The Last of the Knucklemen

Last updated

The Last of the Knucklemen
Knucklemen1979poster.jpg
DVD cover
Directed by Tim Burstall
Written byTim Burstall
Based onThe Last of the Knucklemen
by John Power
Produced byTim Burstall
Byron Kennedy
Starring Gerard Kennedy
Michael Preston
Peter Hehir
CinematographyDan Burstall
Edited byEdward McQueen-Mason
Music by Bruce Smeaton
Production
company
Distributed byUmbrella Entertainment
Release dates
  • May 1979 (1979-05)(Cannes film festival)
  • 11 July 1979 (1979-07-11)(Australia)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
BudgetA$460,000 [1]
Box officeA$180,000 (Australia)

The Last of the Knucklemen is a 1979 Australian film directed by Tim Burstall. [2]

Contents

Plot

The story involves a gang of rough miners. Tom (Peter Hehir) turns up at the mine looking for a place to hide. He allies himself with the mining foreman Tarzan (Gerard Kennedy) before the big fight.

Cast

Production

Before Tim Burstall started on Eliza Fraser he thought Hexagon Productions should make a male bonding film, and considered Rusty Bugles , The Odd Angry Shot and Last of the Knucklemen. He eventually decided on the latter. He had to wait to get the rights because the Melbourne Theatre Company were negotiating to sell the rights to the US but this fell through. [3]

Burstall did the adaptation himself, which was largely faithful to the play. He felt that the film was weak in the first half setting up characters. [3] Burstall:

I was trying to take the ocker stuff and cross it, as I think John Powers' play was, with anthropology. Before I rehearsed the cast, I got them to read 'The Territorial Imparity of the Native Aid'. I wanted it to be seen not just as ockerism but as anthropology. But the only people who got that were the French. It was bought in France and it's done terribly well there – much better than it ever did in Australia. [4]

The movie was shot over six weeks in September and October 1978 mostly on sets at Melbourne's Cambridge Studios. [1] Exterior scenes were shot in the South Australian outback town of Andamooka. [5]

Reception

The Last of the Knucklemen grossed $180,000 at the box office in Australia, [6] which is equivalent to $703,800 in 2009 dollars. Reviews however were strong. [1] Burstall:

I don't think they knew how to market it. A lot of women said to me, 'I'd never go to a picture that had the title The Last of the Knucklemen'. But nobody ever looked at it as an analysis of the way men work. It's a right-wing view of unionism. [4]

John Lapsley of the Sun-Herald gave the film 4 stars concludes "It is a very strong script nicely adapted by Burstall. The situations and relationships are subtly developed - yet all through there is a vigorous, rough overlay which makes it seem anything but delicate. Apart from being a very good movie, it is also a very funny one, with a wide enough four-letter vocabulary to make the odd backward schoolgirl blush." [7] Martha DuBose wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald "In spite of the cleverly crafted rough-edged look of the film and its peppery language, The Last of the Knucklemen is a wistful little romance on a dying breed of men." [8] The Adelaide Advertiser's Terry Jennings commented on the films poor distribution and said of the film "Burstall has taken a modest subject and made a modest success - a well-crafted, well-acted, always entertaining adaptation of John Powers's boisterous if simple and machismo stage play." [9] Colin Bennett in The Age says "Bruce Smeaton's music seems to be summing up 'The Last of the Knucklemen'. He uses a rousing frontier banjo ... and a set of caterwauling gibberish-lyrics." [10] Writing in Cinema Papers Keith Connolly concludes "In sum, Knucklemen is disappointing, not for any marked defect of rendition, but rather because Burstall (who, of course, knows precisely what he is doing) keeps his sights so low." [11] The Bulletin's Sandra Hall states "It is precisely this evenness that makes it such a frustrating film to write about. There is professionalism but no passion or originality." [12]

AFI Awards, 1979

Home media

The Last of the Knucklemen was released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in January 2012. The DVD is compatible with region codes 2 and 4 and includes special features such as the trailer, photo gallery and interviews with John Powers, Gerard Kennedy, Dan Burstall, Steve Bisley and Michael Caton. [14]

Original play

The Last of the Knucklemen
Written byJohn Powers
Date premiered19 November 1973
Place premiered Russell St Theatre, Melbourne
Original languageEnglish
SettingA mining camp, north-west Australia

John Power's play had been produced in 1973. [15]

Leslie Rees described it as "a sequence of sketches using the same basic characters but without much development or thematic resolution". [16]

It was performed Off-Broadway in 1983 at the American Theater of Actors, featuring Kevin O'Connor and Dennis Quaid. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

Timothy Burstall AM was an English Australian film director, writer and producer, best known for hit Australian movie Alvin Purple (1973) and its sequel Alvin Rides Again (1974).

<i>Attack Force Z</i> 1982 film

Attack Force Z is a 1982 Australian-Taiwanese World War II film directed by Tim Burstall. It is loosely based on actual events and was filmed in Taiwan in 1979. It was screened at the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 1981.

<i>Alvin Purple</i> 1972 Australian film directed by Tim Burstall

Alvin Purple is a 1973 Australian sex comedy film starring Graeme Blundell in the title role; the screenplay was written by Alan Hopgood and directed by Tim Burstall, through his production company Hexagon Productions and Village Roadshow.

