0:24

After the success of 70's Australia

0:26

New Wave films like Wake and

0:28

Fright and Pitnik at Hanging Rock,

0:30

the Australian film industry saw a

0:32

boom of commercially successful genre movies,

0:34

the sort of low budget films

0:36

that would bring in big crowds

0:38

on a Friday night, films

0:41

with plenty of graphic violence but

0:43

also an emphasis on the Australian

0:45

landscape as a backdrop. This

0:47

wave of films has now become

0:49

known as Osmploitation and many Osmploitation

0:51

films from this era were about

0:54

the perils and dangers of the

0:56

natural world. In 1978 Colin

0:59

Eggerson made Long Weekend, an

1:01

Osmploitation film about a toxic

1:03

married couple camping on a

1:05

beautiful secluded beach disrespecting the

1:07

natural world and the natural

1:09

world taking its revenge. A

1:11

few years later in 1984

1:13

Russell Mulcay made a slick,

1:16

stylish and utterly deranged film

1:27

about a killer boar

1:29

terrorising residents of the

1:31

Australian Outback. Join

1:43

me as we continue exploring the

1:45

evolution of nature in horror films

1:47

and we discuss two Osmploitation classics,

1:50

Long Weekend and Razorback.

1:59

Welcome! back to the evolution of horror,

2:01

my name is Mike Muncer and as ever

2:03

I am your host. In

2:05

this podcast we explore and dissect the history

2:08

and evolution of the horror genre one

2:10

sub-genre at a time. We are

2:12

currently in the middle of our

2:14

tenth season exploring the evolution of

2:16

nature biting back in horror and

2:18

this is part 9. This

2:21

week, I mean it couldn't be a

2:23

more perfect double bill of films for

2:25

this particular theme. It is

2:27

all about nature biting us

2:29

on the arse, particularly Australian nature. We

2:32

are talking Long Weekend from 1978 and

2:34

Razorback from 1984. Both

2:40

of these discussions will be spoiler-ific

2:42

so give yourself a real treat,

2:44

especially in this hot sweaty summer

2:46

that we're having right now. Go

2:48

and watch these two bangers before

2:50

you listen to our discussion. So

2:53

joining me to discuss these two films, I've

2:55

got a brand new guest with me. She

2:58

is a freelance film writer, a critic, a

3:00

lecturer, a horror scholar. She also happens to

3:02

be an Australian expat. It is

3:04

my great pleasure to welcome Lindsay Hallam.

3:07

Hello Lindsay. Hi, I'm a long time

3:09

listener, first time caller. I'm

3:11

a big fan of the podcast so yeah, it's

3:13

very exciting to be on. Oh that's so lovely,

3:15

thank you so much. It's so nice to have

3:17

you on at last. Just you

3:19

know, I always like to ask our new guest, just tell

3:21

us a little bit about yourself and what you do. So

3:25

my day job is as

3:27

a senior lecturer in film at the University of

3:29

East London. I moved from

3:32

Australia about 10 years ago

3:34

to take up the position. So I'm

3:36

also the co-course leader of the film degree,

3:38

the BA film degree. And

3:40

so I teach, well

3:43

our course is primarily practice based so yeah, if

3:45

there's any listeners out there who want to be

3:47

film workers, come and study with us. Yeah,

3:50

and yeah, I also teach a lot

3:52

of the kind of film history, theory,

3:54

world cinema modules. And

3:56

I get to have my own horror

3:59

and science fiction modules. as well. Where

4:01

students get to make something and also

4:03

write about it as well. And we

4:05

look back at, we actually have

4:08

a week on eco horror. So

4:10

yeah, and yeah, alongside

4:12

that I write mostly

4:15

about horror. I've written a couple of books.

4:17

Screening the Marquis de Sade was my first book, which

4:20

is based on my PhD. I did

4:22

my second book was part of the Devil's Advocate

4:24

series on Twin Pix Fire Walk with me, which

4:26

I know is a subject close to your heart.

4:29

Oh, Lindsay, we are going to be best, best

4:31

friends. Yeah, yeah, my

4:33

students know that whenever I can

4:35

bring up horror or David Lynch,

4:37

that happens. Yep. And yeah, and

4:39

I'm currently working on a book

4:41

on revenge in Australian horror cinema.

4:44

So very much about what we're talking, discussing

4:47

today. Yeah. And

4:49

I do some writing for Blu-rays

4:51

and do commentaries and things. I

4:54

also every now and then every few years I'll

4:56

get a book to make a film. So my

4:58

last film, they called me David, premiered

5:00

at Fright Fest in 2021. And did

5:03

a bit of a festival run. So that's on

5:06

Vimeo now. So yeah, my whole life is movies.

5:08

I love that incredible. Oh my god. Well, all

5:10

of those things that you just said were like

5:12

music to my ears. So that's amazing. Thank you

5:15

so much for being here and taking the time

5:17

today. Where did your kind

5:19

of relationship with the horror genre start

5:21

Lindsay, do you remember like your first

5:23

horror movie experience? Well, for me, I

5:25

always actually go back to the

5:28

music video for Michael Jackson's thriller.

5:31

That came out when I was a

5:33

little kid. And I was

5:36

obsessed with this music video, but it would

5:38

terrify me. And but I

5:40

kept wanting to watch this music video.

5:42

And I would run out of the

5:44

room, especially when Michael Jackson started turning

5:46

into a werewolf. And then

5:48

I would want to come back in and see them

5:51

all dancing. And then I'll get scared. And that music

5:53

video was pretty much like a short film in

5:56

itself. And, and

5:58

I don't know how or why. But my parents

6:00

ended up getting a video

6:03

that had the full music

6:05

video, followed by a making

6:07

of. And so I

6:09

got to see how they made it. I mean,

6:11

maybe it was because I was getting so scared,

6:13

but I was so obsessed with it that it

6:16

was a way for me to kind of see

6:18

how they were. But that's where I saw like,

6:20

John Landis, and you know, a director. And also,

6:22

you see Rick Baker in that documentary, doing all

6:24

the effects, you see them doing the face molds,

6:27

and all the makeup effects, and

6:30

the choreography as well. So definitely, I

6:32

think I always go back to this

6:34

obsession that I had as a really

6:36

small child with the thriller video. And

6:39

then, and then there was also, you

6:41

know, as with most girls

6:43

or most kids, sleepovers, where

6:45

you watch horror films. And

6:48

I remember a sleepover when I was about eight

6:50

or nine, and they put on Nightmare

6:53

on Elm Street. And I

6:55

still can play that film

6:58

in my mind, because of that viewing, the images

7:00

kind of see it in my brain. And I

7:02

remember, I was saying to my friend, Oh, I'm

7:05

going to brush your hair and plait your hair

7:07

to try and not look at the screen. But

7:10

but I kept looking. And yeah,

7:12

so that definitely Nightmare on Elm Street. That's too

7:14

young. Oh, I know, right? I know. It's always

7:16

one of those, isn't it? It's always one of

7:18

those that we're too young to watch, that

7:21

causes us to fall in love with the genre.

7:23

I mean, that is we are

7:25

freakishly similar, Lindsay, I have the exact

7:27

same horror origin story as you, Michael

7:30

Jackson's thriller, just I was obsessed with

7:32

it. And with that, making of documentary.

7:34

Absolutely. What about kind of

7:37

now, you know, now that you're a kind

7:39

of seasoned horror fan, do you have a

7:41

particular kind of area like a favorite sub

7:43

genre, a favorite type of horror movie that

7:45

you gravitate towards? Well, I wrote the book

7:47

on Twin Peaks Firewalk, and the main premise

7:49

of that book is that that's a horror

7:51

movie. Yeah. So and I've also just recently

7:54

written something that's going to be radiance

7:56

films that bring out Blu rays, they've

7:58

got a zine called Dirty Art House

8:00

and I've just written something for them

8:02

about David Lynch as a horror auteur.

8:06

But so definitely I guess you could say

8:08

that but also my other big one is

8:10

Suspiria, Dirogento. I love

8:12

Italian horror. Italian horror of

8:14

the 60s and 70s is

8:17

totally my jam. That's what I really love. I'm a

8:19

sucker for just visuals that

8:22

just make it look pretty. If the

8:24

horror looks pretty, I think that's yeah,

8:27

that's my sweet spot. Love that. Yeah,

8:29

incredible. Good choices. Well, we are here to

8:31

talk about the kind of the theme for

8:33

this season I've called kind of Nature Bites

8:35

back very much kind of eco horror. You

8:37

mentioned already they let you know you do

8:39

a bit of eco horror stuff. Tell me

8:41

what what are your kind of thoughts on

8:43

that area of the genre? Are you a

8:46

fan of kind of eco horror and animal

8:48

attack movies and that kind of thing? Yeah,

8:50

so I'm I am a total animal

8:52

lover. So I do love these films.

8:54

I do love it when an animal

8:56

goes and kills a bunch of people. I

8:59

do really enjoy I get a lot of

9:01

enjoyment out of it. But

9:04

yeah, so I can watch I can

9:06

watch anything happen. The most heinous things

9:08

happen to human beings. But

9:10

I do I do struggle if

9:13

anything happens to animals.

9:16

Yeah, so like I actually

9:18

struggle probably with like nature documentaries.

9:20

I really do. I really don't.

9:23

I can't handle it. I can't

9:25

handle the brutal truth of

9:27

nature. Yeah, yeah.

9:30

But but this this whole thing is

9:32

it's this idea of aspect of horror,

9:34

which is all about just survival. And

9:37

I think with nature it is it just

9:39

becomes about survival and

9:41

action. It's there's no room to kind

9:43

of have any kind of

9:45

introspection and contemplation. It's just like, this

9:47

is situation that is an animal

9:49

attacking. It's just, yeah. And so

9:51

it is just kind of about

9:53

that reduction to a primal state

9:55

that, you know, it doesn't take much

9:57

for us to go for us to go back to that. state

10:00

as well, that it

10:02

is all just this thin veneer, it doesn't

10:04

take much to kind of just get us

10:06

back to that point again. Yeah, I think

10:08

that's what I find really scary about it.

10:10

There's a real kind of like, I don't

10:12

know, there's a loss of control, I think

10:14

that these movies remind us of, right? That

10:16

we're kind of small and insignificant, I think,

10:18

compared to the world around us. And in

10:21

some ways, you know, I people always used

10:23

to take like last year when I covered

10:25

home invasion, and everyone said, Oh, that's the

10:27

that's the most troubling, difficult sub genre for

10:29

me. But I don't know, in some ways,

10:31

I find these movies more stressful, like long

10:33

weekend, what we're about to talk about, I

10:35

find incredibly stressful watch. And last

10:37

week, my guest and I

10:39

discussed waking fright, which like

10:41

I, that's one of those

10:44

incredibly powerful movies right where there's barely even

10:46

any actual on screen horror. And yet I

10:48

can almost not bring myself to watch it

10:50

because it's so stressful and anxiety inducing, you

10:52

know, it's like like, we're good, right? It's

10:54

just like, it's hell. It's just like going

10:56

to hell. Yes, yes. It's it

10:58

and and you just it's almost like

11:00

you can't escape it. And there is that whole thing.

11:03

Yeah, like you said, no control, no

11:05

escape, that realization, you're

11:07

small and insignificant. You're

11:09

at the mercy of the elements. You

11:12

know, it's like in urban and suburban

11:14

spaces, there are walls and fences, there

11:16

are boundaries. And certainly

11:18

with like, you know, the Australian

11:21

kind of outback and desert, there

11:23

are no boundaries. It's

11:25

boundless expanse. There's nothing kind of

11:28

there's it seems like there are no

11:30

rules or there are there is no kind

11:32

of order that we try that

11:34

we can impose on it. Yes, I always

11:37

I always think of that Verda Herzog video

11:39

video where he's talking when he's when he's

11:42

shooting Fitz corral, when he has that thing, where

11:44

it's like the trees are in misery, the boogers

11:46

are in misery. And it's this

11:48

is how, you know, in

11:52

order sometimes to survive, something has to

11:54

die. Like I have two cats that

11:56

I adore more than anything. And the

11:58

thing is, they they have to So

14:00

I grew up in Australia and then I moved back

14:02

here 10 years ago. So I've got

14:05

this weird relationship, but I think it was this whole

14:07

thing when you're growing up, when you're a teenager, you

14:09

kind of reject what's around you. So this

14:11

whole thing of being outdoorsy and going to the beach, I was like,

14:13

nah, I don't want to do it. I just want to stay in

14:15

and watch movies and stuff. And

14:17

also like for PE, they made us

14:19

go to the beach for PE.

14:22

And of course, as soon as you make it something that

14:24

you have to do, like learning

14:27

for school, you're like, we had to like

14:30

run on the sand and that's

14:32

just awful. Like running on the sand is

14:34

awful. And then you'd go into the

14:36

ocean and there used to be these little things, like

14:39

not jellyfish, they were we called those stingers. They

14:41

were just like these little things and you'd brush

14:43

past them and they would sting you. Oh no.

