Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr

Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr

Australia – 1981

Director – David Hemmings

Vestron Video, 1984, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour 37 minutes

Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr is essentially a formulaic Western, set on the margins of civilization where intrepid loners are defined by their actions and uphold a stoic moral code in a lawless land. Nothing but the accents have changed. New Zealand is more or less the rocky wild frontier of the (English) Empire afterall, still unpenetrated by metroplitain 'order'. Gibbie (Donald Pleasence in top form) is a rugged frontiersman who has spent his life living on the fringes forging his own path. Barney (Ken Wahl) is a young rebel, born into a society that offered nothing but a conformity he couldn’t stomach and wouldn’t eat anyway. So reticent are they to stray from the lonely path of personal initiative that our protagonists argue with each other for the first half of the film.

On the left is Bruno Lawrence of Quiet Earth

Drunken mountain-man Gibbie discovers a U.S. military planeload of WWII vintage loot half-submerged in a remote New Zealand lake. Trading some of his haul in the nearest village he finds himself the subject of persecution by a semi-official and terribly fake-accented George Peppard. Gibbie reluctantly teams up with bitter youth, ‘Nam-era cultural drop-out Barney, they action-scene their way through the remaining film. With the help of some stalwart Kiwi frontiersmen, they keep Peppard’s forces of modern metropolitan greed from commodifying their myth of rugged self-sufficient outsiderism and win the day with handfuls of loot and hugs all around.

All this and yet, director David Hemmings' Kiwi Western fantasy doesn’t manage to be anything but safe. Gibbie and Barney do dabble a little in rebellion, but it would be far too upsetting if they were ever allowed to truly reject society. That’s why, in order to succeed Zephyr’s protagonists actually have to embrace it. What better way to do that than by recreating that bedrock of social institutions, the family with the introduction of a woman. Gibbie’s estranged daughter Sally (Lesley Ann Warren) starts out scolding and yelling, but reconciles with her father and falls in love with Barney in time to assist in their triumph. And of course it’s important to consider that recreating civilization in the wilderness essentially robs it of any of its frontier character. Onward colonizing heroes flush with Old Crow and treasure!

The Quiet Earth

The Quiet Earth

New Zealand – 1985

Director – Geoff Murphy

CBS/FOX Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 31 minutes

This may be the first post-apocalypse film in which the apocalypse isn’t cataclysmic, at least not in the nuclear holocaust/return of Christ sense. Although it does in fact begin immediately post-apocalypse, for some time it is not clear that there was in fact an apocalypse at all. This key question persists for the entire film; was there an apocalypse, and if so what was it? Here our protagonist (Bruno Lawrence) simply wakes up in the morning to find a world devoid of people. All of them have simply vanished at the same time, in the middle of whatever it was they were doing at that instant; flying aircraft, driving, crapping, making coffee. He proceeds to go very nearly ape-shit.

But is there ever a post-apocalypse movie that doesn’t succumb to the need for secondary characters? Is there any film about isolation or solitude that doesn’t? Once our protagonist meets a woman, Joanne, and then another man, one can’t help but shake the feeling that this is supposed to be a subtle sci-fi sociology lesson. Being the only three people on Earth reduces them to a primitive uncivilized survival situation, a textbook experiment in inter-gender socialization. The woman is a vacillating opportunist, looking for the best deal and changing her mind on a moment by moment basis. The rest is a philosophical and/or psychological lesson about the duality of man. Does the intellectual archetype offer the most attractive options for the future, or is it the physical, warrior type? Which is the true apocalypse; the potential disaster of scientific achievement, or the violent barbarity of hierarchical tribalism? The whole thing begs the further intriguing question; how do you define apocalypse?

Here's The Quiet Earth trailer from TkrB via YouTube. While you're there, check out the Saturn rising sequence, it's cool.

Gorezone #5 - Bad Taste

Back when nobody knew who the hell Peter Jackson was a little magazine called Gorezone, the red headed stepchild of Fangoria (itself the offspring of Starlog Magazine I think) did this little article on his first movie in January 1988. If you don't like Bad Taste you are in the wrong place. One of the reasons I love all these old movies and held on to these magazines is because of the hands on technical gore, and Bad Taste is at the top of the offal heap on that front.
Most of these pictures are well known since Jackson got big with Dead Alive/Brain Dead and beyond, but it's interesting to read the way they talk about the whole thing knowing what's happened since.