| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.23.233.247 |
I've only just seen this and it's already a favourite film. It's not perfect but it's stuck in my dreams and I realise I've been emulating it in my own work in advance. The authoress only wrote one fiction book and this was it. She wrote it in six weeks after seeing it in her mind 'as a film'. She says in the dvd extras that time is not linear; I wonder if she really did just see the film and wrote what she saw? Amazing film, and the three disc set is wonderful too; but why is it old documentaries we have never seen feel so familiar? | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
Oh, I envy you seeing it for the first time, Tony. I've always LOVED this film. So eerily beautiful and mysterious, never giving up its secrets. Truly one of a kind. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.196.92 |
It's always been one of my very favourite films. I'm glad it made an impression on you, Tony. The books is available from Penguin, by the way, although it may be out of print now. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.72.14.113 |
'Picnic At Hanging Rock' is another 70s classic of adult cinema that puts to shame all of today's factory produced popcorn fodder. I was always a bit unclear about whether it was based on a true vanishing case or is it completely fiction? Either way it's a one-off masterpiece that once seen stays with you for a lifetime. Could rank as a ghost story without any ghosts and is one of those films that gets better every time you see it. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.179.204 |
It's fiction, Stephen, but I remember being unsure about this when I first saw the film as a teen (I suspect quite a few people were). The film has a wonderful atmosphere of strangeness and an underlying current of eroticism, and comes closer than most, in my opinion, to achieving the sense of awe and mystery found in the best tales of Machen and Blackwood. The film's score is genuinely haunting, too. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
One of my favourite films, too, ever since I was a boy. It's an astonishing piece of work - I must've seen it 20 times and it never gets stale. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.22.117 |
Never seen this, even if I know the film by its reputation. The fragments on YouTube look promising and the music, especially "The Ascent", is haunting. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I'm very fond of the film too. I sent Robert Aickman off to see it, and he was impressed. He thought (as I'd suggested) that it was quite Aickmanesque. "Most like me," he wrote, "is the lady who loses her underwear." | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.93.219 |
I love the film and would say 'Aickmanesque' nicely sums it up. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.166.189.17 |
I'm not a big film watcher - in fact I've hardly seen any at all for 10 years - but this film and 'Death in Venice' are my two favourite films of all time. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 149.254.219.30 |
I wonder why Aickman liked this and not Don't Look Now? They feel akin. Also has anyone seen the seemingly unavailable The Last Wave? Also the alternate ending to Picnic gave me goosebumps. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.119.24 |
Tony, I have THE LAST WAVE - it's been available as a Criterion DVD for some years now. http://www.playusa.com/DVD/Region_1/CART/2-/101355/-/Product.html?searchstring=l ast+wave&cur=513 I saw it on its first release and loved it, so I was a bit pleased when it finally surfaced on DVD. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
"The Last Wave" is great. There's something about antipodean horror films - a creepiness. Lovely stuff. My own favourite is "Long Weekend". | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
'Long Weekend' is a brilliant movie that I've only seen once late on TV way back in the 80s and I've never forgotten. It haunts me still, a truly spinechilling evocation of nature as hostile force! I remember the crying of the manatee made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and honestly can't recall a better portrayal of the sense of complete isolation and helplessness and escalating terror one must feel when lost in the wilderness. Must get the DVD. I enjoyed that recent Australian movie 'Jindabyne' and thought it had some of the same haunting qualities. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Here it is, cheap. http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/840088/Long-Weekend/Product.html | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
Hey that's for nothing!! I've ordered it already! Thanks Ramsey. I'm about to start 'Obsession' btw. { :-) ) | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
The Last Wave is seriously creepy. It was one of those I watched on cable (in the States) with my parents many times and it still has eerie resonances for me. To this day I can't hear aboriginal tribal music without getting gooseflesh! | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.165.182 |
Has anyone seen an Australian horror film called 'Cassandra'? Saw it many years ago when I was in college and it scared the living shit out of me. Picnic at Hanging Rock is one of those films I've heard of but never seen. Need to get a copy in... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
Even I've seen it, SiBee. You should be ashamed of yourself.  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 81.155.107.64 |
