David Clendenning Movies

This silly Australian slasher film concerns a psychopath strangling students at an elite Catholic girls' school run by a strange married couple. Myles and Virginia Sheffield have sexual problems, and the viewer is led to believe that Myles is relieving his impotence by garotting the nubile students with barbed wire. There's also a nun, who disapproves of her girls getting friendly with the boys of the nearby Winchester school, and some hostile townies who are feuding with the prepsters. When a townie boy and a schoolgirl fall in love, the reactions from all quarters are such that there are suspects aplenty. Since the murders are all pretty much the same, at least the viewer can take interest in the mystery, right? Wrong. In fact, Alec Mills' direction is so clumsy and Robert Brennan's script so obvious that one is hard-pressed to find any reason at all to watch this film. At least Mills' follow-up -- the equally weak Dead Sleep -- had Linda Blair. This film has nothing!, but actually played theatrically in its home country to widespread apathy. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Bruce Beresford returned to the austerity of his first Australian films with The Fringe Dwellers. Kristina Nehm stars as an Aborigine woman named Trilby, who along with her tribespeople lives on the fringes of "accepted" Australian society. Trilby's mother (Justine Saunders) urges her family to remove themselves from squalor and move up to a fashionable all-white suburb. What with the snobbery of her new neighbors and an onslaught of visiting relatives, Trilby never has a moment of happiness. She seeks solace in the arms of her boyfriend (Ernie Dingo), but this only results in an unwanted pregnancy. Her "escape" to a better life is an indirect result of her newborn child's death. Bruce and Rhoisin Beresford adapted the script of The Fringe Dwellers from the novel by Nene Gare. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A reporter and his girlfriend do some investigative journalism and discover that a successful actor/businessman who recently returned to Queensland may well be involved in pornography and snuff films. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide