Kate Fitzpatrick Movies
- 1968
Shirley (Jane Harders) has had a close encounter of the "third" kind, and met aliens face-to-face. She's not very happy about it, and nobody believes her anyway. However, she feels obliged to spread the word. She was the Australian equivalent of a juvenile-delinquent, a "widgie, and she and her gang went to a carnival when a wax statue of the Duke of Edinburgh was animated by the aliens and spoke to her. She spent the next ten years trying to spread the word, growing more and more deranged. The story catches up with her at an insane asylum, as she is being interrogated by a psychiatrist. Director Jim Sharman went on to direct The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which has some similarly absurd features. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1974
In this Australian comedy-drama, ennui stricken employees of the Public Service Department go to their annual picnic and let it all hang out. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1975
This comedy, based on Barry Oakley's popular novel Salute to the Great McCarthy chronicles the adventurous and amorous exploits of an Australian country boy. The whole mess begins when the strapping lad is kidnapped and taken to Melbourne to play Australian Rules Football. The perpetrator and owner of the team is Colonel Humphries who also gives the young man a job in his insurance company. There the lad has great fun making love to a series of women--including the colonel's daughter. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Jarratt, Judy Morris, (more)
- 1975
In this adaptation of an Australian play, a police officer swears that never in 23 years on the force has he had to use his gun. A rookie is assigned to him, and soon they are both bored to death with watching television and working crosswords. They get a little excitement when a woman and her sister come into to complain that her husband has been beating her. The woman desperately wants to leave him, but cannot because he will not allow her to have the furniture. This inspires the lead cop to go to the apartment and tie up the abuser while the woman takes the furniture. They then proceed to beat the stuffing out of the man until he is near death. To ensure that he keeps silent about the beating, the cops agree to take the man out for a few drinks. During their night, battered wife beater keels over and dies. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Hargreaves, Peter Cummins, (more)
- 1976
This off-beat comedy-drama from the director of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, follows two young lovers who end up marooned on a desert island. They find a seemingly abandoned beach house there and decide to pop in for a little lovemaking. They have no idea that their antics are observed by a wacked out physician who grabs the girl and plans to use her to help bring his beloved wife back from her eternal sleep. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arthur Dignam, Rufus Collins, (more)
- 1977
A private nurse uncovers strange goings-on in the home where she's employed. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide
- 1982
In a somewhat far-fetched premise (not uncommon to the genre), this action film has some Australians (including soldiers) joining up with Asian forces, all backed by American money, ready to take over Surfers Paradise, a resort and retirement area on the Gold Coast of Queensland. They are not interested in good surf or securing an ideal retirement home, they just want the off-shore petroleum rights and inland uranium deposits. Right into their scheme walks Michael Stacey (Ray Barrett), a one-time policeman who left the force because of an alcohol problem and now has to make money as a private eye. While he is looking for the missing daughter of an old friend, now in politics, he runs into the usual private-eye characters: the barmaid who is willing to spend some quality time with him, the corpse that shows up in his hotel room, and the former buddies who turn against his investigation. Two of his friends are fronting the coalition of take-over forces and invite Stacey to join them in their conspiracy. Now the detective has to make up his mind about where all this is going, and if he wants to avoid any unhealthy alliances, how can he do that and stay physically intact? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robyn Nevin
- 1983
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This patchy, uneven combination of fantasy and musical comedy is hilarious in parts and embarrassing in others, though the premise has great potential in itself -- a screwball Captain Invincible is out to save the world from his nemesis, Mr. Midnight, the white supremacist. Captain Invincible (Alan Arkin) is wallowing in his cups in the Australian outback when he receives an unusual call from the American President asking for his help. Unusual because the Captain had no choice but to go into exile after Joseph McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee became suspicious of his red cape, and he has never been sober enough to recover from the shock. This history is given in a mock newsreel at the beginning of the film. But now Mr. Midnight is threatening to dismember New York City by convincing all the ethnic groups to live along the seashore. Once they are situated on beachfront property, he will blast out a crack in the earth behind them, cut their connection to the mainland, and send them drifting off into the Atlantic. It seems the dastardly Midnight has stolen the ultra-secret hypno-ray and can slice off New Jersey whenever he wants. Weakened by depression and alcohol, Captain Invincible is nursed back to full throttle by Patty Patria (Kate Fitzpatrick) and is soon ready to zoom over Sydney to the far side of the globe -- after practicing in harness in front of rear-projected scenes. Meanwhile, Mr. Midnight and his sidekick are all set to defend their turf, and their ability to slice it up -- though the (American) patriotic sentimentality that prevails in the end, after several other songs have come and gone, is summarized in a rendition of "God Bless America" that conflicts with the opening scenes and may leave foreign audiences cold. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, (more)
- 1984
This low-budget film is about a discontented, rather boring couple. Nick Bailey (Harold Hopkins) is tired of his office job, tired of his marriage, and tired of the awful apartment he shares with his wife. She feels the same, and each consider having an affair -- he with a young woman who runs a hamburger stand, and she with a former lover. Their fantasies are not all that exciting, as might be expected, and the resolution of how to get out of their rut, as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon, stays within their standards of mediocrity. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harold Hopkins, Jeanie Drynan, (more)
- 1985
In this drama, an Australian professor, his bored wife, and their children find their lives disrupted when a male baby-sitter comes to call. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Cinematographer Chris Menges' first directorial effort, A World Apart was inspired by the lives of South African journalist Ruth First and her daughter Shawn Slovo (who wrote the film's screenplay). Barbara Hershey plays the fictional counterpart to Ms. First, Diana Roth, with Jodhi May as her daughter. Told from the daughter's viewpoint, the film shows us that Diana and her husband Jeroen Krabbe are so busy with their anti-Apartheid political activism that they totally shut May out of their lives. In 1963, Hershey is arrested by the South African police, becoming the first white woman to be held under the infamous 90-day-detention act. Left despondent and suicidal by two separate arrests and by constant harassment from the police, Diana still won't include her daughter in her life until the girl presses the issue in a climactic confrontation. Some critics felt that Shawn Slovo was using A World Apart to settle unresolved issues in her own life: Ruth First was killed under suspicious circumstances in 1982, without ever reconciling with her daughter. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Hershey, Jodhi May, (more)
A runaway Japanese bride finds herself alone in Sydney, Australia when her lover fails to show up to save her from her husband, and she ends up on an off-road adventure with a handsome getaway driver while fleeing gangsters, cops from two countries and her murderously humiliated spouse. The whole mess begins when Midori (Youki Kudoh) engineers her own kidnapping to avoid her honeymoon night with her hyper-tense businessman husband Yukio (Kenji Isomura). When he notices Midori's absence, Yukio panics. Local policemen Bishop and Moffat are assigned the case and it is while talking to Yukio and the staff that they learn the truth. When the Japanese press finds out about Yukio's plight, they merrily proceed to crucify him in the headlines, making him a laughingstock. Meanwhile, Midori, after getting jilted, goes to a bank to exchange some money and is caught in the midst of an armed bankrobbery masterminded by Afghani hoodlums Mahood (Robert Mammone) and his brother Gullbuddin. The two are about to shoot the terrified Midori when their getaway driver Colin (Russell Crowe) intervenes. Gullbuddin is accidentally killed during the scuffle and Colin hits the highway with Midori. With the aforementioned crowd in hot pursuit, the two fugitives head for a farm in the boonies where Colin's elderly, embittered father lives in almost comical isolation. Along the way, the two encounter several memorable characters. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Russell Crowe, Youki Kudoh, (more)
