Australia's Rich and Revolting Criminal History

You wouldn't know it from watching bland Aussie movies such as Australia or The Man From Snowy River, but the Land Down Under has a rich and gloriously revolting history of true crime.

If you've seen the recent Animal Kingdom, The Boys, Snowtown, or the Blue Murder miniseries, you'll have some sense of the convict colony's lurid past and present. If any of the above have moistened your appetite for Aussie vice, I suggest you line up for these unbelievably lurid, stark, and graphic accounts of dozens of hideous, fascinating crimes.

 

Originally produced for network TV and the Aussie equivalent of America's Investigation ID, and hosted by a well known ex-'60 Minutes' journalist, these recreations of crimes that shook the Land Down Under caused considerable controversy for their graphic nature and upset more than a few victim' families and friends.

Personally, I think the series is a revelation, probably the best snapshot ever of a country's history of criminal behavior. A country under the Queen, mind you!

My problem with the recent feature film Snowtown (which I did like, by the way, and have reviewed here) was that it avoided key events of the crimes themselves and neglected to address the 'Bodies in the Barrels' aspect of the case. Fortunately, CIA's (Crime Investigation Australia) take on the case (made before the Snowtown film) leaves no stone unturned and captures the lurid "thrill" of murder the killers experienced. And this is the key to the series' success.

CIA doesn't whitewash its cases or spare us the gory details. It also does an excellent job of conveying the sweet juice of vice that criminals become addicted to. It is this  approach that, I feel, offends so many people. Producer Graham McNeice and director Gary Deans are to be congratulated for delivering a balls-to-the-wall true crime series that brutally injects us into frightening macro worlds of terror, lust, greed, racism, misogyny, and bigotry.  This is awfully scary stuff. 

Snowtown isn't the only story recently given both the CIA and feature treatment. The above disk contains a crime known in Australia as 'The Anita Cobby Murder'. Cobby was taken from a train station and brutally raped and murdered by three brothers. This episode can be watched in conjunction with Rowan Woods' powerful The Boys as, narratively, it is a sequel. The events of The Boys (one of the greatest crime dramas ever made) occur prior to the rape of Cobby. Woods' film ends with the brothers watching Cobby from their car. 

 

 

There is no reason for any horror, drama, or true crime fan to not have these in his or her collection. They are the duck's guts! For reasons unfathomable to me, the DVD's are particularly difficult to acquire and appear to have had very limited pressings in Australia. Only recently did I finally get my hands on the five disks comprising Volume I; there are three volumes so far.  

Ebay is a good place to start you're search for these if you're not living in Australia; even if you are living Australia, you'll have a tough time finding the first two volumes in stores. On a recent trip, I turned up empty-handed, but I did manage to pick up the just-released third volume.    

I can not overstate the value of this series to anybody interested in the human mind or curious about a side of the Australian psyche not often seen beyond its shores.

Australians do have a peculiar relationship with their criminals. Having virtually canonized bushranger killer 'Ned Kelly' in a series of films and a couple of TV manifestations, the public have recently lined up at pubs to hear the real Chopper Read ruminate on his life of crime. The likable Chopper, whose antics were immortalized in the film of the same name, maintains a healthy profile in Melbourne, and can be seen judging film festivals or making guest appearances at art openings. 

 

 

The Crime Investigation Australia series is bloody pulp perfection. 

Get a big motherfucking load of it. 

These discs are PAL, so you'll need a multi-system DVD player to view them.

If you haven't already invested in a multi-zone Blu-Ray and DVD player,

you're crazier than Mark David Chapman.

Trailer for My New Feature 'FERTISLE'

Blog posts have been spotty this year due to the fact that I've been working on two features and an epic documentary.

All three are finally taking shape as tangible entities and here is the trailer for the first one, Fertisle.

A man at war with himself, washed up on a strange South Pacific island, becomes its unwanted guest, and the target of a native woman who wants nothing but to be left alone.

The film is the first feature of US-, Japan-, and Australia-based production company, Cinenature, an outfit specializing in strong genre material for the international market.

My cinematic obsessions -- male/female relationships, dolls, islands, the ocean, the grotesque, and the beautiful -- are given full voice here.

 

Snowtown

Australia has distinguished itself recently recently with a handful of dramas based on true crime stories; Animal Kingdom, one of the best,  did a US tour of duty, and garnered an Oscar nomination for Aussie actress Jackie Weaver. This week, Snowtown, based on the notorious Bodies in the Barrels story, hits theaters; it's another worthy addition to a genre that is gaining traction with filmmakers, audiences, and critics Down Under.

