Hi, everyone. Moriarty here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

When I woke up on Sunday, my first inclination was just to roll over and go back to sleep and totally blow off Australian Night. I felt even worse than I had the night before. But I was curious to see what motivated Quentin to program a night like this one, so I forced myself out of bed and downstairs and got something to eat, determined to get myself ready for the festival.

That reminds me... I haven’t properly thanked the friends who are hosting me while I’m in town for the festival. Aaron and Kaela are great people, and they’ve gone out of their way to make me comfortable while I’m here. They’re both attending the festival with me, and during the off-hours, we’ve been looking around Austin at available houses. I’m strongly considering a move here because I don’t feel like raising Toshi in Los Angeles.

Because I was dragging ass so severely, we left late for the Drafthouse, which meant we didn’t have time for dinner ahead of time. We ended up getting there just in time for the start of the evening, which was earlier than normal with the first film set to start at 5:00 in the afternoon. After the now-familiar Alamo trailer ring, QT hopped back up onstage, this time wearing a Richard Pryor as Mudbone t-shirt that I actively covet. He talked about how he wanted to do a kid’s show matinee this year but couldn’t quite pull his shit together in time. Instead, he scheduled this early show as a way to kick off the evening and sort of double as the kid’s matinee. I’ve never seen BMX BANDITS despite it being a long-time staple on various cable movie channels, so I figure this’ll be interesting.

Quentin immediately gets the night off to a good start by calling this the Australian GOONIES, then saying how much he doesn’t like GOONIES. He was roundly heckled by the audience, led by Grande Rojo himself. I’ve been on the record about this one for years, so I don’t think I’m shaking anyone’s world when I say that GOONIES is one of those nostalgia films. If it hit you at the right age (either chronological or emotional), then you probably love it and defend it rabidly. If you were too old for it when it came out, then no one’s going to convince you that it’s anything more than a noisy, labored, vaguely obnoxious kid’s movie. Count me in on that second group. Quentin finished his quick introduction by talking about how rough the bad guys are at the start of the film, which surprised him, and how much he likes the work of the director, Brian Trenchard-Smith, and then came his signature mic toss. I’m waiting for the day that mic explodes on contact with the stage, but until then, it’s always entertaining.

Tim dug deep and came up with a great appropriate trailer reel for the film. First up was a great trailer for Peter Weir’s THE LAST WAVE, one of my favorite of his movies. The film’s a total nightmare, a fever dream, and the trailer does a great job of conveying that quickly. Next up was DEAD-END DRIVE-IN, directed by Trenchard-Smith, which looks like MAD MAX set at a drive-in theater. I’ve never seen it, but Quentin was fairly bouncing off the walls at the trailer.

BMX BANDITS is not a brilliant, defining, seminal cinematic experience by any means, but it is charming and fun, and there’s a good sense of humor to the thing. It looked great, too, since Quentin’s print is full scope. It’s an adventure involving three kids... PJ (Angelo D’Angelo), Goose (James Lugton), and Judy (Nicole Kidman). They’re all crazy about BMX biking, and they want to find a way to create a BMX track where all the local kids can get together to ride in peace. To that end, they go out to try and raise some funds. They stumble across a crate of walkie-talkies that they decide to sell off to friends. What they don’t realize is that the walkie-talkies are part of a plan to rob an armored payroll truck, specifically designed to be able to interrupt and monitor the police band. The two thugs who are sent to catch them and retrieve the walkie-talkies, Whitey (David Argue) and Moustache (John Ley), are, thankfully, total goofballs.

That sets up the highlight of the film, a half-hour long chase sequence where the kids are on bikes and the bad guys are in cars and on foot. What makes the film fun is the way Trenchard-Smith packs the film with silly details like the speedboat airbrushed with CONAN on the front or the way he stages some of the chaos during the chase. The film turns into a Mentos commercial for a few minutes after the kids start making money, but it’s redeemed by the punchline, where Nicole proudly declares, “Two’s company, but three gets us talked about!” And speaking of Nicole, it appears that she’s always been about eleven feet tall with nine and a half of those feet made up of leg. I can see why QT makes the GOONIES comparison. Kids adventure movies are tough to pull off because you can’t make them too wimpy or no kid is going to think it’s cool, but you can’t make them too scary or you’re going to piss off parents. This manages the balance pretty well, and now that I’ve seen the film, I can see why it’s stayed in rotation on cable all these years.