14:45

And they were just and so like, yeah, so

14:48

you would come out and like I remember towards

14:50

the end, where one of the last times we

14:52

were made to when I was in high school,

14:55

I actually almost came out in like a weird

14:57

rash. It was almost like I was allergic to

14:59

the ocean. And my mom

15:01

ended up writing me a note saying Lindsay

15:03

doesn't have to swim in the ocean anymore.

15:06

So it's like I was

15:08

bodily reaction against against

15:10

against doing this. Yeah. Yeah. So oh

15:13

my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's I

15:15

mean, like it is what did you

15:17

ever have any scary like animal encounters

15:19

in Australia? Because like, again, you know,

15:21

we're going to talk about this a

15:23

lot as we go. But Australia, as

15:25

portrayed in a lot of horror films,

15:27

is a terrifying place for human beings.

15:30

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's the

15:32

thing is like where I grew up

15:34

in Perth or Bulu, which is

15:36

its traditional name, their

15:38

redbacks was the big thing. And

15:42

my dad not long after he moved to Australia,

15:44

my dad was bitten by a redback and ended

15:46

up in hospital. Luckily, I

15:48

was managed to avoid any spider

15:50

bites. But every

15:52

spring was magpie

15:55

season, basically where they would have their

15:57

baby so they would get very, very

15:59

territory. and they would swoop.

16:02

And at my primary school, there

16:05

are all these trees and the magpies were

16:07

nesting in them. So to get home at

16:09

the end of the day, you'd

16:11

have to run through these. Oh my

16:14

god, like the birds. Yes,

16:16

every spring was the birds. That was

16:19

every spring was the birds. That

16:21

film was my reality. So

16:24

where I lived was in the suburbs,

16:26

deeper the suburbs, but there was a

16:28

park just up the road. And

16:30

I remember for one of my birthdays, we'd

16:33

had a sleepover. And

16:36

the next day morning, I think my mom

16:38

just wanted us get us out of the

16:40

house. So we went up to this park

16:43

nearby. And I because it

16:45

was my birthday, I had like a little

16:47

sparkly hair tie in my hair. So

16:50

we went to the park. And as we

16:52

were walking into the park, I felt this

16:54

like, boom, like back in my head. And

16:57

it was a magpie had swooped down and

16:59

like pet me right in the head where

17:01

this sparkly hair tie was. Oh my god.

17:03

So I

17:06

was wearing sparkly stuff in my hair. Like I

17:08

may have just gone out there with like a

17:10

sign saying magpies please sweep me. So

17:12

this magpie just like was terrorized

17:14

like sweeping would not leave me

17:17

alone to the point that I

17:19

actually turned and left my friends

17:22

ran home up the street and this magpie

17:24

chased me all the way up the street

17:26

back home. Oh my god. And I got

17:28

home and I'd like told my mom and

17:31

the whole thing was like, yeah, so this

17:33

this whole like sleepover the night before my

17:35

mom had heard us all screaming. But she'd

17:37

been hearing us screaming like all night like

17:39

a bunch of you know, eight, nine year

17:42

old girls all they do is like screaming

17:44

carry on. So she didn't realize that we

17:46

would be swooped and terrorized by this magpie.

17:48

But yeah, so I got picked in the

17:50

head by magpie. And then yeah, so yeah,

17:53

it was always for several years. It was always

17:55

very like oh, oh my god, a bit of

17:58

a bit of a fear. Jesus, I love it.

18:00

Even Even the birds that we get in the

18:02

UK are more scary in Australia. I love that.

18:05

That's incredible. And so let's talk a

18:07

little bit about Australian horror specifically. You

18:09

know, like I said, we

18:11

talked about Waking Fright and Pinnica Hanging

18:13

Rock last week. And obviously we

18:15

talked about two more titles like that this week. You know, it

18:18

does seem like Australia has an incredible

18:20

tradition and history of horror, particularly from

18:22

about the 1970s onwards. Right.

18:25

What do you think it is that

18:27

makes Australian horror kind of stand apart

18:29

from like Hollywood horror, for example? I

18:31

think, well, it is just the uniqueness

18:34

of the place. I

18:36

guess for most of the world, it

18:39

is this unknown faraway place. Like

18:42

where I grew up, Perth is the

18:45

most isolated city in the world. And you

18:47

really and it really is far away from

18:49

everything. You are really feeling like you're

18:51

far away. And

18:53

there's this, yeah, there's the unique landscape.

18:57

There's just this great expanse in the middle

18:59

of the continent that,

19:01

you know, there's just

19:04

extremes, extreme temperature. Like

19:08

I remember my dad

19:10

works in mining, which isn't, yeah, there's problems

19:12

there. And he

19:15

went away to a site once and it was 49

19:17

degrees Celsius. Like

19:20

I don't even want to think about that. And

19:23

I was on a film shoot once that was 46 degrees

19:26

at a weir and that was just

19:28

insane. So there's

19:30

this extremes of heat. I think there's a

19:32

line in Wake and Fright where Jock, the

19:35

policeman says something like all the high suicide

19:37

rates and he's like, and because they say

19:39

it's the heat. Yes. And

19:41

it does kind of drive you. Like

19:43

I remember like, when

19:46

it gets, I do not miss Australian summers, when

19:48

it gets above Like

19:50

it does kind of fill me with rage. Like I

19:52

remember just being like, you try and go out family,

19:55

you know, pick mix or things like

19:58

especially around Christmas, because that's what it's

20:00

summer is Christmas time. Going to, you

20:02

know, family things outdoors. And I would

20:04

just be losing my mind. It kind

20:06

of makes me lose my shit a

20:08

bit. When you're just so hot, you

20:10

just can't escape it. So

20:12

there's just all these extremes. Yeah.

20:16

And yeah, so I think definitely

20:18

just the uniqueness

20:20

of the place, these

20:23

extremes that you have within Australia,

20:25

obviously, you can mind that for

20:27

horror. Yeah, I

20:29

think that's so interesting. You're absolutely right. It's

20:31

a country of extremes. And,

20:34

you know, there's something kind of like scary

20:36

and imposing and powerful about the landscape

20:39

itself, isn't there, I think, you know,

20:41

and also this kind of

20:43

interesting thing, we talked about it last week. This

20:46

kind of like, I suppose

20:48

particularly with Wake and Fright, but there is a

20:50

kind of like scary, almost like masculinity sometimes. I

20:52

don't know, I think of like characters like Mick

20:55

from Wolf Creek, or you know, I don't know,

20:57

there's something about the kind of like, you've got

20:59

to be I guess it's just that idea that

21:01

you've got to be physically tough, right, in order

21:03

to like, survive Australia or whatever as well. And

21:05

some of the most interesting movies kind of really

21:08

comment on that. I think there's a bit of

21:10

that in Long Weekend as well, isn't there, you

21:12

know, I think there's something really interesting in that

21:14

in the kind of like, masculinity and those kind

21:16

of dynamics, you know. And I think you also

21:19

definitely in Razorback, in particular,

21:21

as well, is very kind

21:23

of masculine space and the

21:26

kind of extreme characters that

21:28

come out of that. You

21:30

know, it is this kind of place

21:33

that still in some ways,

21:36

and especially the centre, is kind

21:38

of been unchanged. But then also

21:40

there is these sits colonization, invasion,

21:43

there has been this attempt to

21:45

kind of control and dominate it.

21:48

Like modernization, industrialization, all the

21:50

riches that the landscape holds,

21:52

like have been mined and

21:55

stripped out, farming.

21:57

So there's all this, there's all

21:59

this. this exploitation that's

22:01

happened of the land, stripping

22:04

it of resources. There's been huge swathes

22:09

of species that are extinct,

22:11

that have been driven to

22:13

extinction by this modernising,

22:19

industrialising force.

22:23

I think that, again, I always

22:26

go back to there is this kind of reckoning

22:28

with what has been wrought upon

22:30

the land that

22:33

you get with a lot of these films. The

22:36

fact that

22:39

this colonisation invasion happened at

22:42

the expense of the indigenous peoples, it was a

22:44

genocide. The societal structures

22:46

that exist today, the institutions

22:50

were brought up at the cost of the

22:53

people that were actually the original inhabitants,

22:56

the First Nations people. It

22:58

is a really shameful history. I think

23:01

in Australia, there's still this inability

23:03

to really confront that. I think

23:06

about the referendum that just happened

23:08

in Australia in October, which

23:12

is just about the least possible thing you could

23:14

do, which is just giving a voice

23:16

to indigenous peoples in parliament

23:19

and just recognising them in

23:21

the constitution.

23:26

It was voted down. I think a lot

23:28

of it is just this inability. People don't

23:30

want to confront what

23:32

happened. It's weirdly enough

23:35

in the horror films

23:37

that it is that layer of

23:40

genre conventions, although it's just about a giant

23:43

pig. It's just these rampaging animals. It's

23:48

just like, no, you're actually starting

23:50

to get that critique. You're starting

23:53

to get that reckoning, that realisation

23:55

and acknowledgement that you can't

23:57

make on a surface

23:59

level. It's kind of feeding and

24:01

that's what makes it scary because we we have

24:03

to we have to we can't keep yeah Don't

24:05

do it that and what about like I feel

24:08

like it's probably relevant to talk a little bit

24:10

about specifically Exploitation before we get into

24:12

these two movies and we touched upon this very briefly

24:14

last week because we talked about waking fright And I

24:16

guess that in a way that was one of the

24:19

movies that really kicked it off, wasn't it? But this

24:21

this particularly this kind of like wave of movies in

24:23

the 70s and 80s that I guess has since become

24:25

known as Exploitation do

24:28

you think that there is a particular kind

24:30

of definition of what what we mean when

24:32

we say kind of Exploitation movies. I mean

24:34

there was obviously the the the

24:36

film that kind of sparked this this whole

24:39

term Exploitation which is not quite Hollywood which

24:41

came out in 2008 and I guess

24:44

it's just In

24:46

many ways it was so I guess what happened in the 70s Is

24:50

that you obviously had the Australian new wave

24:52

which was we were these more kind of

24:54

art house? Films

24:58

the kind of playing at international festivals

25:00

So like picnic at hanging rock,

25:02

which I think you looked at last week. Yeah picnic

25:05

at hanging rock, but but a

25:07

lot of all these kind of They

25:10

were actually period dramas like

25:14

the the getting of wisdom and

25:17

I'm trying to think they're my brilliant career That

25:20

where these yeah these period films looking at

25:23

particularly kind of colonial history So they were

25:25

still very much from you know

25:28

the white perspective But

25:31

yeah, so these were kind of more Yeah,

25:34

your art house films, but really for an

25:36

industry to flourish You have

25:39

a good kind of art house cinema, but

25:41

also a genre cinema And

25:43

so that started to also happen

25:45

alongside These

25:48

new wave films you had You

25:51

the beginnings of

25:54

of horror films, I mean Wake and

25:56

fright is interesting because that was 1971 and also

25:58

you had walk about So

26:00

you had Ted Cottcher from Canada coming

26:02

and making Wake and Fry and you had Nicholas Rogue

26:06

from Britain making Walkabout.

26:08

And so you had these foreign

26:10

filmmakers and it almost kind of

26:12

legitimized or showed Australia that they

26:15

could make films as well. With

26:19

Wake and Fry in particular, there is this, it is

26:21

kind of an art film, but also very much a

26:24

horror film. Then around, I think

26:26

it was 1974, one of the first kind of

26:28

out and out kind of horror films being made

26:30

in Australia is Night

26:32

of Fear. That it

26:35

was made before Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but

26:37

it's very kind of similar. It's this

26:40

woman being kind of chased by

26:42

this kind of very grotesque man

26:45

in the wilderness. And

26:48

it's all, I think

26:50

it's not even an hour long and it's

26:52

no dialogue. And it's just very much this

26:54

chase film, this woman being chased through

26:57

the wilderness by this crazy maniac.

27:00

And she's being terrorized. And then

27:04

from there you started to get also

27:07

what later became known as Australian Gothic.