Peter Hehir is an Australian retired actor. He had a regular role as Bert Duggan on the soap opera The Sullivans from 1976 to 1978. His film appearances included The Last of the Knucklemen (1979), I Live with Me Dad (1985), The Hour Before My Brother Dies (1986), Two Friends (1986) and Fast Talking (1984), the latter of which he was nominated for the 1984 Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Alvin Rides Again is a 1974 Australian sex-comedy film sequel to Alvin Purple. It was directed by David Bilcock and Robin Copping, who were regular collaborators with Tim Burstall. It was rated M unlike its predecessor which was rated R. Alvin Rides Again still features a lot of full frontal nudity.

Roadshow Entertainment is an Australian home video, production and distribution company that is a division of Village Roadshow that distributes films in Australia and New Zealand. Their first release was Mad Max. Roadshow Entertainment is an independent video distributor in Australia and New Zealand.

Kangaroo is a 1987 Australian drama film directed by Tim Burstall and starring Colin Friels, Judy Davis, and John Walton. It is based on the 1923 novel of the same name by D. H. Lawrence.

Libido is a 1973 Australian drama film comprising 4 segments written and directed as independent stories, but screened together as one piece, exploring a common theme of instinctive desire and contemporary sexuality.

Petersen is a 1974 Australian drama film directed by Tim Burstall.

Stork is a 1971 Australian comedy film directed by Tim Burstall. Stork is based on the play The Coming of Stork by David Williamson. Bruce Spence and Jacki Weaver make their feature film debuts in Stork, being honoured at the 1972 Australian Film Institute Awards, where they shared the acting prize. Stork won the prize for best narrative feature and Tim Burstall won for best direction. Stork was one of the first ocker comedies. Stork was the first commercial success of the Australian cinema revival called the Australian New Wave.

2000 Weeks is a 1969 Australian drama film directed by Tim Burstall and starring Mark McManus, Jeanie Drynan, and Eileen Chapman.

Eliza Fraser is a 1976 Australian bawdy adventure drama film, directed by Tim Burstall and starring Susannah York, Trevor Howard, Noel Ferrier and John Castle. The screenplay was written by David Williamson.

The 22nd Australian Film Institute Awards ceremony, presented by the Australian Film Institute (AFI), honoured the best Australian feature films of 1980, and took place on 17 September 1980 at Regent Theatre, in Sydney, New South Wales. The ceremony was hosted by Graham Kennedy and televised in Australia on ABC.

End Play is a 1975 Australian thriller film directed by Tim Burstall and starring George Mallaby, John Waters and Ken Goodlet. It was an adaptation of the 1972 novel End Play by Russell Braddon. It was made by Hexagon Productions.

Hexagon Productions was an Australian film production company established in 1972 by Roadshow Distributors with Tim Burstall and Associates and the company Bilcock and Copping. All parties had successfully collaborated on Stork (1971) and wanted to engage in further production. The company was owned along the following lines:

The Naked Country is a 1985 Australian film. It was based on the 1957 novel by Morris West.

Fast Talking is a 1984 Australian film written and directed by Ken Cameron. It starred Rod Zuanic and Steve Bisley and Tracy Mann

The Last Outlaw is a 1980 Australian four-part television miniseries based on the life of Ned Kelly. It was shot from February to May 1980 and the end of its original broadcast, in October–November 1980, coincided with the centenary of Ned Kelly's death.

Michael Duffield was an English-born character actor who worked in Australia for many decades. He was nominated for the 1979 AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his role in The Last of the Knucklemen, a role he was reprising from the original stage production.

References

  1. 1 2 3 David Stratton, The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival, Angus & Robertson, 1980 p38
  2. ↑ Vagg, Stephen (24 July 2019). "50 Meat Pie Westerns". Filmink.
  3. 1 2 Scott Murray, 'Tim Burstall', Cinema Papers Sept-Oct 1979 p577
  4. 1 2 Interview with Tim Burstall, 30 March 1998 Archived 15 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 14 October 2012
  5. ↑ "Curator's notes: The Last of the Knucklemen (1979)". aso.gov.au. Australian Screen Online, part of the National Film and Sound Archives. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  6. ↑ Film Victoria – Australian Films at the Australian Box Office
  7. ↑ Lapsley, John (15 July 1979), "KO winner for Tim Burstall", The Sun-Herald
  8. ↑ DuBose, Martha (13 July 1979), "Review", The Sydney Morning Herald
  9. ↑ Jennings, Terry (8 December 1979), "Review", The Adelaide Advertiser
  10. ↑ Bennett, Colin (17 September 1979), "Fair fist of knuckles", The Age
  11. ↑ Connolly, Keith (September–October 1979), "The Last of the Knucklemen", Cinema Papers, p. 563
  12. ↑ Hall, Sandra (31 July 1979), "Misfits out in the desert", The Bulletin, p. 73
  13. ↑ Kuipers, Richard. "The Last of the Knucklemen (1979)". Australian Screen. NFSA. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
  14. ↑ "Umbrella Entertainment". Archived from the original on 16 June 2013. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  15. ↑ The Last of the Knucklemen at AusStage
  16. ↑ Leslie Rees, Australian Drama in the 1970s, Angus & Robertson, 1978 p 207
  17. ↑ Gussow, Mel (27 October 1983). "THEATER: 'KNUCKLEMEN,' CONTEST IN THE OUTBACK". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 26 September 2017.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.