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Dead End Drive-In
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| Year: |
1986
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Director: |
Brian Trenchard-Smith
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| Stars: |
Ned Manning, Natalie McCurry, Peter Whitford, Wilbur Wilde, Dave Gibson, Sandie Lillingston, Ollie Hall, Lyn Collingwood, Niki McWaters, Melissa Davis, Margi Di Ferranti, Desirée Smith, Murray Fahey, Jeremy Shadlow, Brett Climo, Alan McQueen
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| Genre: |
Action, Science Fiction |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
The time is the near future and society has broken down, nowhere more than Australia, which is where Jimmy (Ned Manning), known informally as Crabs, lives. Although unemployment is rife and crime has spiralled out of control, Jimmy is more concerned with accompanying his brother on his job, which is towing away vehicles at scenes of accidents. He already has a job as a delivery driver, but brother Frank (Ollie Hall) thinks he's not muscular enough to combat the scavengers who can be a problem. No matter, as tonight Jimmy is taking girlfriend Carmen (Natalie McCurry) to the drive-in - what could possibly go wrong?
Dead End Drive-In was one of the idiosyncratic movies from director Brian Trenchard-Smith, but this one had the added kudos of being based on a story by award-winning Australian writer Peter Carey. Not that Carey wrote the script, Peter Smalley took care of that, but his input could have been the reason there was a sharper intelligence behind this than say, Trenchard-Smith's previous attempt at a society gone to the dogs science fiction effort, Turkey Shoot (which is neatly playing at the drive-in that Jimmy visits).
The thing about this film is that it's clearly supposed to be a metaphor for something, but exactly what is somewhat muddled. The drive-in itself, one presumes, is intended as a microcosm of Australian society, yet you don't really need to be caught up with the politics of the film and can just as easily enjoy it on the level of exploitation. It was clearly influenced by the Mad Max movies, so there are plenty of souped up vehicles to go along with your dystopian future, but a more obvious antecedent is Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris.
Like the Weir film, the hero becomes trapped in a vehicle-based community he cannot escape from, because when Jimmy and Carmen gain entry to the drive-in they have two of the wheels stolen from their car, and find the gates are locked so they cannot get out. There are enough conveniences there, including lavatory, showers and food, to ensure that they and their fellow prisoners can survive indefinitely, but only Jimmy seems keen to escape. Even Carmen gets acclimatised to this environment, prepared to leave her boyfriend and put up with this enforced leisure.
There are strong hints that there is a satire at work here, with the youth of Australia locked up to keep them away from the rest of society rather than giving them something useful to do and many of the prisoners are quite happy to stay where they are. Then there's the racism plot development, which sees Asian immigrants bussed into the "camp", leading to protests among the whites, a heavy handed but interesting way of holding a mirror up to pressing issues. Jimmy is having none of this, realising that the powers that be are simply setting the lower classes against themselves to stop them doing anything about the authorities, and after too many, well, dead ends, he gets to mount his break for freedom, which is just about all that distinguishes the outside from the inside. Dead End Drive-In has an edge over many of the post-apocalypse movies of the eighties with its shrewdness; it's not the best of them, but it's not bad at all. Music by Frank Strangio.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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