27:10

These films that were kind of contemporary

27:12

set, but all these kind of, like

27:14

Carthate Ate Paris, which is an early

27:16

Peter Weir film. Peter Weir

27:19

is interesting and that Picnic Hanging Rock and

27:21

also The Last Wave, they're kind

27:23

of art films, but they have these genre

27:25

elements. Carthate Ate Paris is even more kind

27:27

of what you might kind of call like

27:30

ausploitation. It has

27:32

this really strange society where they have

27:34

these really weird cars. So

27:37

I guess it's these kind of out

27:39

and out genre films that started to

27:41

be made. You had horror, you had

27:43

sex comedies, these ochre comedies, The Adventures

27:45

of Barry McKenzie, which I don't like

27:47

that. But you have

27:50

action films. And

27:52

then, so that starts to happen in the 70s. So

27:55

the industry is just being built up. Yeah, we've got

27:57

this art house and this. genre

28:00

films. And then in 19 around 1981, you have the introduction of like

28:02

the 10 BA tax incentives,

28:09

which was all about, I

28:12

guess, just providing kind of tax relief

28:14

for investment in films,

28:18

like there was 150% deduction saving

28:20

on spending. So if you spent

28:22

a million dollars making a film,

28:25

you would get 1.5 million kind

28:27

of tax relief for from I

28:30

don't know exactly how it works. I don't

28:32

know tax. Yeah, no, no idea. But yeah,

28:34

but there's these whole ideas that you get

28:37

tax relief if you invest in films. And

28:39

that just led to a huge kind of

28:41

mass investment, mass production. And a lot of

28:44

these productions were trying

28:46

to cater to the drive in

28:48

market. There's a huge drive in

28:50

market. Because Australia is such a

28:52

car culture, going to the drive

28:54

ins, they needed films for that.

28:57

So it wasn't about making art for a lot of

28:59

people investing in these films, it was just about making

29:01

money and making that stuff that making that money on

29:03

the back end. So

29:06

a lot of so there's just this

29:08

oversaturation that happens. And a lot of

29:10

that is genre cinema. And

29:13

what we call exploitation, it is about like, it's

29:15

the whole thing of exploitation films, like the corpsman

29:17

kind of method of, yeah,

29:20

just getting something out there to kind

29:22

of capitalize on a trend, maybe

29:25

mimicking something that was big from Hollywood

29:27

and making a kind of a version

29:29

of that. There was a lot of

29:31

Australian films, where everyone speaks in American

29:33

accents, where they almost try and trick

29:35

you into thinking it's an American film,

29:37

a lot of that happens. So yeah,

29:39

so the 80s, and then the 90s,

29:42

the government started to dial that back. And

29:44

there was so much criticism of these types

29:46

of films, like why are we making this

29:48

trash, that they kind of walked it

29:50

back in the 90s. So there's hardly any horror

29:53

films made in Australia in the 90s. But there's this

29:55

boom that happens the 70s, but in and into

29:58

the 80s. So interesting. Yeah, I love

30:00

that. I think that's all really good context

30:02

for what we're about to talk about. Cause

30:04

I feel like these are two kind of

30:06

real standout movies in this kind of era,

30:08

right? That we're gonna get into. So

30:11

let's do it. We're gonna talk about these

30:13

two movies kind of will go chronologically. Let's

30:16

begin with Long Weekend from 1978.

30:34

Listen to the sound

30:36

of evil. It

30:39

is out there waiting. It

30:44

comes back with

30:47

us. Powerful,

30:51

deadly, invisible. They

30:56

came to

30:58

take a

31:00

holiday. Ta-da!

31:08

Now, they are running

31:10

for their lives. Because

31:14

something is out there. There

31:21

are secrets. There

31:23

are mysteries. There

31:26

are forces beyond imagination.

31:29

Challenge them. And

31:32

every living creature, every blade

31:34

of grass will turn against

31:36

you. So

31:45

you've got Peter and Marsha. They're a married couple.

31:48

They're going away for a long weekend with

31:50

their dog Cricket out to this spot near

31:53

the beach. However, it starts

31:55

to become clear that this marriage

31:58

is not going well. marriage

32:00

is a marriage on the rocks. We

32:02

find out that Marsha has recently

32:04

had an affair and had an

32:06

abortion because of that affair. On

32:09

the way to the camp, things start

32:11

to already seem a bit off, start

32:14

to feel a bit wrong. At one

32:16

point, we see Peter, he flicks his

32:18

cigarette out, and there's a shot, and

32:20

you start to see the cigarette, and

32:22

the grass starts to burn around it.

32:24

They're driving at night, and

32:26

Peter's so tired, he ends up running

32:28

over a kangaroo. They arrive at their

32:31

camp, but they can't – well, they arrive where

32:34

they think the camp is, but they can't find it. It

32:36

seems like they're going in circles, so they spend the first

32:38

night in the car. When they

32:40

wake up, they realize, oh, we are actually at

32:42

the camp. But more strange things

32:44

start to happen. Marsha keeps

32:46

hearing what she thinks sounds like

32:48

a baby crying. She

32:52

thinks that there's something in the water when

32:54

Peter is going out swimming. At

32:57

one point, their speargun just goes off,

32:59

even though the safety's on. Marsha

33:01

finds this eagle leg, and then

33:03

Peter's attacked by an eagle. He's

33:05

also then laid up, attacked by a

33:08

possum. They see something

33:10

in the water again. They shoot at

33:12

it, and this dugong washes up on

33:14

shore, and Peter

33:17

starts to bury it. But then as they

33:19

go along, they keep seeing the dugong. It

33:21

almost seems like it's moving. But

33:24

also, alongside this, we're also seeing

33:26

how Peter and Marsha are treating

33:30

their surroundings, spraying

33:32

insecticide, littering. Peter's

33:35

chopping at a tree for no reason.

33:37

He shoots into the ocean.

33:39

At one point, Marsha

33:42

smashes the eagle leg. So

33:46

we're seeing the disrespect that they're showing

33:48

to the land. So it starts to

33:50

seem like maybe the land is starting

33:52

to take notice. But they're so

33:54

wrapped up in their human drama, they

33:57

just don't understand what's going on. Until

34:00

Peter finds an abandoned camp with

34:02

just a dog, and he

34:04

sees this car with

34:06

what looks like a body in the ocean, and

34:08

they kind of realise we should get out of

34:11

here. But then Peter can't

34:13

find Cricket, their dog, so he

34:15

refuses to go, and so Marsha just storms

34:17

off in the car. As

34:19

she drives off, she's kind of tormented by

34:21

birds swooping. She

34:24

drives into this huge mass of

34:26

cobwebs and kind of runs out of

34:28

the car. And

34:30

meanwhile, Peter is just out there. He

34:34

finds Cricket, he's just there by a

34:36

fireplace. He's set up a fire, but

34:39

he's hearing all these noises. At

34:41

one point, he shoots the spear gun because

34:43

he hears something, and then

34:45

in the morning, he realises it was

34:48

Marsha. He's killed Marsha

34:50

with the spear. He

34:52

starts just running through the wilderness. He

34:54

finally runs to a road, and he's

34:56

run over by a huge truck. And

34:59

that's the end. Yeah, run over just

35:02

like that kangaroo, basically. In

35:05

some ways, it's like the most perfect summation

35:07

of everything I'm doing in this whole series.

35:10

It feels like the ultimate kind of nature-biting back

35:12

movie in a lot of ways. What

35:14

do you kind of think of this movie generally, Lindsay? What's

35:16

your history with it, and what do you think of the

35:18

movie? I love this movie. I really

35:21

do. I think it is

35:23

a perfect balance. What I was

35:25

just talking before about what was happening in a

35:27

lot of Australian films of the

35:29

70s, where it is quite experimental.

35:31

It's not like an out-and-out

35:34

art film. It

35:37

has these kind of horrific,

35:40

just this overwhelming feeling of dread

35:43

throughout it. It's

35:45

quite masterful in how it just

35:47

unsettles you. I think

35:49

it's an incredibly effective film. I'm

35:53

trying to remember when I first saw

35:55

it, because I know that definitely after

35:57

not quite Hollywood, that documentary was a

35:59

very interesting film. documentary really made

36:02

quite an impact when it came

36:04

out, especially within Australia. It really

36:07

led to a rediscovery of these

36:09

films that had really, like everyone

36:11

always talked about the Australian new

36:13

wave sof. A lot

36:15

of things that had been written about Australian cinema

36:17

up to that point, these

36:20

films would have been a footnote at best.

36:23

They were not taken seriously whatsoever.

36:26

And I think Hollywood was quite

36:28

instrumental in kind of beginning this

36:30

reevaluation of these films. And I

36:33

think Long Weekend definitely was one

36:35

of these gems that

36:37

was rediscovered, reappraised,

36:40

and people really started to

36:43

recognise how great this film was.

36:45

And I don't really think it

36:47

was that

36:50

it had been that way beforehand.

36:53

And there was this great

36:56

DVD Blu-ray company in Australia called

36:58

Umbrella that started to bring out

37:00

a lot of these films on

37:02

DVD and kind of give them

37:05

the releases that they deserve that were

37:07

really treating them as these kind of

37:10

classics of Australian cinema. So I think

37:12

that whole wave of like,

37:14

from Not Quite Hollywood and the rerelease and

37:16

rediscovery of these films, especially on DVD, I

37:19

think that's where people kind of really found

37:21

these films again. Well, that's where I found

37:24

them. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm pretty much

37:26

the same as you. I first became aware

37:28

of it because of that exploitation documentary and

37:30

sort it out. And oh my God, I

37:33

love this movie. This movie is really stressful

37:35

though. I kind of have a similarly visceral

37:37

reaction to this as I had with Wake

37:39

in Fright last week where I kind of

37:42

feel like I'm trapped in hell, right? Like,

37:44

I don't know what it is about these

37:46

Australian movies, but they really get me. I

37:50

think partly it's because of the two

37:52

characters in this. They're brilliantly played, but

37:54

they are awful insufferable characters that you

37:56

have to, that you're kind of stuck

37:59

with, right? And again, And it just

38:01

feels like this never-ending hell that these

38:04

characters and we can't escape from, you

38:06

know? And it's very scary and stressful.

38:08

Yeah, and it's just, and the whole thing is, it's

38:11

never clear whether

38:14

there is something really happening.

38:17

It really treads this fine line where

38:19

it never says out and out, oh

38:21

yeah, the animals are out to get them

38:23

or nature is about to get them. It's...

38:27

Yeah. And is this

38:29

actually nature's... And why this couple?

38:31

I mean, they are insufferable, but

38:34

why this, why has this couple

38:36

been made to atone for all

38:39

the sins of like humanity? And

38:42

so, and again, so it begs the question of

38:44

that. They're not these kind of extreme

38:47

characters that you get like in Wake and Fright

38:49

or that we'll see in Razorback. They

38:52

are kind of this somewhat

38:55

unordinary couple. They're a city couple. Yeah.

38:58

So a lot of these Outback

39:00

films, I have the characters from

39:02

the Outback who seem, you know,

39:04

these kind of extreme almost caricatures

39:06

or just these larger than life

39:08

characters. These two, and I guess

39:10

there's also the tension that comes from them. Like

39:15

they're just constantly fighting. So

39:17

you're tense and stressed because

39:20

you're... It's this couple

39:22

that are fighting all the time and

39:24

they're vicious. Like they hate

39:26

each other's guts. Oh my God. Like there's no...

39:29

I think this marriage is beyond saving. I

39:31

mean, just leave each other guys, just divorce.

39:34

Like it is like, yeah, like you say,

39:36

it's beyond saving. They hate each

39:38

other's guts, I think, you know. Yeah, they've got

39:40

to that point. There's no going back. And so you

39:42

have all these

39:45

strange occurrences,

39:49

but you also just have these

39:51

vicious fights where they're just really

39:53

awful to each other. It's this

39:55

heightened state the whole entire time.

39:58

And there's... wrapped up in

40:01

this human drama. And it's very much

40:03

a relationship drama at the same time.

40:06

But yet they're so ignorant of

40:08

what's happening around them. And we

40:11

as the viewer, and you know, guided

40:13

by the camera work, we're constantly being

40:15

shown like this close

40:17

ups of her spraying insecticide everywhere.

40:20

We see the cigarette, what happens

40:23

after he just thoughtlessly flicks his

40:25

cigarette out the window. So we're

40:28

constantly seeing what the

40:30

destruction that they're wreaking just by. And

40:33

it's a lot of things like maybe a

40:35

lot of people would go for a long

40:37

weekend. Yeah. So it's also reflecting back

40:40

to us what maybe a lot of people kind

40:42

of act around these

40:44

surroundings. Yeah, this is why I don't

40:46

go camping, Lindsay. It

40:50

is just awful. And I think you're right.

40:52

That's what is so powerful about it is

40:54

that you're seeing these characters and you can

40:56

feel that build of dread. You know, it's

40:58

just a regular camping weekend. In some ways

41:00

they are a slightly heightened version of any

41:02

couple, right? And I think there is something

41:04

relatable in them, even though they are quite

41:06

monstrous. But you're right, like those little throwaway

41:08

shots of him putting his cigarette out and

41:11

you know, chopping down a tree or her

41:14

spraying insecticide. And we're just, we're becoming increasingly

41:16

aware of nature around them and the way

41:18

they treat it, right? And it just kind

41:20

of builds and builds and builds. It's almost

41:22

excruciating. I do love the way that this

41:25

director kind of tells this story. How do

41:27

you find it? How do you find Colin

41:29

Eggleston's kind of direction throughout this film? It's

41:31

really well done in that it

41:34

all looks very real and recognisable.