Quentin took the stage to introduce the next film, and he told us that he bought this print specifically because of Aldo Ray. He’s a huge Aldo Ray fan, and he couldn’t help but launch into the whole history of Ray’s Hollywood career. He was discovered by George Cukor, launched into stardom right away, and then enjoyed a slow slide into alcoholism and obscurity spent in overseas b-movie hell. When Quentin was gearing up on PULP FICTION, he showed Bruce Willis some Aldo Ray films to convey the attitude he was looking for from Butch. Ray is the guy with two very distinct Hollywood firsts to his name. He was the first person ever kicked out of SAG for doing so many low-budget movies, and he was also the first major Hollywood star to appear in a porno, a film called SWEET SAVAGE. Thank god it was in a non-sex role, but still... that’s a pretty far fall from where he started. Quentin also spoke about how much he loves the use of Sydney as a location in the film.

There’s one other thing that makes this movie stand out that Quentin didn’t mention, and it strikes me as rather sad. This was the last film produced by Ealing Studios, one of the great English film companies. They didn’t last long in the grand scheme of things, but it would be hard to imagine English film history without Ealing’s contribution. They were known more for their comedies, but this film contains many of the qualities that marked their films as special during their existence.

Before the film, we saw a few more Australian trailers. HIGH ROLLING looks like a road comedy about two buddies in a stolen Corvette raising hell. I caught a glimpse of a young Judy Davis a few times, always a trip. Next up was the trailer for the film that first turned me on to Australian cinema when I was eleven, THE ROAD WARRIOR. I could have happily watched this movie right that moment for the eight billionth time, but even the trailer was enough for me to get my fix.

FOUR DESPERATE MEN is a great little thriller, shot in that creamy Ealing black and white that makes everything feel like a dream. It’s a sweaty movie, one of those films where everybody looks like they’re at the tail end of a meth bender and every emotion seems to be turned up to high. Aldo Ray plays Matt Kirk, a guy who was sentenced to a long stretch in prison for his part in planning a bank robbery. He maintained his innocence all the way through the trial, and even though the evidence against him was circumstantial at best, he was sent away. The film opens with his escape, thanks to the efforts of his brother Johnny (Neil McCallum), his old friend Bert (Victor Madden), and the obligatory new guy/hothead Luke (Carlo Gustini). Everything’s going smoothly until they get in a boat and try to get out of Sydney Harbor. They’re forced to pull in at Pinchgut Island, a small military ammunition depot right in the middle of the harbor. All they want to do is repair their boat and get on their way, but one thing leads to another, and they end up taking the caretakers of the island hostage. This leads to a tense showdown with the authorities when Matt threatens to use the artillery on the island to blow up a ship in the harbor that is packed with explosives. I love this kind of film, guys under pressure, the screws being tightened little by little over the course of the film. One by one, the guys break down as the authorities keep turning up the heat. Aldo Ray in particular is an animal in the film, and it’s hilarious how he goes from fully dressed to only wearing a wife-beater to finally running around shirtless like an ape. His relationship with his brother’s a little heartbreaking, especially at the end of the film, and everyone does a great job. Harry Watt, the director, really knows how to pour on the tension, and he really does make Sydney a character in the film. When you see the shots of empty streets after everything’s been evacuated out of fear that Matt and his gang will blow up the ship, it’s chilling.

It was an odd choice to show an episode of RIPTIDE as the next entry in the evening, but Quentin seemed pleased to have found it. He talked a bit about Ty Hardin, the star of the show, who was a contemporary of Steve McQueen’s. He starred in BRONCO, an American western series, before he left for work overseas. RIPTIDE evidently ran for a while, one of Australia’s most successful series. This particular episode co-starred Jack Thompson (who most of you would recognize as Cliegg Lars in ATTACK OF THE CLONES), which is what got Quentin’s attention in the first place. There was only one trailer before the film, contributed by our very own Quint, and it was a winner. If you’ve never seen THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE, it’s a deliciously silly Alan Arkin vehicle about a superhero who is called back to service after many years of disgrace. Christopher Lee plays the bad guy, and there are some outrageously goofy songs, and the trailer does a nice job of conveying the spirit of the thing.

