Last week’s title, David Hemmings’ Race for the Yankee Zephyr, was an Australian co-production—conceived for filming in Queensland—that was ultimately transplanted to New Zealand. The end result and the film’s overall lack of cultural specificity suggest it could have been made anywhere affording a canvas for its aerial, water, and land-based chase sequences.
In contrast, the two titles discussed below—made thirty years apart—could only have been made in Australia.
Exhibit A: The titular joey, named Joey, of Ian Barry's 1997 movie Joey is iconically Australian fauna. When Joey becomes orphaned, human pal Billy (Jamie Croft) takes Joey to Sydney to reunite him with his family, befriending a senator’s daughter (Alex McKenna) along the way.
Other signifiers of Joey’s Australianness include sunburnt countryside, a Ute chase with Billy pursued by demented hoons, an Indigenous pal (Tony Briggs), effective location shooting in Sydney, and familiar faces like Rebecca Gibney, Ruth Cracknell, Harold Hopkins, and Richard Moir. It’s 90s-ness, meanwhile, is signified in an animated title sequence ala so many films of that vintage (see Christmas Vacation, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Honeymoon in Vegas, Don’t tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, City Slickers etc) though this one’s a little classier than most.
I’ve only seen one other title from director Ian Barry, his Ozploitation actioner The Chain Reaction; like that movie, Joey is an energetic chase film, broadly played and pacey in execution. It doesn’t quite crack the echelon of Storm Boy and Red Dog, but sits comfortably alongside Australian family movies in the Brian Trenchard-Smith tradition—befitting given their shared Ozploitation roots—ala BMX Bandits and Frog Dreaming: family films that play a little rougher and edgier.
Barry never made the leap to Hollywood, but crew members that did include co-writer Stuart Beattie—who would later contribute to the scripts for Pirates of the Caribbean, Collateral, Australia, and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, as well write and direct Tomorrow when the war began—and editor Lee Smith, who would edit Peter Weir’s final films and a number of Christopher Nolan titles, including his Dark Knight trilogy.
Exhibit B: The Surfer fits into a genealogy of Australian films where foreigners and/or urbanites—here Nicolas Cage—are put through the ringer by sadistic locals, flora, or fauna: see also Wake in Fright, Roadgames, Razorback, Long Weekend, Fair Game, Rogue et al. Here, Cage plays an irregular guy trying to close a real estate deal who interlopes at a beach populated by bogan alphas who turn him away; things escalate as indignities are piled on and Cage’s character unravels.
Of course, there's no shortage of movies from other regions about interlopers getting pushed too far (see, for example, Straw Dogs) or indeed Nicolas Cage getting pushed too far (see The Wicker Man, Mandy). But the particular flavour of Australianness here comes via the bronzed and broadly accented locals, the late Julian McMahon as a charismatic cult leader, and sunburnt country and gorgeous beach vistas and cackling kookaburras.
The tale is effectively spun by director Lorcan Finnegan, with Cage as its frazzled, sweaty geek show centre. But at a certain point all the artfully spinning plates begin to fall, and the movie’s cryptic denouement isn’t especially satisfying, something I also felt about Finnegan’s previous high concept film Vivarium.
Ben