41:37

But everything becomes imbued with

41:39

this sense of portent

41:42

and everything's off and this

41:44

air of dread. But it's

41:46

just kind of showing

41:48

things as they are. And

41:51

yeah, so there is the fact that there

41:53

is this ambiguity and this constant question of, is

41:56

this really happening? Like, is this is there some

41:58

kind of almost plot? Is

42:00

this nature kind of rising up against

42:03

them? Or,

42:06

yeah, so it

42:08

doesn't have the heightened tone and characterisation

42:11

that we see with a lot of

42:13

Osploitation films like Razorback. The

42:17

animals aren't overtly kind

42:19

of monstrous. We see koalas, we see

42:21

swans, we see, yeah, possums. We

42:27

don't see, they're not all like crazy,

42:29

it's not all crocodiles and sharks and

42:31

these really menacing

42:34

creatures. It's these what

42:37

seem like quite harmless creatures.

42:40

Yeah, they're just going about their

42:42

daily lives, these creatures. But you

42:44

do also get this sense that

42:47

they're kind of observing or judging.

42:50

And maybe a lot of it, I think, is

42:52

also the soundtrack. So you have these shots of

42:55

just, these are just a montage of different animals

42:57

just around. But the

42:59

music also, I think, does a

43:01

really good job in placing,

43:04

making that all kind of seem

43:07

slightly off or slightly

43:09

menacing. Yeah, I love

43:11

that. I love the

43:13

sound design in this. And you mentioned in the

43:15

plot synopsis those ideas that the sounds of kind

43:17

of like crying babies, which

43:19

we're all inherently like, we're all kind

43:21

of stressed out by that noise kind

43:23

of innately, aren't we? And I think

43:26

there's some really clever sound design decisions

43:29

in this. And you're right, I think

43:31

it really taps into that thing like

43:33

you said about appreciating the nature of,

43:36

sorry, appreciating the beauty of nature as well

43:38

as the danger of it. Because you're absolutely

43:40

right, like there are some really cute shots

43:42

of gorgeous little koala bears and other things

43:45

in this, right? And actually even the beach

43:47

itself is just stunning, isn't it? It's like,

43:49

you know, the opening titles come up over

43:51

just this shot of this idyllic, you know,

43:53

where anyone would want to go on holiday,

43:55

you know. And so, yeah, I think it's

43:58

doing something really interesting. in that regard, isn't

44:00

it? Like you say, it's not like this.

44:02

I don't know this. Even in Wake and

44:04

Fright, the kind of harshness of the outback,

44:06

you don't really get that so much in

44:09

this. It is kind of really beautiful, but

44:11

there's just like something there

44:14

going on in amongst it, isn't there? Just kind

44:16

of going, yeah, don't, you should

44:18

be respecting this, not messing with it, kind

44:20

of thing. Yeah. Because the ugliness comes from

44:22

Peter and Marsha. The ugliness comes from them,

44:24

their fights, and

44:27

what they're doing, the littering,

44:29

the spraying, insecticide, the, yeah,

44:32

they're bringing the ugliness to

44:34

this beautiful space. And

44:37

they're just, they're not honoring it, they're not

44:40

respecting it. They're, yeah, so

44:42

they're kind of putting

44:44

everything out of balance. But

44:47

it's interesting, though, I was reading some

44:49

interviews with Everett DeRoche, who is

44:51

the screenwriter. And

44:54

he actually was saying that

44:56

he thought that

44:58

the film didn't bring

45:01

enough sympathy

45:03

to the animals. He thought from the

45:05

outset that they were shown as

45:07

a threat, and that he wanted

45:09

there to be more sympathy for the animals.

45:12

And I don't agree with them. Like I

45:14

feel like we're just saying, I view those

45:16

shots as not as menacing. But then I

45:18

was reading, I read a review from when

45:20

the film came out from cinema papers, which

45:22

is this cinema magazine from Australia, from

45:25

of the time and there was this, I

45:27

remember this, this review was saying, oh, the

45:30

the Rwanda is

45:33

filmed like a crocodile and the

45:35

wombats look demonic or something. And

45:37

it's so weird. It's like, I

45:40

didn't get that at all. But I

45:42

don't know, maybe at the time people.

45:44

Yeah. So yeah, it

45:46

is odd. But I know that

45:48

Everett DeRoche had

45:51

a hand in there was a remake of Long

45:53

Weekend made in 2008. It's

45:56

not bad. But it's very much

45:58

the same script. And I think that

46:00

was And it was directed by Jamie

46:02

Blanks, who obviously made like urban legend

46:05

and other things. And

46:07

he actually edited Not Quite Hollywood. And

46:10

I think that remake was

46:12

was trying, I

46:14

think a lot of it was like Everett DeRoz trying

46:16

to make the film

46:18

more as he intended that you

46:20

didn't want any kind of threat

46:22

whatsoever from the animals until

46:25

much further into the film. Right. But

46:27

but yeah, it's just weird. Like, I

46:29

mean, most people I speak to who

46:31

watch the film don't feel that way

46:33

that I don't know maybe yeah, that

46:36

that the sympathy is with the animals from from the

46:38

outset, I feel I would say so. I mean, you

46:41

have the first shot, which was of a spider. And

46:43

I guess the music is kind of and I guess

46:46

maybe it depends on how you feel about

46:48

spiders just seeing a spider might put some

46:50

people on it. Yeah. But yeah, it's just

46:52

it's just interesting that the that the screenwriter

46:55

kind of felt like that sympathy wasn't there.

46:57

At the beginning. Interesting. Yeah, I agree with

46:59

you. I think, you know, you did get

47:01

a few creepy shots of like the wombats

47:04

and stuff at night, right? But not in

47:06

a way that makes them look evil. It's

47:08

just this is what nature looks like at

47:10

night. Right. So yeah, I agree. I think

47:12

it's kind of impartial in terms of the

47:15

way it portrays those animals. But I think

47:17

some of the choices of animals are really

47:19

interesting. You mentioned the Dewgong in your synopsis.

47:21

I think that's a really important deliberate animal

47:24

that they've chosen here, right? In this film,

47:26

because this is a marine mammal, it's kind

47:28

of linked to this kind

47:30

of related to the manatee, right?

47:33

But it is the only living

47:35

representative of the once diverse family,

47:37

Dewgong a day, right? And its

47:39

closest modern relative was

47:41

hunted to extinction in the 18th century.

47:43

So this is a thing that is

47:45

quite endangered and its relatives have been

47:48

hunted to extinction. And so, you know,

47:50

you get I think there's something very

47:52

deliberate there, isn't there, in that you've

47:54

got this mammal that is nearly extinct

47:56

because of humanity and it's the this

47:58

is the thing that is really haunting

48:01

them, right? In a kind of almost supernatural

48:04

way, like it attacks them in the water

48:06

and even after it's killed, it seems

48:09

to be kind of inexplicably moving up

48:11

the beach and towards them. Every time

48:13

they glance at it, it's kind of

48:15

dead corpse is getting closer and closer,

48:18

right? If again, it's kind

48:20

of on the nose, I think, but I feel

48:22

like it's a very, very much a deliberate choice

48:24

to use a dugong here in these sequences, you

48:27

know? Yeah, that's probably the only

48:29

kind of supernatural or odd,

48:32

strange, unnatural thing that seems to be

48:34

happening is this,

48:37

because it's dead, but it seems

48:39

to still be moving. So is

48:41

it dead and moving or is something...

48:44

So that's the only overt kind

48:47

of signal that maybe there

48:50

is something really

48:52

kind of strange and

48:54

like it's unnatural or

48:57

supernatural happening is

48:59

with the dugong and the fact that it's... The

49:02

cry that Marsha keeps hearing

49:04

is probably from this dugong

49:08

and yeah, it's a mother and like there's

49:10

something about that there must be a pop

49:12

and the mother and they've been separated. And

49:15

I think it definitely speaks to the fact

49:18

that, yeah, so many

49:20

animal species have been made

49:22

extinct in Australia. Australia

49:24

has this such

49:27

unique flora and fauna and

49:29

so much has been lost and it's such

49:31

a huge tragedy. Yeah, I mean, it's that

49:34

really brutal, you know, we talked about how

49:36

brutal Waking Fright was with the kangaroo hunting

49:38

sequences, which are almost unwatchable. And

49:41

even this movie again, like just almost

49:43

begins with the kangaroo being run over

49:45

by that truck and it's horrible to

49:47

watch, isn't it? And again, like I

49:51

love how kind of brutal this movie is in its

49:53

messaging with that kind of stuff, you know? Yeah,

49:55

I mean, kangaroos don't have a good time of

49:57

it in a lot of Australia. No. They

50:00

really don't. It's

50:04

weird because when you think of Australia,

50:06

one of the first things you think

50:08

of are kangaroos. In

50:11

rural areas, they often view kangaroos as

50:13

vermin. I remember finding that out and

50:15

just being shocked that they often think

50:18

of kangaroos as vermin that come and

50:20

destroy farm lands and things

50:22

like that. Actually, I

50:24

was back in Australia in August,

50:27

and I have some

50:29

friends who live in

50:31

the very, very outer suburbs of

50:33

Perth on this huge property. They're

50:35

actually rescue joeys,

50:38

baby kangaroos. A

50:40

lot of kangaroos

50:43

are killed on the

50:45

roads. Driving out there,

50:47

because there's these roads, and you can

50:49

go really, really fast. The speed limit

50:51

is 100 k's an hour. So

50:54

you go really, but there is this whole

50:56

thing of they could just jump across the

50:58

road at any point. You're going

51:01

at the speed limit, but it's really fast and

51:03

you just don't know. Unfortunately,

51:05

there is a lot of fatalities of kangaroos. Often, you

51:07

have to check the

51:09

animal to make

51:15

sure that they don't have joeys in their

51:17

lounges and things. I have friends who have

51:19

this almost

51:22

like a sanctuary. I had

51:24

all these and so I got to hold a little baby joey,

51:26

but it's means that

51:29

their mother is gone. It's

51:31

heartbreaking. It is this

51:34

unfortunate, horrible fact of

51:37

the brutality

51:39

of living in these

51:41

spaces. Poor kangaroos. Hello

51:49

everybody, just taking a quick moment to thank

51:51

this week's sponsor. That's $20 Patreon subscriber,

51:54

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52:03

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Head to patreon.com/evolution of horror

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that's patreon.com/evolution of horror. Lindsey

53:46

let's talk about the characters because of

53:48

course they are so important really to

53:50

this story and what's going on right

53:52

you've got John Hargreaves and Brian Ebehets

53:54

playing Peter and Marsha this this married

53:57

couple who as you mentioned

53:59

your synopsis they've got this dark

54:01

past, right? They've been through

54:03

something traumatic together potentially here.

54:05

They maybe haven't healthily dealt

54:07

with it. They're on this

54:10

long weekend together. They don't really seem

54:12

to be on. They don't really seem

54:14

to want to be on this long

54:16

weekend together. Things just get worse and

54:18

worse and worse. I do think the

54:20

performances are great. I think these characters

54:23

are fascinating. What do you make of

54:25

these two? Because it's really just these

54:27

two in this film, it's essentially

54:29

a two-hander and they're

54:31

pretty awful. They're pretty awful, especially

54:33

him. At

54:35

the beginning of the film, Marsha, she

54:38

thinks that, oh yeah, we're going to

54:40

go on the weekend. With

54:42

the dog, Cricket, and she's like, I'll just put a

54:44

bunch of cans of dog food

54:46

in a bowl and leave her

54:48

outside the whole time. I was just like,

54:50

jeez. From the get go, I was like,

54:53

I don't like you. She

54:58

has no warmth or empathy at all.

55:00

Then like you say, he's awful. He's

55:04

so thoughtless. He does these

55:06

senseless, damaging things for no reason,

55:08

doesn't recognize what he's doing. The

55:11

fact that they're just fighting with each other and they're

55:13

so vicious to each other. They're

55:20

definitely not sympathetic. They're definitely not sympathetic

55:22

from the outset. No. I think

55:24

there's this interesting dynamic between them as

55:26

well. She clearly

55:29

doesn't want to be going on

55:31

that trip either, does she? That's the thing.

55:33

He's booked this for himself,

55:35

I think, by the looks of it. He

55:37

very much wants to be there at one

55:40

with nature, but he does really stupid things

55:42

as well. Why is he chopping on a

55:44

tree with an axe for absolutely no reason

55:46

as well? Yeah,

55:49

I think from the get go, you get

55:51

this impression that it's almost like he's trying

55:53

to prove something to himself. I wonder if

55:55

that comes later with this

55:57

idea of these two at some point.

