David Hemmings is a fascinating character. Though I can’t profess to know all the nooks and crannies of his filmography, I enjoy his iconic late 60s counter-culture roles (Blow Up, Barbarella) and more conventional mid-70s leads or co-leads (Deep Red, the wonderful Juggernaut) and at the opposite end of the career spectrum his prolific last act adding weathered gravitas to titles like Gladiator, Spy Game, Gangs of New York, Last Orders, and The Night We Called It a Day. He was also, like Robert Powell and Richard Chamberlain, one of those British globally exported leading men who dabbled in Australian cinema, essaying bureaucrat-in-suit roles—Martin Donovan before Martin Donovan—in late 70s Ozploitation titles Harlequin and Thirst.
Hemmings also directed for film—including David Bowie vehicle Just a Gigolo—and television, including episodes of The A-Team. He also helmed two Ozploitation movies produced by Antony I. Ginnane: spooky thriller The Survivor and adventure romp Race for the Yankee Zephyr, currently streaming on SBS under alternate title Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr. There are several names in the credits that will be familiar to connoisseurs of Ozploitation, among them Ginnane, Everett de Roche on script duty, and Brian May (not Queen’s Brian May) on score, as well as several import stars including George Peppard (two years before The A-Team) and Donald Pleasance (three years after Halloween and following earlier turns in Australian productions Barry McKenzie Holds His Own and Wake in Fright).
Race for the Yankee Zephyr sees Pleasance’s zany dissolute hunter and Ken Wahl’s helicopter pilot discover the wreckage of a wartime airplane, the Yankee Zephyr, with gold bricks onboard. Thereby begins the titular race for the titular treasure, with Pleasance’s daughter (played by Lesley Ann Warren) in tow and George Peppard essaying the antagonist.
Ozploitation productions of the era capped their import stat wattage at two actors, e.g. Stacey Keach and Jaimee Lee Curtis on Roadgames, Hemmings and Robert Powell on Harlequin, Powell and Jenny Agutter on The Survivor, etc. This film’s quadruple import star wattage forced the production to cross the Tasman to New Zealand. I'll concede some Australian location filming would have given me a little something more to connect with in the movie, but credit to New Zealand: it’s gorgeous and affords some impressive vistas and settings for the films chases in the air, on land, and on water. Having said that, the film anyway keeps things transatlantic and doesn’t tap into any local New Zealand flavour, so I doubt it would have milked its Australianness under different circumstances; see also Harlequin, Sky Pirates, and other Ozploitation titles that keep it transatlantic.
The impressiveness of its setting, stunt work, and aerial photography—cinematographer Vincent Monton is a stealth legend, having shot Long Weekend, Snapshot, Thirst, Roadgames, Newsfront, Heatwave, and Molly) are the main draws here. As a caper and a romp, Race for the Yankee Zephyr is not particularly engaging. Some blame sits with the flavourless Wahl, effective in The Wanderers but bland toast here. The gifted Warren does what she can, while Pleasance, an actor I adore, does waaaaaaay too much; the director would have been prudent to nudge Pleasance to turn it down a notch.
Hemmings does a workmanlike job overall, but one suspects original director Richard Franklin, then operating at the height of his powers, would have brought a bit more craft and personality and, as a Hitchcock disciple, a welcome whiff of North by Northwest. As it stands, Race for the Yankee Zephyr is unmemorable and understandably a footnote—indeed, literally a footnote in Mark Hartley’s excellent Ozploitation chronicle Not Quite Hollywood, only fleetingly acknowledged—and very much a relic compared to another adventure film of 1981.
Ben