Avengers of the Reef | |
---|---|
Directed by | Chris McCullugh |
Written by | Anne Brooksbank |
Produced by | Noel Ferrier |
Starring | Simon Drake |
Cinematography | Peter James |
Edited by | Tim Wellburn |
Music by | John Sangster |
Production company | Timon Productions |
Distributed by | Roadshow |
Release date |
|
Running time | 84 mins |
Country | Australia |
Language | English |
Budget | A$100,000 [1] |
Box office | A$27,000 (Australia) [2] |
Avengers of the Reef is a 1973 Australian children's film directed by Chris McCullugh and starring Simon Drake.
Scientist Bill Stewart goes to Fiji with his son Tim to investigate the appearance of the crown-of-thorns starfish in the reefs off the island. It transpires that a mining syndicate set up by Updike is deliberately seeding the reefs with the starfish to enable them to mine the reef area. Updike hires an assassin, Kemp, to kill Stewart. He fails, but Tim thinks he has succeeded and runs away to an island village pursued by Kemp. Tim makes friends with a Fijian boy, Sai, and is eventually reunited with his father.
The film was jointly financed by the actor-producer Noel Ferrier and the Australian Film Development Corporation. Shooting began in Fiji in September 1972, mainly on the island of Taveuni. Filming was delayed by several weeks because of a major cyclone. [1]
Anne Brooksbank won an Australian Writers Guild Award for her screenplay. [1]
Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands, northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.
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