56:00

like maybe she's had an affair, right? And again,

56:02

I think it comes back to that idea of

56:05

fragile masculinity a bit in this movie,

56:07

right? I think I especially get from

56:09

him, it's constantly like he's trying to

56:11

sort of prove something to her or

56:13

to himself, you know? Yeah, because he, like

56:15

the whole thing is that they're supposed to be,

56:18

I guess, trying to save their marriage. But he

56:20

is not consulted with her at all what she

56:22

wants to do. Like, yeah, it's totally for him.

56:24

Like at one point, she says he spent $2,000

56:26

on camping, like what? Yeah, so I

56:32

mean, I'm with her, I would not

56:34

want, I wouldn't want to

56:37

go camping or anything. So yeah,

56:39

it's definitely a very selfish

56:41

thing that he's putting

56:43

her through. And maybe he is trying to

56:45

punish her. Like, that's part of how he's

56:47

trying to punish her, is that

56:49

he knows that she's not gonna like this. And

56:54

kind of putting her through it. So

56:56

there's this, I think maybe that's that

56:59

aspect of it as well, which again,

57:01

makes him even more unsympathetic as well.

57:03

Yeah, so it's just, and

57:06

yeah, maybe he's trying to prove

57:08

something to himself as well. Yeah,

57:10

like you said, that of trying

57:12

to reclaim some kind of masculinity

57:14

after he's cuckolded him. Yeah. Yeah,

57:17

you're right. I think he maybe it is that

57:19

he's trying to punish her. I don't think he

57:22

ever thought that she was going to have an

57:24

amazing time with him on this trip. Like, I

57:26

don't really get that impression, right? And,

57:28

and she's really interesting

57:30

too, I think. And the

57:32

background to this, that we sort of

57:35

slowly learn throughout the film, right, is

57:37

that, yeah, she had an affair. Interesting

57:40

how they talk about this other couple too, like

57:43

maybe they wanted something to happen with this

57:45

other couple, right? And then, but whatever happened,

57:47

she kind of ended up with this other

57:49

man, and I think

57:51

got pregnant and had an abortion, right as

57:53

well. And obviously that lingers over this whole

57:56

thing as well, that she chose to terminate

57:58

a pregnancy. And again, most this

58:01

impression that she feels

58:03

or he feels like they're being punished for it or

58:05

something as well. And yeah, how did you find all

58:07

of that that backstory and the way in which that

58:09

was kind of treated in this movie? I

58:11

guess you needed the backstory for the

58:13

horror to work because you need a

58:15

reason for them to not be on

58:17

not like seeing what's happening around them.

58:20

And for them to not realize sooner

58:22

that they should just get the hell

58:24

out of there. And

58:26

that they're that all of these threats

58:28

or these messages from around them, they

58:30

completely they keep they keep missing it.

58:32

So maybe there are these repeated chances

58:34

for them to do better. And

58:37

they just keep missing it. Because

58:39

there's so it is so much about they

58:41

can't get over what's

58:43

happened her affair and this abortion.

58:45

Yeah, which is the the abortion

58:48

is the whole thing that is

58:50

the one that does make me

58:52

slightly uneasy. It could vary. It

58:55

does seem like possibly that her

58:57

having this abortion is the one

58:59

of the reasons why they've been

59:02

kind of chosen. Yeah.

59:05

They've been single act like that

59:07

somehow this abortion is this act

59:09

against nature. Maybe. I don't know. Like

59:11

I do. I do have a

59:13

real uneasiness that could be some

59:15

kind of moral you could definitely maybe

59:18

see a moralistic kind of tone

59:20

to that. I don't think

59:22

it was probably intended, but it's definitely there.

59:24

And the fact that all the the main

59:26

kind of non human animals in the film,

59:28

you've got cricket, who's a girl, female. There's

59:32

the eagle, which it seems like

59:35

it's the mother of like, because

59:37

because Marsha finds the egg. Yes.

59:40

And so maybe that eagle is swooping because

59:42

it's the mother and of course, the doo

59:44

gong is a mother female. So a lot

59:46

of the main non human animals in the

59:49

film are female and

59:51

mothers. And this

59:53

is completely antithetical

59:55

to Marsha who is

59:57

definitely not a mother. mother

59:59

seems to have no maternal instinct. And there's

1:00:02

this weird, this weird line

1:00:05

in one during one of their

1:00:07

fights, when they're basically, he's going

1:00:11

off at her again, because of the abortion, bringing

1:00:13

up the abortion. And he says something like, does

1:00:15

he say something like, you said it cried? Like,

1:00:18

it was this really weird line. Yeah,

1:00:22

because I think he refers to it as a

1:00:24

murder. And she's like, it wasn't a murder. And

1:00:26

then he says something like, you said it cried.

1:00:28

Yeah. And I'm like, obviously, it didn't cry. It

1:00:30

wasn't even no enough of an it to do

1:00:32

anything at that point, if it Yeah. So,

1:00:36

yeah, so there's a really like, maybe, maybe she

1:00:38

kind of was out of it. And she said

1:00:40

something. I don't know.

1:00:42

But it was just, it's just a really odd line.

1:00:46

Yeah, I think throws back at her. I

1:00:48

think there's something and I think that's what

1:00:50

kind of really helps that for me in

1:00:52

terms of not feeling too much like, it

1:00:55

is like this moral pro life movie or something

1:00:57

because like, I was worried about that, I think

1:01:00

too. But I think, I think

1:01:02

actually, it feels to me at moments like

1:01:04

that, like, okay, this is actually psychological. Like,

1:01:06

I think maybe the two of them or

1:01:08

one of them is having some sort of

1:01:10

breakdown in this, right? Like, whether it's guilt,

1:01:13

personal guilt over what they've

1:01:15

done, or, you know, just

1:01:17

this kind of rage they have at each other or

1:01:19

something, or I don't know what it is. But I

1:01:21

feel like, I

1:01:23

don't know, it feels like a lot of

1:01:26

it is coming maybe from them, I think,

1:01:28

you know, particularly that moment when she's driving

1:01:30

right before she dies, really. But that moment

1:01:32

when she's driving into the spite, all the

1:01:35

birds attacking her, it feels to me like

1:01:37

she is having a sort of freak out

1:01:39

at that moment, right? That that could easily

1:01:41

be some sort of hallucination or something. So,

1:01:43

yeah, I like that there's still that there's

1:01:46

that bit of ambiguity of is it supernatural

1:01:48

or is it psychological, you know. And I

1:01:50

think also, Marsha is a really interesting character,

1:01:52

and that in a lot of eco

1:01:55

horror films or these nature felt like

1:01:57

to bite back films and certainly Australian

1:01:59

films. women

1:02:02

are usually equated

1:02:05

with nature. Femininity and

1:02:07

nature are kind of connected and linked

1:02:09

together. I think specifically,

1:02:11

speaking of kangaroos before, there was

1:02:13

another film, I think it came

1:02:17

out around 86 called Fair Game. And

1:02:19

it's about this woman who runs

1:02:21

a kangaroo sanctuary in the

1:02:24

kind of outback and she's terrorized by

1:02:26

these men. And there's

1:02:29

one really horrific

1:02:32

scene where they terrorize

1:02:34

her, they strip her and they

1:02:37

tie her to the

1:02:39

hood of the car, like she's a

1:02:41

mounted trophy and drive

1:02:43

around. And thankfully,

1:02:46

the rest of the film is her getting revenge

1:02:48

on them. So they really get it and they

1:02:50

deserve it. But throughout

1:02:52

the film, she's got this

1:02:55

sanctuary and it's this whole thing of

1:02:57

femininity. It's almost like a

1:02:59

kind of rape revenge. But

1:03:01

she's always continually linked with

1:03:04

nature. And I

1:03:06

even think about like Mad Max Fury Road, which

1:03:08

is so much about

1:03:12

femininity about these female characters. And

1:03:14

the female characters in that film

1:03:16

are very strongly linked with

1:03:19

nature as well. There's this older woman

1:03:21

called whose name is the keeper of

1:03:23

the seeds. So

1:03:25

there's often this traditional

1:03:28

link between femininity and

1:03:30

nature. And Marsha is actually

1:03:32

really a complete kind of

1:03:34

opposite to that. So she really is

1:03:37

this unique female character that she rejects

1:03:40

kind of maternity. She has no

1:03:42

maternal instinct and she's completely out

1:03:44

of sync with nature. There is

1:03:46

no connection with nature

1:03:49

at all from her end. So she

1:03:51

is a really interesting character in that way.

1:03:53

Yeah, I agree with you. And actually, Mad Max is

1:03:55

a perfect kind of

1:03:59

exploitation example. as well, isn't it?

1:04:01

Very much part of that movement and George Miller.

1:04:03

But yeah, no, I agree with you. I

1:04:05

think they absolutely are. They're so interesting the

1:04:08

way these characters are portrayed, particularly in it

1:04:10

against that kind of backdrop of nature. How

1:04:13

do you find those moments of horror

1:04:15

when something really kind of overtly horrific

1:04:17

does happen involving animals or whatever? I

1:04:19

always find that that's such a challenging

1:04:21

thing to make happen in these sorts

1:04:23

of films, isn't it? You

1:04:25

know, famously, people like Spielberg wasn't able

1:04:27

to pull off creating a realistic-looking shark.

1:04:29

And that's always kind of been part

1:04:31

of the challenge of making a good

1:04:33

animal attack movie. How do you find

1:04:35

those moments of horror in this when

1:04:37

our main characters do get attacked by,

1:04:39

you know, the birds or, you know,

1:04:41

whatever else it might be? It does

1:04:43

a really good job, I think, of

1:04:47

not showing too much. And

1:04:50

like you mentioned, the sound design. The sound design is

1:04:52

doing a lot of the work. And

1:04:54

it's good because, yeah, because sometimes

1:04:57

when you show, it's the whole thing,

1:04:59

like with Jaws, if you show the

1:05:01

creature, the animal too much, you

1:05:04

can start to see the seams.

1:05:06

You start to see the fakeness

1:05:09

of it. So you

1:05:11

just, it does a really

1:05:13

good job in implying that

1:05:15

a lot of things, because, yeah, we just have

1:05:17

these shots of them kind of observing,

1:05:20

and then you just have these, I

1:05:23

mean, there's the eagle swooping and the

1:05:26

possum kind of biting him. But

1:05:28

it's all done quite well that you're

1:05:30

not really kind of seeing things very

1:05:33

graphically. That so much of it is

1:05:35

through implication.

1:05:38

And again, this whole, that it's not

1:05:40

telling us outright whether these

1:05:43

animals are attacking, you

1:05:45

know, kind of deliberately consciously. Yeah.

1:05:48

And I think, like, again, it's one of

1:05:50

those movies that kind of really stuck up

1:05:52

on me. Like, I was kind of, I

1:05:54

was on board with it, but I wasn't

1:05:56

realising quite how stressful and scary I was

1:05:59

finding it until it, but it, I think

1:06:01

it just gradually increases, doesn't it?

1:06:03

It just ramps up and ramps up. And

1:06:05

I think their kind of manic energy ramps

1:06:07

up and ramps up as it goes as

1:06:09

well, you know. And I think the filmmaking

1:06:12

does a tremendous job of kind of crescendoing

1:06:14

towards that end point, doesn't it? Yeah. And

1:06:16

it's just interesting that the, I mean,

1:06:19

there is this ambiguity, but I always

1:06:21

think about the tagline for the film,

1:06:24

which is that their crime was against

1:06:26

nature, nature found them guilty. So that

1:06:28

tagline seems to suggest that it is

1:06:30

kind of a deliberate, conscious attack. And

1:06:32

yeah, and I guess it just brings

1:06:34

up this whole idea of nature found

1:06:36

them guilty, this idea of guilt, I

1:06:39

think is so strong. Yes.

1:06:42

Because yeah, it is confronting us, well,

1:06:46

the white prevailing settler culture,

1:06:49

colonial culture, that of

1:06:51

the guilt, they are guilty,

1:06:53

I get, for many, many things against

1:06:57

the land, against indigenous peoples,

1:06:59

against their guilty of many,

1:07:01

many things. And

1:07:03

it's maybe this whole idea of what's

1:07:06

coming to us for

1:07:09

what has been done. And as well,

1:07:11

like the face of it

1:07:13

on the story, like what the

1:07:15

conversation they have when they stop off a

1:07:18

place at the beginning, and the people, the locals

1:07:20

have never actually even heard of this beach as

1:07:22

well. There's something kind of interesting about that too.

