Review: Australia After Dark

A look at the underbelly and nightlife in Australia…and a bunch of random other crap too, all narrated by a super-serious Hayes Gordon.

The good news is that this 1975 pseudo-doco from hack director John Lamond (the Aussie “Emmanuelle” rip-off “Felicity”) is more believable as a documentary than the subsequent “ABCs of Love and Sex: Australia Style”. Obviously both films were Lamond’s crude attempt at catching onto the brief trend/gimmick of using the documentary/educational format as a front for his real intention: Sex, cocks, and lotsa norks. Both film are bad, but at least this one’s attempt at looking like a doco isn’t quite as incompetent. Some of it has been staged, though Lamond has suggested that it’s merely recreating what the participants would normally do anyway. Yeah, still not quite calling it a documentary, though John. I just can’t do it, especially when I know what you’re really interested in here.

 

Frankly, I find it difficult to enjoy the sex when there’s no actual story going on (One reason I’m not really into hardcore porn. Call me a liar if you want, but it’s true), so the so-called racy content in this was pretty useless to me. And you know that Lamond is clearly just trying to get around the censorship laws of the time because the non-sex footage occasionally has fuck-all to do with sex. In fact, a lot of it doesn’t even take place ‘After Dark’. It is Australian, though, I’ll give it that. But the film is just bizarre and random at times. Witchcraft is one thing, but aliens? Really? Oh and now watch a random threesome in a hot tub. And if ever I wanted an Aussie history lesson, it’s not in the same film as sex and nudity. In fact, the usage of footage of Indigenous Australians in a film like this is pretty rank and insulting (The film is quite clearly an Ozploitation movie masquerading as a documentary). Lamond should be ashamed of himself for that one. Credit where it’s due, though, the film shows footage of a ‘gay wedding’, which is interesting. Given the era, it was presumably non-binding and possibly even staged for the film, but still it’s interesting to see such a thing here in a 70s film in Australia (which at the time was a fairly Conservative country). As terrible as it is, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a naked interpretive dance involving body paint and hairy women who don’t know how to dance, nor do the people doing the painting have any clue what they are doing. That was certainly amusing, in entirely the wrong way. The segment on witchcraft/Satanism is pretty hilarious, partly because the warlock has the most bizarre accent and pronunciation of English words that you’ll ever hear. Also because witchcraft/Satanism is kinda dumbski.

 

It might be better than the later film, but this still isn’t very good. More importantly, it’s incredibly dull and dry. Sure, some of it is a little informative, but after 15 minutes or so, the value in that is seriously diminished. Because Lamond is an appalling filmmaker, it’s all very random, occasionally offensive, and predominantly boring and unsexy in the extreme. A lotta bush, though, which certainly has its charm, but even fans of ‘Mondo’ cinema might find this one a good cure for insomnia.

 

Rating: D+