot about
in-house perspectives on success. Markets (as audiences)
are the true centres of the politics of taste - where taste
is not seen as ideological, cultural and industrial, but
as arbitrary, personal and unaccountable. "I knows what
I likes."
I
only talk of the trailer for THE LIGHT HORSEMEN because
- like thousands of other sensible people - I wouldn't go
see a turkey like that in a million years. That communal
groan in the theatre is the real sound of the crowd - a
sound unheard by Australian film culture and its industry
because it is muffled by all the back-slapping in those
pre and post production offices that gave birth to this
typically ugly Oz mutant. Yes, it is uniquely Australian
(to return to `cultural/national identity') - but only by
default. Our true identity is founded on our desire and
inability to have one based on Euopean or Anglo models.
This is nothing new - many people have long realized that
our lack is our identity. THE LIGHT HORSEMEN trailer proves
it yet again - another Oz turkey (note the American imperialist
terminology - which isn't imperialist : it's actually sympathetic!).
Let's
consider a prime example of uniquely Australian cinematic
dialect born totally by default : TURKEY SHOOT (81). This
film knew its turkey status from square one. I regard this
film as the ultimate Australian film - obviously through
deliberate perveristy on my part, but also in line with
a critical rationale that is not so flippant or dismissive.
TURKEY
SHOOT is prime exploitation. Not that it extoles the perverse
sensibilities that operate under and within the rubric of
Exploitation ; rather, it clearly denotes that it has no
cinematic affiliation whatsoever with `other' types of cinema
that could be interpreted as having `non-exploitative' values
and concerns. The film is set in a not-too-distant future
with the action taking place at a concentration camp for
training (ie. humiliating, torturing and brainwashing) radicals
and subversives how to behave normally - and if they fail,
they die. The `turkey shoot' refers to the new sport of
rich corrupt officials who hunt down `released' convicts
for sport. A basic sub-generic plot with the same pedestrian
analogies to current society (though one could have a heyday
re-interpreting TURKEY SHOOT as a film exorcising itself
of its colonial heritage).
TURKEY
SHOOT, though, couldn't care less about any social commentary
- unless it can be effected by a dynamite explosion or a
bullet-riddelled body. The true perversity of its filmmakers
(producer Tony Ginane & director Brian Trenchard-Smith)
was evidenced by their decision to enter it into the 1981
A.F.I. Awards. Sort of a "suck on this!" gesture to the
culture-vultured aesthetes. And they won : Phillip Adams
(the King Tut of cute wit) feigned outrage in print and
did them a service - because the video release is now emblazened
with a sticker declaring how "the critics" were outraged.
TURKEY
SHOOT plays out all the nightmare jokes everyone makes about
Crawfords and Grundys. I mean, this film has Lynda Stoner.
Of course most people would have checked it out during its
drive-in run just to see if she bared her you-know-whats.
The casting of Stoner, though, simply accents what was already
in operation in COP SHOP, except there they could deny the
emphasis on her bust and negate such an interpretation as
purile fetishism, because COP SHOP after all was high-rating
top-class Australian TV drama (pardon me). TURKEY SHOOT
can't play any double standards like that because it makes
its intentions clear, obvious and direct : Stoner is in
it to possibly manifest the suggestiveness of COP SHOP.
That's
only one cast member dealt with. All the other staring roles
operate under similar conditions of expectation - and hence,
exploitation. Olivia Hussey plays a pathetic pseudo-Asian
waif whose fraility typically marks her in this kind of
macho-action-sex flick as the girl always about to be raped.
Perhaps Hussey was meant to bring some international class
to the production - but I doubt it. We should be thankful
that TURKEY SHOOT proves how bad she is. Still, she was
boasted as a `big name recognized artiste' for the production
- which means that people would ponder "How in hell did
they get her to do a film like that?" And that's why she's
in it. Steve Railsback provides the American counterpart
to Hussey's British input. Railsback was most memorable
(yet most unrecognizable) in HELTER SKELTER (76) where he
did Manson so well we probably don't need the real thing
for comparison. He attempts similar states of psychosis
in TURKEY SHOOT but comes out of it pretty badly. Still,
he had an authentic American accent (and boy, are they getting
rarer in Australian films courtesy of Equity's anal perspective
on cultural development and jobs-for-the-boys).
And
then there's the Grundy/Crawford role call : Michael Craig,
Noel Ferrier, Carmen Duncan and Roger Ward. Real professionals.
They all speak that same grating pseudo-British accent that
only our drama schools can pump into people. They all blurr
after a while, but my personal fave in the film is Carmen
Duncan, who tries so hard to be a hot lesbian on a death
trip (complete with a predictably Sydney interpretation
of `punkish' make-up) but only succeeds in looking like
a boring secretary living it up on a girls' night out. And
what irony - Duncan shoots Stoner in her chest with an arrow
after the former `rapes' the latter at gun-point. The battle
of the sex symbols. All that was missing was some mud-wrestling
with Abagail. Last but not least, Gus Mercurio really slobs
it up as a warped warden with a limp. His numerous rape
attempts are suitably repulsive, making him perhaps the
most successful performer in the film.
TURKEY
SHOOT obviously tries to be an international film - but
only to maximize its profit margin in a variety of overseas
markets. But unlike our numerous `Sons of GALLIPOLI' movies,
TURKEY SHOOT is refreshingly blunt in its treatment of Australia
as simply another market. As most of the markets on the
Ginane shopping list make up an amophorous mass of hidden
and marginal circuits throughout Asia and Continental Europe,
Australia is accordingly treated, like the others, as a
quick-buck side gamble. TURKEY SHOOT's production thus states
: national identity belongs to the highest bidder. Amoral?
Definitely so! That's why TURKEY SHOOT doesn't need the
goddamn A.F.I. Awards or all our snooty film festivals.
This is a more fundamental acknowledgement of precisely
how Industry and Culture work with and against one another,
in a way that morality and ideology are not viewed as either
agents or instruments for production and communication.
The commercial success of the film is not really at stake
here either, for (a) Ginane and Trenchard-Smith surely would
have died of heart attacks if the film came in a block-buster,
and (b) its lifespan on our theatrical circuit is - by virtue
of its exploitative nature - strategically designed to disappear
as much as it appears, meaning that it has to flash across
the country (the world as well) in order to realize its
profit potential (as opposed to actually `running' somewhere).
OK
- so the shit hit the fan in '88 with the collapse of the
Ginane and Hemdale celluloid (or paper and tape) empire,
but once again, we probably deserved it. What cultural aesthete
hiding out in the film industry wasn't casting side glances
at their quick treatments, considering whether or not to
whip them to Ginane - or Dino De Laurentis or New World,
for that matter. But remember : all three empires fell in
Australia, and apparently New World (who even declared shares
for sale on the open market) received next-to-no scripts.
The point being that it isn't simply a case of "Australia
being too small a market blah blah" but frankly I don't
think Australia had or has the collective nouse to plug
into the open exploitation market - let alone exploit it.
The only way we do it is by aping the dumbest of American
mainstream models : YOUNG EISENSTEIN had so many Oz dollars
in it, it had to go overboard with its publicity simply
to clear good ground for itself. As such, Yahoo Serious
becomes a goddamn ambassador for the Australian film industry
simply because he has `successfully' become ensnared by
the same mainstream industry machinations as overseas BABs
(broad-appeal-blockbusters). That's the current name of
the game : a pat on the back if you can play it like the
big boys. It's all very well (and I'll join the throng of
support for Yahoo's dedication to his project, be it mythical
or real), but we're left with the same problem - shit films.
But
things keep going in one way or another. While many sifted
through Hemdale's rubble and archeologists and insurance
detectives inspected the site of the collapse, Ginane continued
pumping out a small slew of Phillipino action productions.
That's exploitation - keeping your finger on a pulse only
to lift it off as quickly as you laid it on : do it quick
and move on quicker. That's development - real cultural
development : messy, ad hoc, uncontrolled, aleatory, random.
Fuelled by a desire that is instantly replaceable ; able
to simulate and stimulate an audiences obsessions and its
distractions.
A
side note for all those who would deny TURKEY SHOOT its
essential `defaultive' Australian nature : its American
release title is ESCAPE 2000, a two word poem that speaks
a minor history of exploitative sub-genres. The American
distibutors realized that the American slang of its title
totally clashed with its obvious Australian quality. ESCAPE
2000. That's probably the only way we'll fully realize our
national identity - by escaping our attempt to construct
it.