1:07:24

Like, why is it that no

1:07:26

one's heard of it? Is it like this place

1:07:29

that exists in some parallel universe

1:07:31

that's there to talk to them? Is it

1:07:33

like some sort of hell that they find

1:07:35

themselves driving into? Again, like all of that

1:07:37

is really ambiguous. Who's the other people that

1:07:39

they think are there? There's like a van

1:07:41

parked up on the beach, right? Who the

1:07:44

husband is just kind of obsessed with going to

1:07:46

find as well, like, and all of those kind

1:07:48

of question marks just around the world building of

1:07:50

this, I find really interesting as well. Yeah, and

1:07:52

it goes back to like, I know that the

1:07:55

screenwriter Everett DeRoche kind

1:07:57

of said that he wanted nature to be...

1:07:59

the hero of the

1:08:02

film. He kind of made it with that

1:08:04

in mind. And I

1:08:06

think he said something like my premise was

1:08:08

that Mother Earth has her own autoimmune system.

1:08:10

So when humans start behaving like cancer cells,

1:08:13

she attacks. So it's kind

1:08:15

of this whole so it

1:08:17

plays into this, this whole idea

1:08:19

of humans being

1:08:22

a cancer or a virus. And

1:08:24

this idea of like the Gaia theory, which is

1:08:26

that Earth itself is

1:08:28

its organism. So how,

1:08:31

you know, how humanity has

1:08:33

acted, could

1:08:36

be seen as some kind of virus. And,

1:08:39

and yeah, and I was like, okay, I

1:08:41

always just think but I was actually on

1:08:43

a panel on about eco horror, about

1:08:46

a year or so ago, for this,

1:08:49

it's past this academic like horror studies

1:08:52

group. And, and

1:08:54

I kind of brought this idea up of yet this, like

1:08:57

whatever it duroche says, like, or humanity kind

1:08:59

of is this virus or cancer. And

1:09:01

on this panel was Kaylee Simmons,

1:09:04

he's an American scholar, who's a

1:09:06

glalalakota. And she spoke

1:09:08

about how this this idea of humans

1:09:10

as a virus, there's some harmful there's

1:09:12

a harmful aspect to that, because it's

1:09:15

ignores a lot of human history of

1:09:17

that were points where humans did live

1:09:19

in harmony with nature, and they didn't

1:09:21

cause environmental catastrophes. And when

1:09:24

we speak of humans as a virus,

1:09:26

we're only really talking about particular humans,

1:09:28

and we're continuing to ignore, you

1:09:30

know, the indigenous peoples that didn't

1:09:34

affect the environment in this way, and still

1:09:36

not seeing them as not human, and I'm

1:09:38

not acknowledging their existence. So it's interesting that

1:09:40

this film, I think is still very much

1:09:44

made from this kind of white colonialist point

1:09:46

of view, and that we're also forcing nature

1:09:49

into this mold, that this whole idea of

1:09:51

like, well, we treated the land

1:09:53

this way. So when they

1:09:55

find us guilty, they're kind of going to

1:09:57

act the same way that this revenge is

1:09:59

going to take this kind of of very

1:10:02

destructive punishing form. Absolutely, yeah. But I think

1:10:04

that movie, I think this movie does do

1:10:06

that in Samragu because these two characters are

1:10:09

city-slicing outsiders, aren't they? That's the thing,

1:10:11

like they are people from this very

1:10:13

kind of like white corporate world almost,

1:10:15

you know, coming out and disrespecting the

1:10:17

land. So I do think that's interesting.

1:10:21

How do you find the ending? It's an abrupt

1:10:23

ending, right? You know, just the way that he

1:10:25

runs out into the road is run over by

1:10:27

a car just like the kangaroo, bam, end, that's

1:10:29

it, right? I

1:10:32

love the ending. I love how

1:10:36

it kind of plays out in the

1:10:38

final act. The fact

1:10:40

that humans, like

1:10:43

it's other humans that kill them. So

1:10:46

he ends up killing her and then he's run over.

1:10:48

So the

1:10:52

animals or nature never has to get its

1:10:54

kind of hands dirty. The

1:10:57

humans all do it all. So it's

1:11:00

this whole, it is quite interesting, a

1:11:02

kind of ironic kind of way

1:11:04

for it to all end. That if they

1:11:07

have been found guilty and this is

1:11:09

nature's revenge, that it's

1:11:12

still able to use humans as the

1:11:16

form of its vengeance. But

1:11:18

yet it's also very telling that

1:11:21

final shot, the truck

1:11:23

that runs him over, the camera

1:11:25

kind of cranes up and you

1:11:27

see that this truck has cattle

1:11:29

in the back. And

1:11:33

there's repeated references in the film, like

1:11:35

at the beginning when they're talking to

1:11:37

the locals that there's an abattoir nearby.

1:11:39

And as they try and go to

1:11:42

this beach, there's even a sign of

1:11:44

saying something abattoir nearby. So

1:11:46

this whole thing of like, there's

1:11:49

still also this, I

1:11:53

guess almost this crime is still happening that

1:11:56

this truck has run him over,

1:11:58

but the truck is taking cattle. paddle probably

1:12:01

to this abattoir to be killed and

1:12:04

this mass slaughter of animals happening

1:12:06

right nearby this place. So

1:12:09

yeah, I think I love

1:12:11

the ending because I think it's a perfect

1:12:14

way to end it. Yeah, agreed. Agreed.

1:12:17

Well, there we go. How do you think this film

1:12:19

holds up? I mean, like, you know, watching it now,

1:12:21

do you think that any of it has dated? Like

1:12:23

is this still a horror movie you'd kind of recommend

1:12:25

to people? Where does it belong to

1:12:27

you in the great kind of pantheon

1:12:30

of Australian horror and exploitations, you think?

1:12:32

I think it still holds up

1:12:35

really well because it isn't going for

1:12:39

the big swings of like

1:12:41

crazy attacks and special

1:12:43

effects and stuff that might date it.

1:12:46

It's so much about the

1:12:49

tension and the feeling and the dread. So

1:12:52

that doesn't age. That doesn't. Yeah.

1:12:56

And the incredible

1:12:58

acting that you get from John

1:13:00

Hargreaves and Brian Eberhitz, I

1:13:04

think is still kind of really

1:13:06

elevating. Like if the film would not work if

1:13:08

they were terrible, there's just no way the

1:13:10

film could work at all. So

1:13:12

I think it really is an

1:13:17

important kind of keystone film for

1:13:19

like just the nature bites

1:13:21

back, but specifically Australian

1:13:24

kind of nature bites back films. But

1:13:27

yet it is still quite unique. The

1:13:29

characters are very unique. Like we talked

1:13:31

about how different Marsha is to a

1:13:33

lot of female characters in a lot

1:13:35

of these other films. You

1:13:38

don't have, you know, these really heightened

1:13:40

caricatures. These seem like an ordinary, they're

1:13:43

an ordinary kind of city couple. And

1:13:47

so, yeah, there's enough about

1:13:51

it that is quite

1:13:53

singular that also kind of sets

1:13:55

it apart. So I think it

1:13:57

definitely has become over time. time,

1:14:00

I think it seems to be kind of

1:14:03

lifting up in a lot of people's kind of

1:14:05

ideas about these types of films and

1:14:08

one of the best examples of this type of film.

1:14:11

Yeah, I completely agree with you. It is simple,

1:14:14

it is streamlined, it's stripped back and

1:14:16

it's incredibly stressful, right? It is like

1:14:18

it's on the nose with what it's

1:14:20

doing, right? It is in some ways

1:14:22

the most overt nature bites back movie

1:14:25

on this whole series. I think you've

1:14:27

got this monstrous couple, they're awful to

1:14:29

nature, their crimes are against nature, nature

1:14:31

found them guilty, nature's gonna fuck them

1:14:33

up, right? But I think because of

1:14:35

these two really interesting characters, because of

1:14:38

the performances, because of that building dread

1:14:40

and the way this story is

1:14:42

told, I think it's tremendous. It is

1:14:44

an incredibly stressful, harrowing watch and, you

1:14:46

know, a really great example of a

1:14:49

movie in this kind of sub-genre. Is

1:14:55

it scary being a lady FBI

1:14:57

agent? Yeah.

1:14:59

Take a nice long look.

1:15:05

A letter was left with the bodies. Sign

1:15:09

with one word. Holy

1:15:21

shit, that was a little clip you just heard

1:15:23

there from a new horror film that's out this

1:15:26

month in cinemas called Long Legs. Now, some of

1:15:28

you might have seen some of the marketing material

1:15:31

for Long Legs. There's a very creepy trailer

1:15:33

out there. It doesn't give away too much,

1:15:35

so I'm not going to say too much

1:15:38

about it. It's a new horror film directed

1:15:40

by Oz Perkins and starring Michael Monroe and

1:15:42

Nicolas Cage and it

1:15:45

is one of the

1:15:47

most interesting and creepy movies I have

1:15:49

seen in a very long time and

1:15:51

that is one of the many very

1:15:53

exciting new releases that we are going

1:15:55

to be reviewing on next week's episode

1:15:57

of Fresh Blood. Fresh Blood is a

1:15:59

monthly horror review strand made

1:16:01

exclusively for the Evolution of Horror

1:16:03

Patreon channel on Fresh Blood, me

1:16:06

and my three co-hosts Becky Dark,

1:16:08

Brad Hansen and Steph McKenna review

1:16:10

and discuss every new horror release,

1:16:12

not just films but also TV

1:16:15

shows, books and video games and

1:16:17

we also recommend new physical media

1:16:19

releases. So we cover absolutely everything

1:16:21

in the world of horror and

1:16:24

July is looking to be pretty strong for horror

1:16:27

as well as long legs. We're also going

1:16:29

to be covering Ty West's Maxine which I

1:16:31

have also seen and have many thoughts

1:16:33

on. We've got the new A Quiet

1:16:35

Place film, A Quiet Place Day One.

1:16:37

There is also the new Russell Crowe

1:16:40

movie, The Exorcism. We've

1:16:42

got In a Violent Nature, a

1:16:44

very critically acclaimed first

1:16:46

person slasher movie which is coming out in

1:16:48

July as well. We're also going to be

1:16:51

covering new films on streaming like Under Paris

1:16:54

and a whole bunch of other smaller

1:16:56

releases as well. Brad might even be

1:16:58

giving his thoughts on Winnie the Pooh,

1:17:00

Blood and Honey too. So if

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horror. That's patreon.com/evolution of horror. Ok,

1:19:40

let's return to the second half

1:19:43

of this week's episode in which

1:19:45

Lindsay Hallam and I discuss Razorback

1:19:47

from 1984. She

1:20:03

was the last one to see it. She's

1:20:18

missing. It was

1:20:20

an accident. Now, he must face

1:20:23

it. I thought you might know what happened.

1:20:27

Alone. God

1:20:37

has created it. And

1:20:41

hell has given it a name. Now,

1:20:45

there's a new breed of terror. Razorback.

1:20:53

Okay, so you're in the outback.

1:20:55

There's this old man, Jake Cullen.

1:20:58

He's looking after his grandson. And

1:21:02

a giant Razorback kind of

1:21:04

feral pig bore storms into the

1:21:06

house and takes the baby. So

1:21:09

that's our opening. Then

1:21:12

just after that, the grandfather has been

1:21:14

put on trial for

1:21:16

the boy's murder, but he's found not guilty.

1:21:18

So it's obviously kind of referencing the Lindy

1:21:21

Chamberlain case that happened just a few years

1:21:23

before this film came out. But

1:21:26

then it cuts to Beth Winters, who

1:21:28

is this American, I guess she's a

1:21:30

reporter. I don't really know. Or she

1:21:32

works for these Animal League. I don't

1:21:34

know. But she's on TV and she

1:21:37

does these investigations into stories

1:21:39

about animal rights abuses. She travels

1:21:41

to Australia to investigate the treatment

1:21:43

and mass killing of kangaroos in

1:21:45

the town of Gamola, which

1:21:48

is where the opening scene takes place. She

1:21:51

gets footage of these two brothers, Benny

1:21:53

and Dooko. He

1:21:56

was kind of using room meat

1:21:58

to make pet food at the this

1:22:00

cannery, the pet pack cannery or

1:22:02

factory. They

1:22:04

realize that she's on to them, there

1:22:07

kind of maybe some illegal activities going

1:22:09

on. So they run her

1:22:11

off the road. They also attempt to

1:22:13

assault her, but then they see that

1:22:16

this giant Razorback might be coming

1:22:20

up, coming up to where they are. So they

1:22:22

leave. And then

1:22:24

Beth is left behind and she's attacked

1:22:26

and killed by the Razorback. Then

1:22:28

we cut to her

1:22:31

husband, Carl. He's now arrived in Gamala and

1:22:33

he wants to find out what happened to

1:22:35

his wife. He meets up here

1:22:38

with Benny and Diko, who kind of

1:22:40

take him out on a kangaroo hunt,

1:22:42

but they leave him behind. He's

1:22:45

attacked by some pigs, he gets lost

1:22:47

in the desert. And

1:22:50

he gets found by Jake, the old

1:22:52

man from the beginning and Sarah, who

1:22:54

lives in the town and she's studying the feral

1:22:58

pigs of the area. And she

1:23:00

tells Carl that a lot of

1:23:02

these pigs are assigned to behave

1:23:04

very strangely, they're very aggressive, they're

1:23:07

cannibalizing their young, something's not quite

1:23:09

right. Benny

1:23:11

and Diko then find out that Jake

1:23:14

and Sarah and Carl are kind of working

1:23:16

together to find out what happened to Beth.

