Ghosts … Of The Civil Dead (1988/Region Zero/0/Free/PAL DVD/Umbrella
Entertainment)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras:
B Film: B
PLEASE NOTE: This is a DVD that can only be
operated on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region
Zero/0/Free and the PAL format software, and was originally issued by our friends
at Umbrella Entertainment when we covered this years ago. Since then, the makes have come up with hits
like Lawless, The Proposition and The Road. Here is the original review text…
Did Australia
produce a film so potent and controversial that it could not be handled by an
American distributor? Well,
especially considering it was released in 1988, that could very well be said of
John Hillcoat’s Ghosts …Of The Civil
Dead. This was more than a prison film, as brutal as anything that
had been seen before, or until the classic HBO-produced Oz series. This still holds up very well because it offers so
much more about how brutal and disturbing the social question of the most hardened
and dangerous criminals is dealt with in any major industrialized nation.
It took a
long time to catch up to this gem, not even issued on the old 12” LaserDisc
format and who wants to watch VHS or Beta? Not seeing it booked nearby in
all these years, it was great to get our hands on it here and the film is one
of the strongest films we have seen from Australia
or New Zealand
since Mad Max or Lee Tamahori’s 1995
groundbreaker Once Were Warriors.
This film involves the toughest prisoners in Australia, intended to be now, but
looking like the near-future or soon-to-be-future of Science Fiction
cinema. However, this film is not a mere genre piece, but a deep
examination of the darkest side of prison life that had only been previously
seen in documentaries and retroactively in Don Siegel’s 1979 drama Escape From Alcatraz with Clint
Eastwood.
The
prison in question, called The Central Industrial Prison, is set in the middle
of a desert so escape is much tougher than just a body of water, as it had been
in Alcatraz. The guards and prisoners
are having their buttons pressed, in every way from literally to figuratively,
on the federal level. The film, co-written by Gene Conkie, Evan English,
Hillcoat and Nick
Cave, goes out of its way
to be as honest and brutal as necessary without being exploitive or overdoing
it. Frontal male nudity was more shocking then, but even that is not
played up by being overlit and shown for “money shot” effect. Along with
the sterile setting and the portrayal of violence in an
honest-but-non-Hollywood way, the film is at least a minor classic.
That is
simply because there is some solid storytelling here and it offers some great
advantages a show like Oz cannot
because of the TV grind and need to continue the story on and on. At
times, I was reminded of J. Lee Thompson’s underrated, impressive 1972 Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes,
which has its own “serial sequel” issues. This is like nothing you have
ever seen before and one way to think about it is that it does not allow the
subject of these prisoners being trapped to become a celebrated ugliness.
It never glorifies things, never introduces enough of the Gangster genre to
ever make this seem like a place you would want to be or could survive and
thrive in, does not send a message that the whole world is rotten and bad
things happen all the time in a way that it is telegraphed to the
audience. It does not perpetuate a sense of terrorism to hit the viewer
on the head with. It does not assume it knows reality, something Oz
eventually runs into problems with, which is why it ran out of room before it
should have to make great shows, despite some great seasons.
The full
frame image is from a good 35mm print, and since it is in the PAL format, is a
bit richer and thicker than usual, translating well on all the NTSC monitors it
played back on that could handle it. It also played well on digital HD
monitors and PC screens. Co-lensed by cinematographers Paul Goldman and
Graham Wood, then processed in an Australian lab, it has a look unlike just
about any film you will see. This, along with director John Hillcoat’s
loss of some detail control of the misé-en-scene, is the reason this is
sometimes considered a science fiction film. One quote even sited George
Lucas’ original THX-1138 (1971),
which is high complement indeed.
The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo sound nicely reproduces the original Dolby A-type analog
stereo surround the film was originally issued with theatrically, including the
fine score by Nick
Cave, Mick Harvey and Blixa
Bargeld. The music is so rich, that a 5.1 Dolby and DTS mix could have
been done, something to consider for a digital High Definition version down the
line.
Extras
are extensive and are often cross-referenced. On the main extras menu,
five subsections exist: Interviews, Nick Cave,
Production, Promotion, and Criticism. Hillcoat, English, Cave and
Bargeld’s old and new interview segments are included. These include some
audio-only pieces in some cases, and video interviews either from the time of the
film (1988) or for this DVD release. After the section all to cave,
Production is broken down into: Concept & Research, Filmmakers, Cast,
Storyboards, Photographs, and Music & Sound. In that, you get four
music-only pieces of the original soundtrack, and four David Hale dialogue
pieces explained as part of the roots of this project. Promotion gives us
the Australian and French trailers, print promotion (in Europe), Venice & Cannes
introductions (which has seven slides and a nine-minutes-long piece about their
arrest for their posters being mistaken for political agit-prop), and a list of
the many other Festivals in initially appeared. A trailer for Chopper with Eric Bana is also
included, as Mick Harvey did the score for both films, and is included as one
of three other trailers in the Australian Prison Films section besides one for
the main film here. The other two are 1988’s Stir and 1994’s Everynight…
Everynight. Ghosts …Of The
Civil Dead deserves to be discovered as much as that film was, which happened
even before Bana landed up in ill-fated big-budget films like The Hulk and Troy. Umbrella Entertainment has created a very loaded,
extremely collectible DVD.
As for
the Science Fiction approach, it may take a somewhat documentary approach, but
the use of computer writing on screen to explain events and the ironically
colorful look of the prison, along with the “otherworldness” achieved on little
budget, the antiseptic nature of space and honest violence put it there by
default. Hillcoat needs to understand a Science Fiction film does not
have to take place in the future, as Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965) and Francois Truffaut’s version of Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451 (1966) prove.
Between some of the technology, as simple as it is here, looking a bit
futuristic (especially for 1988) and guards who look like fireman/football
players, Science Fiction comes to mind more than documentary or news items.
The design of the prison on top of colors is another. Then there is
the dangerous assumption that, because the news always tells us of bad news,
that “we would hear about this if it happened” as if we the public were always
told what was going on. Some people are amazingly naïve. Ghosts …Of The Civil Dead makes a
strongly contrary point, even if viewers often miss it. The good news is
that, because Hillcoat had the production look he intended, the film will hold
up visually for many more years than he may have intended.
For more
Hillcoat/Cave filmmaking, see our coverage of their critical and commercial hit
Lawless at this link for its Blu-ray
release:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11928/Lawless+(2012/Anchor+Bay/Weinstei
-
Nicholas Sheffo