I'm very familiar with the 'Snowtown' story, so I needed zero introduction or explanation of the narrative gaps the film doesn't address. International audiences not familiar with the story may have trouble with the film's broader context because director Justin Kurzel does little to paint it, let alone explain the title (it's the name of the town where the film's victims were entombed in barrels).

Tonally, Snowtown has more in common with Rowen Woods' The Boys, a superior work, than Animal Kingdom. A low budget production, it focuses on a small cast of characters through the eyes of Jamie (Lucas Pittaway),  an impressionable, rudderless young man whose world is turned upside down by a man, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), who appears to offer a solution to the shithole that is his life. Unfortunately for Jamie, Bunting's solutions to his and a slew of local "problems" (including homosexuality) involve murder, betrayal, dismemberment, rape, torture, and assorted perversions -- committed under the pretext of vigilantism. Like the hero of Kinatay (reviewed in previous blog), Jamie finds himself spiralling helplessly downwards into an abyss of utter madness -- in this case, a strange kind of suburban madness, portrayed with chilling realism by all concerned -- under the tutelage of older adults who come bearing gifts of mature guidance.

The film opens with a wrong-headed voiceover that reeks of post-production jitters. Thankfully, this redundant gimmick is jettisoned lickety-split, allowing director Kurzel to get on with business. From the opening frames to the closing ones, the film's trance-like sound design plays a major role in establishing the grim, relentless tone. Credit Jez Kurzel with the hypnotic score and Frank Lipson with the crack sound design.

Though based on a true story, the story on screen doesn't feel like anything particularly new or original because key details of its origin story are ignored or glossed over. It's as if the filmmakers were too afraid to tick off certain plot details out of fear that they would offend relatives of the victims. 'Snowtown' has forever been associated with The Bodies in the Barrels, but you wouldn't know it here. At some juncture, the killers were forced to move their victims' bodies from one location to another. That second location was a bank vault. The bodies were stuffed into large, plastic barrels and left there. The crimes became public when the barrels surrendered their ghastly cargo. In Snowtown, we see barrels in the background of a handful of scenes, but anybody unfamiliar with the story would have no inkling of their significance.

As horror, this film delivers the goods. We're treated to homosexual rape, hints of pedophilia, strangulation, torture, and good, old-fashioned animal killing. The film is intense, with leads Pittaway (a natural first-timer) and Henshall (stunningly good!) confidently carrying heavy dramatic loads on their shoulders. Henshall's bigoted, corrupting patriarch is worth the price of admission alone. What a piece of work he is!

Like The Boys, Animal Kingdom, Blue Murder (the best crime drama ever produced in Australia), and the little seen Shame (just released on DVD Down Under), Snowtown's milieu is a dark, disturbing, horribly homophobic and racist underbelly of Aussie culture that is the product of nobody's imagination. An an Australian who has traveled broadly within the country, I can vouch for the chilling reality on display in these movies. It mightn't be pretty, but it's a side of Australia that is alive, well, and busy reproducing like vermin.

Just as the film begins with a wrong-headed choice, it ends with a surprising whimper. For mine, it totally cops out by not depicting the ultimate fate of the killers -- or at least how they were busted. Instead, it offers five or six sentences of explanation to pick up the slack it leaves us. Why describe in writing what should have been described on screen? For Australians who know the story, this decision to avoid a big bang ending isn't quite so tragic because the story is familiar. For those unfamiliar with the story, it will probably be a letdown.

Still, this is a film that is well worth chasing down and experiencing. One hundred plus minutes inside a world as depraved and morally bankrupt as this is the kind of  "entertainment"  that rattles you without a reach-around.  Cruel, yes, but compelling, nonetheless, for adventurous punters.

***

Interestingly, the 'Snowtown' story has already been vividly and more graphically depicted in the amazing and intense 'Crime Investigation Australia' series, a brutal TV anthology of lurid docudramas that explode any myth that Australia is all about dancing transvestites, yahoos fighting crocodiles, and boxing kangaroos. . 

Available on video in Australia, this series (and this episode) are highly, highly recommended; the 'Snowtown' entry represents a more exploitative, linear take on the story, hitting every grisly and grotesque punchline in its presentation of the crimes.