1:23:20

They maim Carl and leave him

1:23:22

to be eaten by the Razorback.

1:23:26

So Carl and Sarah find Jake

1:23:28

dead and then they go to

1:23:30

the pet pack cannery to confront Benny and Diko.

1:23:35

Carl drops Benny into this mineshaft. But

1:23:37

then just soon the Razorback arrives, so

1:23:39

there's big showdown.

1:23:43

Diko ends up getting killed by the

1:23:45

Razorback, but Carl manages to kill

1:23:47

the Razorback. And him and Sarah manage to survive

1:23:50

and it ends. Yeah,

1:23:55

it's quite the kind of sprawling plot, isn't

1:23:57

it? And it's interesting that that it was

1:23:59

written by the same guy, right, who wrote

1:24:02

Long Weekend, Everett Duroche. And he obviously, and

1:24:04

he'd written quite a lot of these kind

1:24:06

of iconic, you know,

1:24:08

exploitation movies, right, Patrick and Road Games

1:24:10

as well. But it feels so

1:24:13

different, I think, to Long Weekend. What

1:24:15

do you think of Razorback, Lindsay, and

1:24:17

how does it compare to Long Weekend

1:24:19

for you? And it's very, very different

1:24:21

to Long Weekend. It's much more the

1:24:23

kind of bombastic,

1:24:26

crazy killer animal, rampaging

1:24:29

animal, weird

1:24:33

caricature characters in

1:24:35

this outback town. It's

1:24:37

so much about the style. It's

1:24:40

much more kind of in your face, balls

1:24:42

to the wall kind of action, adventure, horror.

1:24:46

So yeah, it's not, you know, a

1:24:48

relationship drama in any way, like Long

1:24:50

Weekend. No. It is this

1:24:53

out and out kind of horror

1:24:56

rampaging animal film. Yeah,

1:24:59

so it's very

1:25:01

different. Do you, are you a fan of

1:25:03

it generally, would you say? Like, do you

1:25:05

like it? Yeah, I think it just is

1:25:07

an entertaining ride and

1:25:09

it just looks so incredible. It really does.

1:25:12

It is very much a kind of stylistic

1:25:14

exercise. Yeah,

1:25:16

so I think just on

1:25:19

that surface level, you can totally enjoy it.

1:25:22

I do actually think there's other stuff

1:25:24

going on. It's often been said that

1:25:26

it's just style

1:25:29

over substance. I think there's a little bit of

1:25:31

substance to it that we can get into. But

1:25:34

yeah, it is very much the style

1:25:36

up front and center, which

1:25:39

when the film came out, it was kind of derided

1:25:41

for that. But I think it was very

1:25:43

kind of maybe a kind of ahead of its time with

1:25:47

the way it looked and the

1:25:49

way that Mulkay and

1:25:51

the cinematographer were shooting it. Yeah,

1:25:54

yeah, I agree with that. I think

1:25:56

it looks absolutely stunning this film. I

1:25:59

think maybe for that reason, reason I wasn't quite

1:26:01

as engrossed as I was in Long Weekend. Like,

1:26:03

I think, you know, you watch this one from

1:26:05

a slightly more kind of, I don't know, I'm

1:26:08

watching the mad characters and filmmaking and appreciating

1:26:10

it on that level, maybe more than I

1:26:12

was, like, felt like I was trapped in

1:26:15

hell, like I was with Long Weekend, you

1:26:17

know? But it's so much fun. How

1:26:20

do you find that, you know, that

1:26:23

direction by Russell Melchihi, you know, he'd come

1:26:25

from a kind of, he's famous for kind

1:26:27

of music videos and that kind of thing.

1:26:29

Can you tell, has he got that kind

1:26:31

of, like, I guess, music video style to

1:26:33

this movie, do you think? Yeah,

1:26:35

there's definitely this MTV aesthetic that he's bringing

1:26:37

to it. It does look quite different to

1:26:39

a lot of the Australian films that had

1:26:41

come before that.

1:26:44

And yeah, Mulcay, I believe

1:26:47

this was his first feature film that

1:26:49

he directed, I'm pretty sure. Yeah,

1:26:51

he'd come from music videos, he did music

1:26:53

videos for Duran Duran, Elton John, Queen, and

1:26:55

of course, Queen went on to do the

1:26:57

soundtrack for Highlander. Iva

1:27:00

Davies does the music and he

1:27:02

actually, Iva Davies is in

1:27:05

a band called Ice House, this really

1:27:07

kind of big Australian rock band

1:27:09

from the 80s. So

1:27:12

yeah, the fact that he's got this guy

1:27:14

from rock band to do the score,

1:27:16

he's bringing that music video background. And

1:27:20

in fact, I found out he directed

1:27:22

Video Killed the Radio Star by the

1:27:24

Buggles, which was the first music video

1:27:26

ever to play on MTV. Yes. So

1:27:29

yeah, he has that, he definitely has

1:27:31

that background. So it's very much, yeah,

1:27:35

this really kind of focus on the

1:27:37

visuals. Like I always think of this

1:27:39

particular, the scene where Carl is lost

1:27:41

in the desert, and it just becomes

1:27:44

almost this surreal, like these tableaus that

1:27:46

are just incredible, that look like something

1:27:48

from a Salvador Dali painting. Yeah.

1:27:51

This is not any kind of

1:27:53

realistic depiction of the outback. It

1:27:56

really is kind of... Yeah, this is

1:27:59

a really interesting scene. heightened aesthetic

1:28:02

to it all. And the

1:28:04

fact you know, you've got the town

1:28:06

in the film, it's called Gamola, which

1:28:08

is an Aboriginal word for gut or

1:28:11

intestine. And there's this really real visceral

1:28:13

feel to the film. There's all this

1:28:15

disgust with blood and meat everywhere. And

1:28:17

this feeling of disease,

1:28:20

like the Razorback almost seems like the

1:28:22

symptom of this kind of disease and

1:28:24

sickness, it's kind of invaded the town.

1:28:27

So yeah, you have this kind of

1:28:29

disgust, but then also it's really beautiful

1:28:31

at the same time. So it's definitely

1:28:33

yeah, the style is doing I guess

1:28:35

a lot of the work. I

1:28:38

was watching Not Quite Hollywood Again. And there

1:28:40

was even a story where I think it's

1:28:43

Gregory Harrison who plays Carl. He

1:28:45

was talking about being directed by Russell

1:28:47

Mulcahy. And like Russell Mulcahy, he was

1:28:50

always just thinking about the

1:28:52

style. Like there was big points

1:28:54

where because you know, Mulcahy

1:28:57

loves the smoke machine. So there's like

1:28:59

smoke machines, smoke

1:29:01

everywhere. Apparently, he'd say to

1:29:03

Gregory Harrison like, Oh, just just cut out

1:29:05

like let's just skip over all that dialogue,

1:29:08

because the smoke's going to disappear. So yeah, so he

1:29:10

was he was he was kind of

1:29:14

that was his focus. Yeah, really was was the

1:29:16

look of it. Yeah, more than you know, the

1:29:19

text of the the screenplay or anything like that.

1:29:21

And absolutely that comes across and that's fine. I

1:29:23

mean, it's a joy to watch, isn't it? And

1:29:25

you do get the feeling that he he would

1:29:27

he would choose about six shots over just like

1:29:30

one person would use maybe one he

1:29:32

uses about six different shots for something.

1:29:34

It's it's amazing. And it's the cinematography

1:29:36

is Dean Semler, who was the cinematographer

1:29:38

for stuff like Mad Max two, and

1:29:41

a bunch of other movies like Dances with

1:29:43

Wolves and Apokolipto as well later on down

1:29:45

the line. So he's a very accomplished cinematographer

1:29:48

with this kind of like stylish director. And

1:29:51

it is you're right, it's like, there are

1:29:53

so many moments of this film, you could

1:29:55

like frame and put on the wall. It's

1:29:57

like a beautiful tableau, the moment when he's

1:29:59

like, that

1:34:00

you have this kind

1:34:03

of link between, I guess, the Razorback and the

1:34:05

white men of the town. They

1:34:08

kind of both introduce species. It's very

1:34:10

telling that the town is called Gamola,

1:34:12

which is this Aboriginal world, but there's

1:34:14

no Aboriginal people there. Yeah.

1:34:19

And, you know, Bernie and Diko are as much a

1:34:21

threat as the Razorback. And

1:34:24

there's, you know, they basically attempt to rape

1:34:26

Beth, and

1:34:29

then they leave. And then that kind

1:34:31

of precedes the Razorback coming in and

1:34:33

killing her. So there's almost like maybe

1:34:35

there's this kind of connection between

1:34:38

the men and the

1:34:41

Razorback. And I think that's another

1:34:44

kind of really important film

1:34:46

that came out in the 80s is

1:34:49

Dark Age from 1987.

1:34:51

And in that, that's

1:34:53

a Killer Croc movie, but in that

1:34:55

the crocodile is very sympathetic. And

1:34:59

in that film, you actually, which

1:35:01

was, is a

1:35:03

very, unfortunately, a rare occurrence, you have

1:35:05

these Aboriginal characters. And they

1:35:08

believe that this crocodile contains the spirit

1:35:10

of their people that connects them back

1:35:13

to the dreaming. And

1:35:17

the crocodile in that film, I mean,

1:35:19

there is a scene where the crocodile

1:35:21

eats a child, but primarily

1:35:23

the people that are being attacked

1:35:25

in Dark Age are these men

1:35:27

who are

1:35:30

seeking to, yeah, they just want to kill the

1:35:32

crocodile. It's that whole thing of like, it always

1:35:34

used to anger me when like, if

1:35:37

there was a shark attack, there was this whole thing

1:35:39

of like, well, we've got to go out and kill

1:35:41

the shark. Yeah, there's a crocodile attack,

1:35:43

we've got to go out and kill the

1:35:45

crocodile. And Dark Age is really, it's

1:35:48

a really great film, because it

1:35:50

actually in that film,

1:35:54

there is, they seek like the main character

1:35:56

played by John Jarrett, but

1:35:58

he's in consultation with the with the Aboriginal

1:36:01

people of this area who

1:36:03

say to him, this is

1:36:06

an ancient creature that's probably

1:36:08

been here since before colonization

1:36:10

invasion has happened. And

1:36:12

they try and kill it,

1:36:16

they want to move it

1:36:18

and return it to its

1:36:21

original place, this Billabong. And

1:36:23

so they actually, and like

1:36:25

one of the Aboriginal characters

1:36:27

says that this coconut has

1:36:30

right to exist. And so

1:36:32

it's this really interesting kind of counterpoint,

1:36:34

like with Razorback, you have this introduced

1:36:36

species that is kind of

1:36:38

completely unsympathetic and monstrous. And

1:36:41

with Dark Age, you've got this

1:36:43

acknowledgement that these are species that

1:36:45

predate colonization and that they

1:36:47

have a right to be here. And

1:36:50

then it's not just about the rampaging

1:36:52

animal having to be conquered and

1:36:55

to restore order. Yeah, so

1:36:57

it's just, definitely I recommend Dark Age

1:36:59

if anyone has it seeded.

1:37:02

Yeah, I just find that in my

1:37:04

mind, these two films, they

1:37:06

came out with a few years of each

1:37:08

other. And it's just this interesting kind of

1:37:10

counterpoint in terms of the animal and what

1:37:13

they represent. Love that. That's I mean, all

1:37:15

that stuff is really interesting. I think where

1:37:17

the film is completely bonkers is in its

1:37:19

human characters, right? And the way in which

1:37:21

it's a kind of sprawling narrative, it's almost

1:37:24

kind of episodic, the way we kind of

1:37:26

hop through this story via different characters, right?

1:37:28

You mentioned in your setup that this film

1:37:30

kind of begins with the character of Jake

1:37:32

Cullen, right? And you know, his grandson

1:37:35

is killed by the boar, and he goes

1:37:37

to trial for it. And I thought, okay,

1:37:39

this is where this story is going, right?

1:37:41

This is what this film is going to

1:37:43

be about. And like you say, it kind

1:37:45

of, there are mirrors of the Lindy Chamberlain

1:37:48

case, of course, which was an event that

1:37:50

happened in 1980 when a woman said that

1:37:52

dingoes ate her baby, right? And she went

1:37:54

on trial for it, you know, and I

1:37:57

thought that was the story that it was going

1:37:59

to be telling, but... it wasn't that at all.