Who feels that 'A Day Out' (an Alan Bennett black and white film of a bike ride just broadcast on BBC2 from 1972 about 1911) shares an ambiance with PICNIC? | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I've always thought that Australian horror movies tend to draw on the vastness and strangeness of Australia's ultra-alien landscape. PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and THE LONG WEEKEND are excellent examples. RAZORBACK and ROGUE are others (though slightly cheesier movies). Even WOLF CREEK suggested that the killer had a near-supernatural relationship with a primal world from which his victims were separated by the softening influence of civilisation. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Australian weird cinema has something other films lach, IMHO. A strange sense of a hellish landscape lurking just beneath the one we know - THE LAST WAVE, LONG WEEKEND, WALKABOUT, THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, RAZORBACK, WOLF CREEK; all uniquely atmospheric films. I love Australian horror. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
BLACK WATER is my favourite recent Australian horror film. It's brilliant. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.48 |
Damn! Missed it, Des. I like Bennett. Wish he'd written more fiction - a lot of his writing has that mysterious 'feel' to it. Just bought an oldish Oxford Book of Classic Short Stories; loads of them are ghost stories. Funny that. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
wrong thread??? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 81.155.107.64 |
Weber, I think Tony was replying to my post above about 'A Day Out' by Alan Bennett. It was on TV Last night, and I likened it in ambiance to PICNIC. BTW, I entered your 'three cheers' short story competition on the Christmas Stories thread. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
I've written my entry for it, I just need to find someone with an interweb connected machine that still uses 3.5" floppy disk so i can email it to myself and post it on the board. Someone else needs to be the judge, unless we use a voting system. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.48 |
I was, Des. And Des - there was a similiar bike ride film made by the Scott brothers when they were in their teens. Possibly their best film. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.48 |
Des - just for you. It's a treat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EO7cu2qLIc | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 81.155.107.64 |
Wonderful. Thanks, Tony. I went on many bike rides in the Fifties and Sixties, but I don't think I ever bunked off school to do so. I was a goody-goody. They were all in a similar black and white, however. In Alan Bennett's Bike Ride 'Day Out', the men's amospheric trip reminded me of that of the young ladies in PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK - and the First World War for these boys was symbolic of their Ayers Rock. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>I just need to find someone with an interweb connected machine that still uses 3.5" floppy disk so i can email it to myself and post it on the board.<< Weber - I have both internet and 3.5" floppy disc drive if that's any help to you? But I don't know if you mean you need to be able to give the disc to someone, rather than email the file to them. Anyway, you know my email address if I can help. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.114 |
My PC at home is ancient and doesn't even have a USB port - just a floppy disk and a CD drive - not CD Writer. In my old job my work pc had a floppy drive but in my new job I use a more modern machine. Even the libraries locally have upgraded their machines and I can't transfer from my floppy disks there any more which is what I've been doing for most of this year. Luckily one of the guys in the office has an old machine that still uses the good old 3.5" floppy and he emailed me my files this morning. I think it may be time to upgrade at home. | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.153.165.191 |
Anyone remember a very fine 80's Aussie thriller called 'Crosstalk'? An experimental apartment block where all the amenities are controlled and regulated by computer is the setting for a gruesome murder and subsequent disappearance. Some neighbors eventually become suspicious when audio/visual clues are discovered on the building's computer systems. But is this just pure chance or is this new system more intelligent than we initially think? | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Another one that springs to mind for me was a great Aussie thriller of the 70s/80s about a serial killer picking up and murdering pretty female hitchhikers. Back at home a helpless wheelchair bound invalid slowly comes to suspect his odd drifter of a brother is the killer. It was like an updated combination of Hitchcock's 'Shadow Of A Doubt' & 'Rear Window' that, in my memory at least, worked quite brilliantly as an exercise in pure suspense. Anyone know the title? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.132.170.90 |
It half sounds like Road Games, apart from the wheelchair guy bit. I love Road Games. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 93.96.181.75 |
Floppy disk...  But back OT. I put several Criterion DVDs on my Amazon wish list and Picnic at Hanging Rock was one of them. So fingers crossed! I've always adored the film, just never seen the Criterion edition. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.0.107.17 |
It wasn't 'Road Games' which is another brilliant thriller. One of Stacey Keach's best ever roles. Haven't seen it in years. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.178.138 |
The Second Sight 3-disc deluxe edition of Picnic at Hanging Rock is the one to go for, in my opinion. Unlike the Criterion edition, it has a load of extras, and includes the original version of the film as well as the shorter 'director's cut'. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
At last, after years of searching, I've found the name of that great Australian psycho-thriller: 'End Play' (1976) directed by Tim Burstall and based on the novel by Russell Braddon (if any of that means anything to anyone). A real classic of its kind! It's at times like this you realise just how wonderful the internet really is... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Russell Braddon certainly does to me - Committal Chamber was on my Book of Lists list. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Now that's a list I'd like to see! |