Review: Smiley Gets a Gun


Keith Calvert is the well-meaning young tearaway of the title, who along with his ‘cobber’ Joey (Bruce Archer) is prone to causing all sorts of mischief, albeit unintentional. The constantly flustered local police sergeant (who else but Chips Rafferty?) comes up with a plan to teach the kid some responsibility. If he can commit a responsible act, he’ll chop a ‘nick’ into a tree with an axe, and if he gets enough ‘nicks’, he can have himself the rifle he’s been eyeing off from the sergeant’s office. But if he fouls up, away those ‘nicks’ will go and it’s back to square one. Sybil Thorndike plays crotchety, hermit-like local resident Granny McKinley, whom the boy starts to befriend, despite rumours of her being a witch. The cast is rounded out by Guy Doleman (whom you’ll recognise from countless British films including the Bond outing “Thunderball”) as a visiting journo, an amusing and youngish Ruth Cracknell (One of the genuine treasures of the Aussie acting world) as a humourless church organist, and Reg Lye as Smiley’s not so reliable dad.


If you can get by the slightly ‘on the nose’ plotline (a kid being rewarded for good behaviour with a GUN?), this is a really cute 1958 Anthony Kimmins (the first “Smiley” flick, as well as “Captain’s Paradise” with Sir Alec Guinness) Aussie flick, a mixture of TV’s “Skippy” and “Dennis the Menace” that has a lot of (admittedly antiquated) charm, and likeably hammy performances by young Calvert, and old pros Rafferty and Brit veteran Thorndike (the latter particularly chews a gluttonous amount of scenery, albeit charmingly).


I haven’t seen the first outing for “Smiley”, and I usually loathe ‘ocker’ representations of Australia, but this one was quite a pleasant, infectious surprise, and a must for Australian cinema completists. It’s cute, and too innocuous to hate. The screenplay is by the director and Rex Rienits (“Jazz Boat”, a minor British crime-caper), from a Moore Raymond (“Smiley”) novel.


Rating: B-

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