1:38:01

It kind of abandons that, you know, partway into

1:38:03

the first act of the film, and then it

1:38:05

becomes about this character of Beth, of course, and

1:38:07

then she's killed off kind of midway through, and

1:38:10

then it actually becomes about her partner, Carl. Then

1:38:13

it kind of comes back to Jake Cullen at

1:38:15

the end, but you've also got that character of

1:38:17

Sarah, and the plot just kind of like meanders

1:38:19

around, doesn't it? How did you find that, the

1:38:21

kind of structure of this film? Yeah, you could

1:38:23

kind of say it's a bit kind of like

1:38:26

Janet Leigh in Psycho, where you think, oh, yeah,

1:38:28

Beth is, we're going to be following Beth, and

1:38:30

then suddenly she's gone, and then other people come

1:38:32

in, and they're trying to find out what happened

1:38:34

to her. And I

1:38:37

think one of the things, interesting

1:38:40

aspects of the film is what it's kind

1:38:42

of saying about masculinity, and how, especially

1:38:45

with the character of Carl, and how you

1:38:47

first see him in the film, he's in

1:38:49

the kitchen, making

1:38:52

Beth's dinner, and she

1:38:54

comes home from work. So this

1:38:57

reversal, I guess, of the gender roles and

1:39:00

what you would normally see in marriage,

1:39:03

yeah, traditional marriage. And he also

1:39:05

has that funny apron, like he's

1:39:08

got, his apron has like a

1:39:10

silhouette of like wearing lingerie and

1:39:13

stockings. And so he's

1:39:15

completely feminized from the outset.

1:39:18

Yeah, and then he's kind of opposite to

1:39:21

the men of the town. You know,

1:39:24

he's foreign, he's got an

1:39:26

American accent, although one point he says he's

1:39:28

Canadian, but I wonder if he says he's

1:39:30

Canadian, like if he's just lying,

1:39:32

I think he's lying at that point. I think

1:39:35

so. I think he's making up a kind of

1:39:37

fake persona for himself almost, isn't he, at that

1:39:39

point? Yeah. And then, and like,

1:39:41

and there's the kangaroo hunt that he goes

1:39:44

on with Benny and Dicco, which recalls, I

1:39:46

think, Wake and Fright, certainly. And yeah,

1:39:48

he's out of place there. He

1:39:50

can't he's not he's, he's not

1:39:52

up to the task or that he he

1:39:54

when he has to kill the kangaroo because it's suffering.

1:39:56

He you can see that he's a very good person.

1:39:59

And I think that's a good see that he really,

1:40:01

it's too much for him. And he's yeah, and

1:40:04

so they see that as I guess him not

1:40:06

being man enough, and

1:40:08

they kind of leave him behind. And

1:40:11

yeah, he's often like Sarah is also really

1:40:14

interesting and that she kind of comes in and she's

1:40:16

kind of rescuing and she's, and

1:40:18

she I guess she's the one that kind of tells

1:40:20

him about you know, what's happening in the area. So

1:40:23

this is interesting kind of relationship.

1:40:25

But yeah, you're right. It's episodic. It's like

1:40:27

this characters introduced and then suddenly they're gone

1:40:29

and then this one and now we've got

1:40:32

this person here and all Jake's back again.

1:40:34

Yes. Yeah, you would think that it would

1:40:36

be like kind of Jake's story. But

1:40:39

he's kind of sidelined and then he comes

1:40:41

back in and then he sort of bookends

1:40:44

it almost doesn't he? Yeah, yeah, it's really

1:40:46

interesting. And in some ways actually maybe the

1:40:48

most consistent characters across the whole film are

1:40:51

Benny and Dicco, right? Like really

1:40:53

kind of horrible monstrous

1:40:55

grotesque characters, right? What do you think

1:40:58

of these two and the way they're

1:41:00

played and portrayed? Oh, they're

1:41:02

so repulsive and vile and

1:41:04

disgusting. And

1:41:07

yeah, so very different to Long Weekend.

1:41:09

They are not fully fleshed out through

1:41:11

dimensional characters. They are just these total

1:41:14

kind of amped up characters,

1:41:17

you know, played

1:41:19

by Chris Haywood and David Argue. And so

1:41:21

yeah, I guess you've got Carl and Sarah

1:41:23

who were kind of a bit more grounded,

1:41:25

but they're just reacting to all these crazy

1:41:27

people and craziness that's around them. But

1:41:30

what you find with Benny and Dicco is they're

1:41:32

just so they're like rotting teeth

1:41:34

and pimples. They're just so disgusting. And

1:41:36

they're always in these disgusting abject spaces.

1:41:38

Like their home, I think almost seems

1:41:41

to be almost like a pit underground.

1:41:43

I think they say at one point,

1:41:45

there's no shower. Like, yeah, of course

1:41:47

there's no shower. And there's

1:41:50

rats and guts. Yeah. And rancid

1:41:52

food. And so and when

1:41:54

then yeah, and there's also the factory, which

1:41:56

is also this kind of abject

1:41:58

kind of space. It kind of reminded me

1:42:00

of production design

1:42:03

in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Yeah,

1:42:05

yeah, yeah. Where it's

1:42:08

very different to the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

1:42:11

where suddenly there's all these subterranean

1:42:13

parts and it all becomes very

1:42:15

not realistic. And yeah,

1:42:18

and these things about Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

1:42:20

that's another kind of male-dominated family. Yeah,

1:42:23

very similar, very similar tonally, I

1:42:25

think, as well. And the kind

1:42:27

of unhinged characters, I thought

1:42:29

of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and 2, actually, that

1:42:32

kind of mania of the second one.

1:42:34

I feel like tonally that is going

1:42:36

for something like that in this movie.

1:42:38

And it's also this idea that in a lot of

1:42:41

horror, this kind of

1:42:43

abjectness, this kind of leaky dank

1:42:46

subterranean, it's usually linked to femininity.

1:42:48

You have this whole idea like

1:42:50

Barbara Creed's The Monstress Feminine. Yet

1:42:54

in this film, it's kind

1:42:56

of like this abjectness is linked to

1:42:58

masculinity. It's

1:43:00

just an interesting counterpoint to what

1:43:02

you normally, I guess, maybe get

1:43:05

in a lot of horror films.

1:43:07

Yeah, but they're just so gross.

1:43:09

Yeah. Give you the ick. Yes. Hello,

1:43:13

now comes the part of the episode where we

1:43:16

thank our next 30 Kickstarter backers

1:43:18

for helping us to create Final

1:43:20

Cut, the official evolution of horror

1:43:22

card game. Final Cut is coming.

1:43:25

It is going to be on

1:43:27

sale on our website on July

1:43:30

1st, that is, in the next couple of days.

1:43:32

So I would urge everybody to be

1:43:34

sat in front of their computer on July 1st

1:43:36

at around 7 p.m. UK

1:43:38

time, because that is when we're going to be

1:43:40

launching the official evolution of horror store,

1:43:43

and we will be selling copies of

1:43:45

Final Cut for anybody who missed out

1:43:47

on backing us on Kickstarter. So just

1:43:49

head to evolution of horror.com/shop on the

1:43:52

1st of July at 7 p.m. UK

1:43:56

time. But for now, I'm going to thank our

1:43:58

next 30 Kickstarter. Backers

1:44:00

a big thank you to Alicia

1:44:02

Waller, Michael Gardner, Anna Leslie Wood,

1:44:05

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Brown, Craig Pierce, Tracey A. Fullbrook,

1:44:09

Christopher Heiser, Anna Bogutskaya, Lee Cassie,

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1:44:14

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Munzer, thanks dad, Jessica, BeerDoll, Faye,

1:44:19

Mike, Ali B, Jay Dem, Ali,

1:44:21

Sam, Julie and Anna Vilcek. A

1:44:23

huge thank you to all of

1:44:26

those people for supporting us on

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Kickstarter. And one more time, if

1:44:30

you want to grab your copy

1:44:33

of Final Cut to the official

1:44:35

Evolution of Horror card game, then

1:44:37

get yourself to our online store

1:44:40

on the 1st of July. That's

1:44:42

evolutionofhorror.com/shop. Lindsay,

1:44:45

let's talk a little bit about the horror

1:44:47

itself in Razorback. We've talked about, you know,

1:44:49

how beautiful this film looks, how stylish it

1:44:51

is, we've talked about the characters, what about

1:44:54

the actual bore and those sequences in which

1:44:56

it attacks people. How effective

1:44:58

do you find the horror in this film?

1:45:00

I mean, I love the opening scene. I

1:45:02

think that just is a great kind of

1:45:05

cold open to take you into it. And

1:45:07

I love there's that scene where again, has

1:45:09

no bearing on the plot. But there's just

1:45:11

this guy at home watching TV. And he's

1:45:13

watching Don Lane, who was this late night

1:45:16

host. He was an American guy, but he

1:45:18

came to Australia and he did this late

1:45:20

night talk show. In

1:45:22

fact, a lot of people say that David

1:45:25

Dasmelchien, I'm saying his character in

1:45:28

late night with the devil, because

1:45:30

that's made by Australian filmmakers that

1:45:32

his character and that's maybe a

1:45:34

bit Don Lane-ish. But

1:45:37

yeah, so you got this guy just

1:45:39

sitting at home. And he's kind of

1:45:41

I don't know, Shaq. And he's

1:45:43

watching TV. And then the Razorback is

1:45:45

there. And it just kind of gets

1:45:47

caught on this chain net or whatever.

1:45:49

And then you just see like, and

1:45:52

just the Razorback, I guess to show

1:45:54

how huge and monstrously strong the

1:45:56

Razorback is, but it just kind of keeps

1:45:58

moving forward. and just tears the front of

1:46:00

the guy's house off. Oh my god. And

1:46:03

I just love that. There's

1:46:05

no reason for that soon to be there, but it's just

1:46:07

really funny and cool. I

1:46:11

think towards the end when you start to

1:46:13

see the razorback more, it does look a

1:46:15

bit more dodgy. Yeah. But

1:46:19

yeah, it's just so over the top

1:46:21

that maybe you

1:46:23

can possibly forgive the

1:46:26

fakeness because it is it's

1:46:29

not striving to be a gritty and

1:46:31

realist take on the outfit or anything. Absolutely.

1:46:34

It's almost like some sort of weird

1:46:37

80s fantasy film or something, isn't it?

1:46:39

It's in the visuals and the

1:46:42

hallucinating when he's walking through the outback by

1:46:44

himself and everything. Like I love all of

1:46:46

that. I do love the moment when Beth

1:46:48

gets attacked in the car by the razorback

1:46:50

as well, and it kind of just like

1:46:52

smashes through the car window. I

1:46:54

think that's kind of fun. And I love that for the most part,

1:46:56

at least in the first act, it's the

1:46:59

Jaws style. It's the point of

1:47:01

view camera shots like smashing through

1:47:03

things as opposed to us actually

1:47:05

seeing the animatronic or whatever

1:47:07

it is, puppet animal attack

1:47:10

people. So I think again, the visuals

1:47:13

kind of make up for occasionally maybe

1:47:15

the slight clunkiness of the boar itself. Yeah.

1:47:17

I mean, it does kind of towards the end

1:47:19

become the big showdown between the the

1:47:27

monster is destroyed and order is restored.

1:47:29

So you get all that kind of

1:47:32

neat, tied up, happy ending. Yeah,

1:47:35

so it's

1:47:37

not doing anything really innovative in

1:47:40

that sense. No, no, absolutely.

1:47:43

How do you find that again, like I

1:47:45

think it's interesting how this movie made a

1:47:47

few years after Long Weekend, but I think

1:47:49

it looks more dated than Long Weekend. Maybe

1:47:51

that's because of the visuals like that. We're

1:47:54

in the mid 80s now and it feels kind of 80s to

1:47:56

me. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean,

1:47:58

I guess maybe it is because... I was also

1:48:00

that it just doesn't have the depth that

1:48:03

Long Weekend has. Yeah. It is just

1:48:05

going on its

1:48:08

visual style, which I

1:48:10

guess was ahead of its time maybe

1:48:12

at that time, but then it became

1:48:14

kind of the norm. Yeah. And

1:48:18

certainly, I guess, we can be dated

1:48:20

back to the 80s now. But

1:48:23

then I think like, yeah, I guess

1:48:25

the raiseback looks a bit fake, but the

1:48:27

alternative now, what it would be, CGI, I

1:48:29

think that would be even worse. Yeah, it's

1:48:31

really, yeah, I agree. And I think it's

1:48:33

a joy to watch this film. Like, I

1:48:36

think it reminds me of why this subgenre

1:48:38

generally is so popular, I think, like the

1:48:40

kind of animal attack movies have a certain

1:48:42