The episode of RIPTIDE that we watched was called “Hagan’s World,” and having never seen another episode, I have to say... I enjoyed myself enormously. Ty Hardin plays Moss Andrews, an adventurer-for-hire who travels around in his boat sticking his nose into other people’s business. I’ve decided to change careers now. Fuck that whole writing gig. I want to be an adventurer-for-hire. And if I’m going to do it anywhere, I want to do it in Australia, because they seem to produce the most genial, well-mannered goons I’ve ever seen. Tony Ward is the bad guy in this episode, and he plays such an incredible shit that you can’t help but root against him. Even though it’s only an hour long, it does a good job of getting you invested in seeing justice done, and there’s a great satisfying punchline. If this is a good example of how entertaining the show was from week to week, it’s no wonder it was a hit.

Quentin’s final introduction of the evening was one of the most entertaining of the entire festival so far. He talked about the anxiety that comes with print collecting. When he sees things pop up on websites or in BIG REEL that he wants to buy, he’s always worried that someone’s going to outbid him. In the case of this last film, he was thrilled when he won the auction. The film’s never played in Australia, even though that’s where it was made, and it’s never even been on video there. He bought the print, happy to have it no matter what the quality turned out to be.

Imagine how surprised he was when he saw that he had purchased the Embassy Home Video master print, absolutely flawless and brand-new. He told us that he didn’t want to give much of the film away, but that it is a giant crocodile movie. He talked about how every single Australian film seems to have a car chase, no matter what the genre, like it’s a national law or something. He does a hilarious Australian accent, and he loves to do it at top volume, finding every excuse to bellow into the mic. The film was shot by Andrew Lesnie. Yes... that Andrew Lesnie. He talked a bit about FAIR GAME, another film shot by Lesnie, which sounds like some pretty wild exploitation fare. He talked about how you can break down Australian films into categories based on what beer they drink in the films. In this case, DARK AGE is a XXXX film, which is the absolute piss of Australia, the favorite beer of the yobbos.

Finally, he spoke about how much he loves John Jarratt, the star of the film. Jarratt had a strong start to his career, appearing in films like PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH, but in recent years, he’s basically done a total fade from the film scene. He’s been the host of “Better Homes And Gardens,” a handyman show. When Quentin went to Australia for the premiere of KILL BILL, he was giving a press conference and was asked who his favorite Australian actor was. He answered “John Jarratt” without hesitation, which confused most of the assembled press. The next day, there were headlines all over the country reading “HANDYMAN JARRATT HAS A HANDY FAN IN TARANTINO.” The punchline to the whole story is that Jarratt’s sudden spike in visibility thanks to that headline made it possible for him to win the role in WOLF CREEK that is about to launch him back to international awareness. Such is the power of Tarantino. He doesn’t even have to direct someone to give them their comeback.

Right before we started the film, Tim League popped up to plug the upcoming Fantastic Fest, which Harry is one of the programmers for. It’s Austin’s attempt to start a major American genre festival, and WOLF CREEK will be playing there in October. So far, the line-up they’ve put together is pretty great, and if you’re interested, passes are on sale now.

We got a couple of quick trailers, neither one of which appeared to have anything to do with Australia. THE MUTHERS is a ‘70's film that manages to mix chixploitation, blaxploitation, and modern-day-piracy, and with Jayne Kennedy running around, there’s plenty of great eye candy to enjoy. SPACE AMOEBA is a Toho giant monster movie from director Ishiro Honda, so you know it’s got to be good.