Other recommended crime features and TV from the proud penal colony:

The Boys

Blue Murder

Shame

Police Crop

Chopper

Scales of Justice

Cannibals, Cultural Poofterism, and Shocking Asians

On a recent shoot in Australia I picked up a copy of Cannibal Holocaust (Siren Visual). I'm a bit of a completist where this film is concerned, so it made sense to pick up a version from my mother country. In the past, it was impossible to acquire a legit, uncut DVD or VHS of the film because it was banned in Australia until 2009.

The cover art, which takes a more subtle route than the American DVD, impressed me. I like the graphic treatment of the inner sleeve art, too.

Thankfully, it's now available uncut.

The passing of the film uncut represents a positive shift in film censorship in Australia (they call it "classification", but they're in denial), and leaves one troubling area of confusion for the censorship gestapo. That area is hardcore pornography and violence. Although hardcore is available for sale and rental in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory), where, ironically, Australia's lawmakers are based, it is still not legally available in any of the States. That's one issue.

But the most pressing issue is the confusion in current law arising from strict censorship guidelines which dictate that graphic depictions of sexuality are not to appear in filmed or videotaped works also depicting violence of any sort. This silly law, which is often interpreted literally, prohibits the showing of a film that features a hardcore sex scene and, for example, a scene in which a man or woman is stabbed. The stabbing need not be part of the sex scene itself.

The original intent of the law -- ushered in by cultural poofters who fear their own shadows -- was to ban films featuring graphic sexual violence, but the lazy, loose wording of the legislation has created more problems than solutions.

The recent banning of LA Zombie in Australia (see previous blog) is a typical example of this confusion. The inconsistency of its application is demonstrated by the censors' tacit approval of Lars Von Trier's AntiChrist, a film featuring hardcore sex and -- yes, you guessed it! -- VIOLENCE

Cultural Poofterism will suck the cock of Lars (a straight man), but it will not give LA Zombie's Bruce La Bruce (a gay man) a DECENT reach-around. That's very confusing. And not at all charitable.

Shocking Asia I and II (Stomp) are also old favorites of mine. When I worked as a VHS dubber in the mid-80's, I dubbed thousands of copies of both films for K-Tel Video, the Australian distributor.

Also available in the US from Synergy, the source for these releases seems to be the same old 1" masters that I threaded up onto massive Ampex tape machines.

Watching the film/s again, I discovered that I still like Shocking Asia I quite a bit and find the music just as memorable and catchy as ever.

LA Zombie's Post-Coital Raid

The home of Richard Wolstencroft, the director of MUFF (the Melbourne Underground Film Festival), was raided by police recently. Targeted was Wolstencroft's screener of LA Zombie, an audacious zombie pic from festival favorite Bruce LaBruce; the filmmaker's The Raspberry Reich was screened by MUFF several years ago. Yours truly even met the visiting filmmaker.

A couple of months ago, Wolstencroft opted to screen LA Zombie after it was banned by the Australia censorship gestapo. His "secret" protest screening did not attract the constabulary at the time. The tardy, post-coital timing of the raid several months later did, however, coincide with a pending election in the state of Victoria. Funny about that.

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised that Mr. Wolstencroft got raided.

Melbourne Underground Film Festival's Richard Wolstencroft

It's neither here nor there that he in particular was targeted, but the thinking behind the raid is easy to understand because I've lived on and off in Australia for some time. Where arts is concerned, Australia has a country town mentality. The divide between the government (the censors) and purveyors of art in that country is massive. It's an abyss, in fact.

Essentially, it's a symptom of gross cultural immaturity mixed with small town outrage. Blend that with government's too close relationship to the funding of the arts, and you get an arts culture that is, to put it politely, intrinsically fucked.

LaBruce's zombie pic was not screened by the larger Melbourne International Film Festival because of the banning. Brave soul Wolstencroft decided to challenge the ban with his protest screening.

It sucks oversized elephant dicks that feature films can even be banned in a country that prides itself on salt of the Earth freedom. It's a damn fucking shame of the highest order because, as far as everything else goes, Australia is the greatest country to live in in the world. It's also the best place to be when you're feeling under the weather, a great place to get a job (the economy is booming!), the locations (for filmmakers) are mouth watering, and the country's women are beautiful and eminently lickable. Australia even has a female Prime Minister (licking optional).

