road to nhill

I borrowed this film on DVD from work, having seen it when it came out but not since, and it was overdue yesterday. Perry and I set off to return it this morning and then it started raining heavily the minute we left the house, so I thought OK, I'll watch it instead while we wait for the rain to recede. 

Apart from, as I remembered it, being a pretty great movie, it also features a lot of former Crawfords  people, such as  Lynette Curran, Monica Maughan, Lois Ramsey, Patricia Kennedy, Alwyn Kurts, Terry Norris, Bill Hunter, Tony Barry, Peter Aanensen, and Don Bridges (who was in two episodes of Special Squad so just qualifies). In fact, of the only people in this film (eg Denise Roberts) who weren't in some Crawfords show like Homicide or The Box or both, it's probably because they were/are too young. I don't think that's so much a matter of the casting being drawn from a bunch of old Crawfordsites as it is a sign of what constituted an experienced senior actor in the late 1990s. The Sunday Age's review (from 16 November 1997 p. 36) described the cast as 'perhaps the finest collection of character actors ever assembled for an Australian film'. 

Alison Tilson told the Sydney Morning Herald's Ruth Hessey in 1997 that she wrote the film so her father could enjoy something at the movies without the word 'fuck' in it.* 

For some absurd reason I recalled Road to Nhill as being set in Nhill. Why on earth would it be, given the title? It's set in Pyramid Hill, a place which actually is not even very proximate to Nhill (262 km) and which has no special road leading to it, despite the discussion early in the piece of the difference between the 'road which actually goes to Nhill' and 'Nhill Road'. 

This seems like a distortion of the truth but there you go. I guess someone just thought 'Nhill' was a decent name for a nowhere place. 

Here's the Pyramid Hill store from the film, above, and google earth, below. 

Thought you might like to see a drawing of it in 1933 from the Age (14 Feb p. 12). It was built after the previous building was destroyed in a fire in 1932. The accompanying article says the new building has been 'treated in the Florentine manner'. 

Anyway, back to the film. It is not quite a film about nothing; it's about how a car accident (not actually a mundane incident, but not immediately fatal for anyone) exposes the strengths and weaknesses of a whole lot of relationships. Also, Alwyn Kurts gets to utter lines like 'I'm skipper of B grade' in a Wes Andersonian tableau. 

On the whole, as glib as it may read, just a really nice but not insubstantial film with some truly spectacular actors, a great script and marvellous locations.

There is a narratorless 'making of' documentary with the DVD that tbh doesn't add a lot to the whole. A lot of material about the making of the four-bowling-ladies-upside-down-in-the-car sequence. Matthew Dyktynski refers to the older actors as 'icons of Australian product'. There is a clip from Homicide in there, when they canvass the various tv shows they've all been in. Terry Norris is featured heavily in the 'making of' but Alwyn doesn't feature and neither does Bill H. 

*Ruth Hessey 'Women 1 Men Nhill' Sydney Morning Herald 14 November 1997 p. 66

homicide: 'a girl who liked beads'

This episode of Homicide, called 'A Girl Who Liked Beads' but - get this! - advertised in the papers when it screened on 25 October 1966 as 'The Girl Who Liked Beads', was a bit too grim for me and I didn't enjoy much of it, but I was intrigued to know what this shopping arcade was:

It ends in a department store or supermarket. It's not identified and weirdly I kind of semi-remember it, though the memory might be false. 

Bead shop where a girl who liked beads is likely to go (and steal a big bagful of them in a very 'cry for help' kind of way. OK, time for the opening credits:

IMDB suggests this is the last Homicide to feature policewoman Helen Hopgood as played by Derani Scarr. There is a half-arsed attempt to suggest that Bill's girlfriend Tink is jealous or somehow disconcerted by Helen (who she describes as 'glamorous'). 

Poor Di Chamberlain has to get through the line 'I'm known as Tink', whereas surely anyone known as Tink would know not to let an S get before their name in a sentence. This is her second-last appearance in the program, so I look forward to seeing whether her departure is written into the show in the way Helen Hopgood's appears not to be - presumably Helen will just never be mentioned again - I certainly hope there is no dramatic ending for Tink. Mind you the way that people seem to respond to the death of loved ones in Homicide I'll be the only one upset. 

Lynette Curren is Karen, the girl who liked beads in question. As mentioned her story is grim and while she doesn't actually get murdered, her mother does. This is her with her boyfriend, Phil, who is determined to get her out of this situation as they both feel something is wrong. Phil is played by 'John Chatteris', I am putting his name in inverted commas because I wonder if it's a spelling error given that it doesn't seem to be a last name and this name has never been applied to someone who ever acted on screen, or anywhere, again, though he's not at all bad at it. Maybe he just didn't enjoy it. Lynette Curran was 21 in 1966 and had already had some screen roles and went on to many more, most recently the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). 

The weakest parts of Homicide are often the little things. Bill has just announced he's got two days off, but when Helen has an inkling that all is not well domestically for Karen (who she just arrested for shoplifting beads), suddenly the Homicide team swing into action. Mac has to pick up Bill from hanging around with Tink and take him off to investigate Helen's hunch, in Springvale. So there are only three people investigating all murders - including random suspicions that something's not right - in Melbourne?  

I'm not going in deep on this storyline because I just find it depressing, particularly because of the second weak element in the story - that Karen's mother has been murdered by her stepfather but this happened so early in the story (and off-screen, but incidentally the whole story takes place over two days) that no-one seems to think Karen is likely to be bothered by it and she's fine now. Anyway, there are a few scenes in the pet shop which the stepfather is landlord to. The proprietor of the pet shop is played by Betty Randall, yet another Melbourne actor with decades of experience in live theatre, radio and television, here in the bittiest of bit parts. The pet shop thing is a whole extra bit of strangeness because this is the most we see of it:

There are, for instance, no animals though we hear a lot of sounds of them. There is no external establishing shot either. Although Karen and her family live in Springvale, the closest we get to seeing the road where the pet shop is, is here: 

The above is 150 High Street East Malvern, and the business was called Eddie Thomas Speed Shop. 

Above is that building today - you can see the arched window and the window above it correspond. This (below) is the building on the opposite corner of the side street, and yes, it has suffered particular indignities since 1966 as you will see:

I mean wtf am I right? 

So then there's the usual chase down a lane, 

A dramatic capture of the stepfather (great performance by Peter Aanensen by the way) who was in all things absolutely no good...

And a celebratory beer with Helen Hopgood

Who we will never see in Homicide again.

'Shit happens'