And a word or two on Maslin Beach (1997), set on the eponymous nude beach in Adelaide. It’s your masterpiece in terms of script and direction. The nudity is not coy. Did you originally set out to make what is essentially a “European” movie? Maslin Beach was my ‘coming of age’, and the transition from…
You co-produced The Dreaming (1988) with Craig Lahiff and with Anthony I. Ginnane as executive producer. It stars Penny Cook who passed away recently. She worked with Lahiff, who is also gone, on the very good Hitchcockian slasher/horror Coda (1987). How would you sum them up? You must have known Lahiff well. The period 1984…
As the producer, what was the inspiration for Centrespread (1981)? How did it begin? In 1978, I began working with Newfilms in Adelaide, which was a production company owned by Justin Milne and Geoffrey Simpson. I learned my trade production managing documentaries, corporate films and commercials. Geoffrey and I constantly talked about making a feature…
*containers spoilers Now for The Dreaming (1988), which Wayne also produced, or The Nightmare as it should be known for its subject matter and slightly troubled production. It’s an epic! Well, for its limited budget of apparently just over two million, it is. From the opening credits, which has a shot taken by helicopter as…
*contains spoilers He is the head of Australian International Pictures, and it is no coincidence that it sounds like Roger Corman’s American International Pictures. Adelaide-based filmmaker Wayne Groom produced his first independent movie in the early 80s with a film on a microbudget which still sent him broke. It was unfortunate because what low-budget dreams…
Paramount Studios, who distributed Overlord, also released Annihilation (featuring Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh), which according to figures also broke even at the box office and might have been released long enough to just recoup its budget. Like the much vaunted, and Academy Award winning (it won three major Oscars) Roma (2018), it appeared…
*contains spoilers Back in the late 70s as a twelve-year-old (yes, I am old and fat and bald and weight 300 pounds!) in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, the Fair Lady theatre was on the main drag in Hindley Street (Salman Rushdie once famously quoted Hindley St ran with blood or something and I…
As I set out to write this blog, I guess I have to ask this question. But those who like cult films, or have cult films of their own, already know the answer. It’s those films which we connect with, no matter what the critics say… films which we claim as our own, whether we…
Cult Film Alley 