"Underbelly: Razor"
s4, e9
Anna McGahan (sample below)
I haven't been to the dusty VHS vault for a few
months so a request has got me to reopen it and pick out a couple of
pretty much forgotten movies.
As with all VHS works, the quality varies, The Empty
Beach came out alright, but The Surfer is pretty poor. I wouldn't have
capped it if there was a chance of a DVD release.
The Surfer
1986
Based in
Brisbane and Queensland,
The Surfer is a noir thriller from the director of
that classic Hostage: The Christine Maresch Story.
Surfer Sam Barlow (Gary Day) is thrust into a
world he wants nothing to do with. Invited to a friend's party, he is
approached by a woman who gives him a note to give to his friend. His
friend reacts immediately to the note and goes out to a park with Sam. The
friend is then murdered by a couple of Vietnamese men. Sam attempts to
stop them, but they get away. For
the sake of the murdered man's wife (Kris McQuade), all
Sam wants to do now is find out why this happened and to identify the
woman who gave him the note. This leads him to a casino owned by hot-shot
Hagan (Rod Mullinar) who becomes very concerned with Sam taking an
interest in his dealings. This leads Sam to the woman who gave him a note,
Gina (Gosia Dobrowolska, gorgeous as ever). When Hagan puts two and two
together, he gets bent cop Calhoun (Tony Barry) on the trail to kill them
both. Sam and Gina go on the run. When Sam accidentally impales Calhoun
when they tussle, Hagan brings in the big guns to kill them and thus to
stop Gina from revealing his nefarious plans.
Totally forgotten film that is an absolute little
gem that only fails when the plot is fully unveiled to reveal something
utterly preposterous. It lays some great groundwork before then. Day is
very good as a man well and truly out of his depth and Dobrowolska is as
sexy as ever. Better known for her various Paul Cox roles, she been in a
sort of semi-retirement from acting, so it was great to see her recently
in an episode of East West 101 still looking amazing after all these
years.
It's totally forgotten and I'd
never heard of it until just recently and didn't even know what it was
about until I watched it.
Shame this film will never be seen again, but I'm glad I picked it out on
a whim. A pleasant surprise indeed.
Gosia Dobrolowska (collages below)
The Empty Beach
1985
The Empty Beach, a noir thriller set along the
glamourous Sydney Harbour, is about Cliff Hardy (Bryan Brown, who
else...), a private eye who has been hired by lonely widow Marion Singer
(Belinda Giblin) to find out what happened to her husband, who's been dead
for two years. A newly arrived note suggests he is very much alive. It
seems John Singer is a man who pissed off a lot of the underworld. A
journalist named Brian Henneberry (Nick Tate), had been looking into
Singer's dealings before he died. And he had dealings with a shady
character called MacLeary (Ray Barrett). Also, a very rich powerful man
named Fred Ward had dealings with Singer. When Henneberry does some
digging into Singer, he has his throat cut while surfing as Hardy is
watching. The police, including a detective Parker (John Wood), want to
know who killed Henneberry, but Hardy is holding back and wants to run his
own investigation, which the police give him 72 hours to get what he
wants. With the help of Henneberry's protege/lover Anne Winter (Anna Maria
Monticelli, with long hair!), Hardy uncovers some incredibly shonky
dealings and a mystery that should've stayed unsolved, well at least make
a scintilla of sense
Yeah, this film, an early production for uber TV
producer John Edwards, is utterly preposterous and I can't make head or
tail of it. This film so wants to emulate that sleazy, sweaty, ugly noir
of the 40s and 50s, but is an absolute mess. Bryan Brown is so good here,
he saves the film from disappearing up it's own arse by giving his a
highly charismatic performance, but the plot is hard to make sense and the
ending is enough to pull out a gun and shot whoever started the ball
rolling.
Not a bad film as it has interesting and quite
creepy touches (the old folk's home scene is particularly memorable), but
too full of it's own cleverness to ever be a great film. Sometimes the
simpler the plot the better the film is, look at The Surfer above.
Peggy Wallach (sample below)
Simone Taylor (sample below)
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