Number 96

1974

Johnny's comments:

Number 96 was a notorious TV soap opera set in an apartment block which began 50 years ago this week and had well over 1000 episodes and makes today's soap operas look pretty soft. With plenty of shocks and sexy stuff, plus nudity, it's very of its time but it's good silly fun and full of high camp. Anyway at the height of its popularity in 1974, the producers decided to make a movie to show in cinemas, something that wasn't unusual at the time as quite a few Australian TV shows made cinema-released movies. It was a huge hit. Well, so says plenty who'd know better than me.

Basically it's extended plots which play out over the course of a two-hour movie, most of which are pretty silly. There's the woman who comes back to Number 96 after being driven crazy by living in it, only to find herself having nightmares which turn out to be caused by her husband drugging her, then trying to hypnotise her into jumping off the balcony so that he can run off with a girl he met on holiday in Bali. In the meantime, his fling is sleeping with the landlord, which seems perfectly fine at first but it turns out she's only doing to keep up appearances. Then there's the couple having their 40th wedding anniversary but it turns out that when they look at their wedding certificate, someone buggered it up so the wife is actually married to the witness. They get in contact with the witness to fix the problem but it turns out he's a methylated spirits-drinking derelict who's also horny for her (this is in no way subtle). There's other stories like the men building a sauna in the building and it's all very soap opera and silly, and is definitely "fans only" stuff. But that's not to say it's not highly watchable. There's some stupidly funny scenes in the movie, which was a surprise. It also begins with a rape scene which turns out to be a dream and can only be described as a completely bizarre way to start a movie.

There's a bit of nudity in the movie, mostly brief stuff from Elaine Lee, who on the commentary said she got paid an extra $300 to do. Not quite Halle Berry in Swordfish (pretty sure that was debunked). Also Rebecca Gilling has a number of nude scenes including full frontal nudity which I'm not sure happened on the TV show (I'm probably wrong about that). Either this or Stone was her first ever role and her character only ever appears in the movie.

Umbrella Entertainment released this movie on DVD plus a bunch of prominent episodes on DVD and I've had a look through all of them and will hopefully get around to releasing them soon. There's a bit of nudity throughout although it looks like there were times when the show decided to rely on plot. Boo...

Rebecca Gilling and Elaine Lee film clips (collages below)

Gilling

Lee