DARK AGE is basically an Australian riff on JAWS, but it’s enormously confident, and there are enough original notes struck along the way that you can’t just dismiss this as a ripoff. As much as I admire ALLIGATOR, this film owns that one. Part of it is because of how beautiful Andrew Lesnie makes Australia look. Part of it is because director Arch Nicholson really knows how to build suspense. And then a big part of it is because of the great cast. John Jarratt plays Steve, a ranger who believes in protecting the indigenous crocodile population. His attitude doesn’t make him terribly popular with either his bosses or with the local poachers, and even the aborigines aren’t sure they trust him. When an ususally large crocodile shows up and starts eating people, Steve doesn’t see any choice but to kill it, but the aborigines tell him that it’s special, spiritually connected to their tribe in a way that no white man can understand. The attacks by the crocodile are vicious and frightening, and there’s one scene in particular where it eats a little boy that is shocking because it doesn’t play by the rules we’re used to from Hollywood. What’s even cooler is the way the film takes a crazy left turn in the last act and becomes something closer to FREE WILLY than to a monster movie. Burnham Burnham and David Gulpilil both make strong appearances, familiar aboriginal actors who give the film an authentic voice. Nikki Coghill makes nice eye candy as Jarratt’s love interest, and all the human bad guys are memorably etched as well. This is the exact kind of film that I come to QT Fest for, something I never would have sought out otherwise. It’s a real gem.

I managed to make it through the evening relatively intact, but as soon as I got back to my bed, I loaded up on the Nyquil and drifted off to a long night of cartoon pharmaceutical dreams. The morning rolled around too soon, and I woke up with my lungs completely full of fluid. I spent the morning working on articles and screenplay pages, and then headed out to Freebird’s for a monster burrito before the evening got started.

Documentary night is another new theme night for QT Fest, and as much as I love Kung-Fu Night or Spaghetti Western Night, it is nice to see Quentin mix it up a bit. Quentin seemed pleased as he took the stage, talking about how the ‘70s seemed to be overstuffed with low-budget wilderness films aimed at kids. I remember all of them. They were the types of films that your grandparents could feel good about taking you to see. Some of them were straight-up documentaries, while others tried to graft a plot onto the nature photography. I’m sure I suffered through all the ADVENTURES OF THE WILDERNESS FAMILY films at least once in the theater. They were sold like exploitation films, but aimed at kids. They would carpet bomb all the local afternoon TV shows with ads for the film, driving kids into a frenzy no matter how crappy the film ended up being. Quentin never actually saw the first film when it played in the ‘70s, but the commercials stuck in his head forever, and he did his impression of the commercial for us. When he saw the print show up for sale, he bought it blind, then took a year and a half to finally watch it. The film wasn’t what he expected at all, but he liked it enough to make it the first film of the evening.

The trailers all tied into the film in sneaky ways. NIKKI, WILD DOG OF THE NORTH is one of those Disney nature adventure films, and WOLFEN, the horror film, was directed by Michael Wadleigh, best known for his documentary WOODSTOCK. PROPHECY and PHASE IV are both “nature gone wild” movies, and the trailers were appropriately creepy.

CRY OF THE WILD is basically a one-man show. Bill Mason was a photographer who wanted to photograph wolves in their natural habitat in Northern Canada, and he spent three years on a quest to get footage of a wolf pack killing a caribou. He marks his success in little victories along the way, things like the building of an igloo or spotting a fresh kill or finding some tracks on the ground. He comes up with some tricks to help him, like using sardines to lure the wolves in for extreme close-ups. During the first part of the film where Mason’s out in the wild, he seems like a decent guy, and it sort of reminded me of NEVER CRY WOLF. The second half of the film is where I decided that Mason is a total cock, though, as he and his family set out to experiment with what happens when you tame a wolf.

They screw up several generations of wolves in the process, and even though it allows Mason to get a ton of great footage of the wolves and their social interactions, the real effects of his experiment become clear when he tries to return “Charlie” and the others to the wild. They’re simply unable to hunt and provide for themselves. Their hunting instincts don’t exist, and as a result, Mason is forced to take them back out of the wild at the end of the film and basically relegate these magnificent creatures to lives as housepets. I can’t help but be annoyed by this sort of hamhanded interference in the natural process, especially when it’s just to satisfy some guy’s curiosity. The film is filled with some great intimate footage of the wolves at play, though, and on that level, I did enjoy it. The other annoyance was the soundtrack, which made me flash on the folk-singing from the animated version of THE HOBBIT.

