Rating:
½
Australia. 1989.
Crew
Director – Brian Trenchard-Smith, Screenplay – Kenneth G. Ross, Producers – Charles Hannah & David Hannay, Photography – Kevan ‘Loosey’ Lind, Music – Peter Westheimer, Special Effects – Steve Courtney & Allan Manning, Makeup Effects – Deryck De Neise, Production Design – Darrell Lass. Production Company – Premiere Film Marketing Limited/Medusa Communications Limited.
Cast
Mark Hembrow (David Gaze), Tessa Humphries (Neva St. Clair), Carrie Zivetz (Dr Lyddia Langton), Helen O’Connor (Barbara Sloan), John Clayton (Sergeant Whittaker), John Ley (Senior Sergeant Detective Delgarmo), Linda Newton (Carla Duprey), Margi Gerard (Maggi Jarrott), Mary Regan (Mary Mason), Shane Briant (Paul Miltz)
Plot
In Sydney, Australia, David Gaze has a series of visions of women being killed just before such happens. His girlfriend Neva suggests that this is because he can astral travel. In trying to warn tv presenter Mary Mason that she is the next targeted victim, David is regarded as a stalker. Alter Mary is killed, he is considered a potential suspect by the police. Next the killer begins to target women close to David. David’s psychologist Lyddia Langton believes him and pushes him to identify the face of the killer.
Brian Trenchard-Smith is an Australian director who has gained a certain cult fame – Quentin Tarantino even considers himself a fan. Though British born, Trenchard-Smith was raised in Australia and found his footing in various action movies in the 1970s Ozploitation heyday, most famously The Man from Hong Kong (1975). In genre material, Trenchard-Smith directed the sf prison film Turkey Shoot (1983), the quite good future satire Dead-End Drive-In (1986) and the modestly effective children’s film Frog Dreaming/The Quest (1986), before going to the US for films like Night of the Demons 2 (1994), Official Denial (1994), Leprechaun 3 (1995), Leprechaun 4: Leprechaun in Space (1996), Doomsday Rock (1997), Atomic Dog (1998), Megiddo (2001), Sightings: Heartland Ghost (2002), The Paradise Virus (2003), Tyrannosaurus Azteca/Aztec Rex (2007) and Arctic Blast (2010).
Trenchard-Smith had a good run in the 1970s and early 80s where the films he was making – The Man from Hong Kong, Day of the Assassin (1979), The Siege of Firebase Gloria (1988), even the derided Turkey Shoot – had decent budgets and were bringing Hollywood names to Australia to star. After that point however, Trenchard-Smith’s budgets and available list of name stars began to thin out. His films of the 1990s and 2000s look impoverished – at least those I have managed to get hold of with several being obscure, made for tv or not getting proper releases.
Out of the Body was clearly one of these films made on a lesser budget. The biggest name star it has to draw on is British actor Shane Briant who turns up for all of a single scene as the boyfriend of tv presenter Mary Regan. Clearly, Trenchard-Smith wasn’t putting much effort in and the result is a dull film. The script seems to be struggling with its concept. It has been pitched as a film about Astral Travel and there are a couple of scenes where Mark Hembrow does so. In actuality, it is more a film about Clairvoyance and treads a familiar path of stories such as Baffled! (1972), Visions (1972) and Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), which act as clairvoyant detective stories where someone picks up clues about murders about to happen.
There is also some very silly direction, none more so than the scene when Carrie Zivetz is pursued through a library as books fly out at her from the aisles, medical skeletons rotate to look as she passes and even the attempts to make gargoyles look sinister. There is a moderate jolt when Carrie Zivetz hypnotises Mark Hembrow in her office and presses him to recall who the killer is and he abruptly comes up off the couch with his eyes black. In the next scene, she flees into her office and is attacked by office furniture come to life. There is a very silly climax with Tessa Humphries running around a warehouse district pursued by a possessed cop car and seeing John Ley being levitated twenty feet up into the air and then made to shoot himself, all before a predictable twist ending.
Over-acting seems the call of the day. The most guilty offender among these is Mark Hembrow who looks more like a surfer than someone troubled by clairvoyant visions. Some scenes of him yelling “The cat! The cat!” induce more laughter than they do conviction, while the height of silliness is his scenes being taken into police custody. Tessa Humphries, the daughter of Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna Everage, is not much better, especially in the scenes where it comes to her trying to portray distress.
Trailer here