The colony's main problem is the lingering Old Englishness of its draconian censorship system. It has a pervasive nanny quality, a belief that decisions related to what you can and can't see or read are best left to those greater (and less corruptible) than you. The system is also dishonest and inconsistent in its decisions (Antichrist, which also features hardcore fucking, was passed uncut, while LA Zombie was "Refused Registration" (banned) . On top of that, the censors call themselves a "classification" board. Well, if they only classified films, that would be accurate, but they ban films, books, games, and magazines also. That's censorship. Even a dumb cunt with a broken abacus knows that.

This maintenance of hundred year old prudishness hovers around the country's exhibition and art business like the wet fart of Maggie Thatcher. You only have to look at some of the old white fucks running the board to understand that it really is time for them to fuck off and die and make room for a system that simply classifies movies. And I'm not just talking movies or videos of "merit", either. I'm talking about anything at all. If it's legally made, it should be available (that includes sex mixed with violence, too, Freedom Lovers!).

Making a mockery of the thinking behind the raid on Mr. Wolstencroft (the director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival) is the availability of pretty much anything and everything on the internet these days. Still, a public screening is a different fish. That's why festivals exist.

LA Zombie director Buce LaBruce

Personally, I don't blame the police for the raid. They were only doing what some pathetic little dweeb in government asked them to do. Clearly, someone got a nice little stiffy intimidating a little guy while hiding behind the Queen's petticoats. I hope they enjoyed their little power orgasm.

In parts of the US, censorship is enforced on a local basis, so the problem operates under another cloak there. Canada censors pornography it deems "dangerous", and England, though far more liberal than it once was, still snips and cuts what it finds offensive.

For as long as there are micro-dicked human beings there will be censorship. It's a tempting passer of time for the weak and insecure, and it's the easiest and laziest way for them to curry favor with society's dumb and ignorant. That's why our politicians practice it with such unbridled passion.

Message to censors: It's a fucking zombie movie for Chrissakes. Grow up and give yourselves a blowjob!

Among The Dead

I'm currently in Australia shooting a documentary for six weeks. It's turning out to be a wonderful experience. Yesterday, we passed an old cemetery that caught my attention. We're staying in the town where this cemetery is located for another couple of days.


Tonight I visited the cemetery and these are frame grabs of the footage I filmed.


I love cemeteries. I feel so at home in them. I don't know why.


I love the dead. They no longer hunger or lament.


I love their cities. They're so peaceful.


I love the way the wind strokes the long grass in the graveyard. It's cold, but it's not bitter. There's no bitterness here.


I love the smell and sensual touch of midnight. The sky is clear from here.


If the dead had working eyes, they'd see things like this.

Life hasn't gone yet, but it's fading, and glowing like an ember one last time.

The Desire to Rampage

What young boy could resist this poster? Motor Cycle Savages On The Rampage, for Chrissakes?

At six year's of age, I'm not sure what kind of rampage I was imagining, but it was enough to inspire this crazy hobby of collecting newspaper ad mats. I haven't stopped since.

The pull of imagery like this is difficult to explain. More than anything, I wanted to ride with these guys and cause mayhem. My experience riding anything at that age was on a tricycle that could barely rampage through a glass factory, let alone Billy Jack's home town, but my will was strong.

My efforts to get my parents to take me to this drive-in classic ("An early birthday present, Mum?!") backfired terribly. I was expected to feel grateful that they took me to see 'The Love Bug' instead. I was devastated and became resentful. Herbie was a shocking alternative to Hells Angel-style mayhem, a pathetic, poofterized VW Beetle who knew nothing about rampaging or savagery. Luckily, 'The Singing Nun', Herbie's support feature, started way after my usual bedtime, so I managed to avoid that by sleeping on the back seat while dreaming of chrome and hot leather.

But I never did get over the fact that, as the poster exclaimed, "the film shocked 25 million Americans", but it never got to shock me.

For years afterward, I'd stare at my 'Born Losers' ad mat and plot a terrible revenge on my parents. They never did understand how a six year old could harbor a desire to "rampage" with a bunch of long-haired larrikins on two wheels.

Someone who did understand that desire was George Miller, the director of 'Mad Max'. Take a look at 'Born Losers', will you?, and then stick 'Mad Max' in your DVD player. They're almost celluloid cousins. One thing I know for sure: While I was having Herbie's nonsense forced down my throat and making do with posters of films I wasn't allowed to see, George was sitting at the drive-in watching Billy Jack fight a bunch of Cycle Savages and hatching a homegrown version of his own. Six year old's get no respect, and they never will.