Between films, I ran into Wiley Wiggins out in the lobby. He has a great blog that I read from time to time, and I’ve always loved his work in DAZED & CONFUSED and WAKING LIFE, so it was nice to chat with him. I also had a chance to talk even more with Greg Nicotero, who sounds like the busiest man alive as he gears up on TEXAS CHAINSAW 2, SIN CITY 2, and GRINDHOUSE, all of which are going to be shooting here in Austin. When I walked back into the theater, Robert Rodriguez was standing there talking to Harry. Before I could say anything to him, he put out his hand and said, “Pictures.” I didn’t know what he meant at first, but when he repeated it, I whipped out the picture of Toshi that I carry with me, and he smiled. “You know, if you didn’t have this, I would permanently label you a Lame Dad.” We talked about kids for a few minutes, and I was reminded how much I love being in the Dad Club now. It’s such a source of pride and joy. Harry showed me an e-mail in which Eli Roth has now declared me a pussy because I skipped out on the last film of the ‘80s Horror Marathon. It seems that no one accepts my black lung as a valid reason for leaving, not even people who aren’t even attending the festival.

Quentin took the stage to introduce the next film, which he said he saw for the first time at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. It was the very first documentary of any type that he saw, and he hadn’t seen it since. A few years ago, when he bought the laserdisc special edition of JAWS, he was reminded of the film.

The trailers for this one were a fairly oddball assortment. Something called THE SAVAGE EYE, which looks like a docudrama, featured a voice-over that fairly dripped with contempt for everyone and everything. SHARKS’ TREASURE was an action film about guys trying to retrieve gold from an area surrounded by sharks, and there was a distressing number of real sharks being killed in the trailer. The GREAT WHITE trailer played next, and I know Mr. Beaks has a particular fondness for this JAWS ripoff starring Vic Morrow. Finally, we got the re-release trailer for JAWS itself.

Peter Gimbel’s BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH was pretty much the first time anyone had tried to capture footage of the Great White Shark on film, and as a result, everything we’ve seen since borrows from it on some level. When these people went on their expedition, they really didn’t have anything else to refer to, so it’s a hit-and-miss affair at first. Ron and Valerie Taylor are the couple who were later hired by Spielberg for JAWS as consultants, and they make the strongest impression in the film. They’re obvious professionals, whereas Peter Gimbel comes across as a flaming jackass for most of the movie. His mantra about punching sharks in the nose because “those brutes can’t stand that form of rough treatment” is laughable. They start the journey by following South African whaling vessels out to sea. When they harpoon the whales, it’s brutal and awful, and Valerie Taylor seems as visibly distressed by it as we are in the audience. The entire whaling industry is shown at its most repulsive here, which is one of the big surprises of the film. It’s certainly not what I expected in a movie about sharks. Although they see plenty of white-tip oceanic sharks and blue sharks, there’s no sign of the Great White during the first part of the film. They head from one place to the next, their frustration growing, and along the way, we’re treated to even more folk music from Tom Chapin, brother of Harry Chapin, which led me to pray that Tom was going to be thrown overboard as chum at some point. At one point, they find an island where there are seals sunning themselves, and Ron Taylor earns some really shitty karma points when he scares the crap out of a sleeping seal. For a while, it looks like this is going to be a bust just like CRY OF THE WILD was, but then Ron finally speaks up and suggests a spot where he’s sure they’ll find some Great Whites. It should come as no surprise that it’s called Dangerous Reef off the Australian coast.

The last section of the film is fantastic, and there is a real adrenaline rush that comes from watching these Great Whites unleash their full power on the diving cages, totally unafraid of the humans that are swimming around them. Because no one had ever filmed these sharks before, you can tell the crew really isn’t prepared for what happens when they do, and it gives the film a raw immediacy that’s hard to deny. Even now, when you can tune in for a full week of shark porn on Discover Channel several times a year, I’ve seen very little that can match the power of this film. It’s great stuff, and even with the folk singing, it was one of the high points of the festival so far.

The night ended surprisingly early, and as we left, I saw one of the strangest collisions of people so far this fest, walking past the RZA and Adam from the Counting Crows standing together. All I wanted to do was get home and get some sleep so I could recover a bit more for Italian WWII epic night on Monday. I’ll be back with that coverage soon. Until then...