Title No: 11273
W I D E R SCREENINGS TM presents...
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA / DVD
DEATHCHEATERS (1976)
Madman DVD (region 4)
d. Brian Trenchard-Smith; pr. Brian Trenchard-Smith; scr. Michael Cove; ph. John Seale; m. Peter J. Marton; stunt cord. Grant Page; ed. Ron Williams; cast. Grant Page, John Hargreaves, Margaret Gerard, Noel Ferrier, Chris Haywood, Roger Ward, Judith Woodriffe (86 mins)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
AUSTRALIAN DVD COVER
Brian Trenchard-Smith and the Internationalization of Australian Exploitation Cinema
Deathcheaters is a collaboration between celebrity stunt man Grant Page and then-hot Australian exploitation director Brian Trenchard-Smith, who had just utilized Page’s talents as stunt coordinator on the hit Man From Hong Kong.
Here, Page and John Hargreaves star as two risk-junkies who seek their next adrenaline rush with a little comic book super-heroics, attempting to infiltrate a Filipino fortress, the headquarters of a criminal enterprise. But the plot here is a mere excuse to showcase some exciting and adrenaline-raising stunt work and create a portrait of men attracted to extreme risk. Indeed, director Trenchard-Smith knows the film is an action showcase and from the start, in scenes showing stuntmen at work during filming, draws attention to the fact that the film is a construction. On initiating the notion of cinematic artifice, Trenchard-Smith then settles down to the exploitation director’s job of integrating plot, character and action, which he does with relish, gleefully bringing his camera close-in on the daredevil duo as the perform a variety of death-defying stunts – from abseiling down buildings to beach buggy chases and much more. Page and Hargreaves are an amiable duo: rugged Aussie individualists addicted to danger. In their characterization, Trenchard-Smith introduces a self-reflexive examination of his chosen genre – action-exploitation. It is in Deathcheaters that the director explores the psychology and screen mythification of the man of danger. For Hargreaves, this is a characterization but for Page the film is a showcase opportunity for the stuntman to demonstrate the thrill of his profession whilst integrating it into a conventional narrative.
OPENING CREDITS
______________________________________________
Screen Mythification of the Aussie Man of Danger
Page and Hargreaves are an amiable duo: rugged Aussie individualists addicted to danger. In their characterization,
Trenchard-Smith introduces a self-reflexive examination of his chosen genre – action-exploitation. It is in Deathcheaters that the director explores the psychology and screen mythification of the man of danger. For Hargreaves, this is a characterization but for Page the film is a showcase opportunity for the stuntman to demonstrate the thrill of his profession whilst integrating it into a conventional narrative.
Stuntman exploitation had at the time in the USA found box-office popularity in such films as Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper, elevating Burt Reynolds to iconic action hero. Trenchard-Smith clearly with Deathcheaters sought to use the risk-taking character type in order to introduce the stuntman as star, or at least co-star for it would be in the subsequent collaboration between Page and Trenchard-Smith that Page would headline. While the next film, Stunt Rock, would integrate narrative and documentary with self-conscious stylization, it was the concentration on straight exploitation narrative and integrated action in the earlier Deathcheaters that enabled Trenchard-Smith to initiate the definitive stuntman-as-celebrity trend in exploitation cinema. In that, Deathcheaters is a superior example of intelligent craftsmanship in so-called “Ozploitation” cinema.
James Bondian derring-do had appealed to Trenchard-Smith when he cast former Aussie Bond star George (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) Lazenby in his previous Man From Hong Kong.
As a follow-up he uses the plot of Deathcheaters to frame action spectacle as an enthralling Aussie mateship movie, hence the flashback to the Vietnam War showing the daredevil addiction of the two protagonists borne of Australia’s wartime experience, an evocation of the issues and psychological imprinting of Australians in Vietnam that was then contemporaneously explored in The Odd Angry Shot. But, Trenchard-Smith is also intrigued here by the sex appeal of such Aussies as much as the reality of their danger-seeking behaviour. Hence, his camera concentrates on the expressions and reactions of his male protagonists in terms of their addiction to danger.
EXTRACT
Although Trenchard-Smith here does this by integrating stunt and narrative, his subsequent work in Stunt Rock would introduce post-modern self-reflexivity in order to simultaneously construct and deconstruct Page as an Aussie legend. Deathcheaters has frequent narratively justified scenes of filmmaking as the two heroes continue their day job as stuntmen and minor actors. It is this smooth integration of stunt and revelation of the process of stunt work that makes Deathcheaters an insider’s stunt movie: it knows its stuff and brings the reality and invigoration of stunt work as a profession to the exploitation crime fighting drama. Though consisting of comic-book level plotting, Deathcheaters is a visually complex and generically ambitious look at danger’s thrall over a select type of Aussie man.
______________________________________________
Subtextual Criticism of Australian Interventionalism
There’s a political context in the script – a rather fanciful proposition of Australian interference in the actions of independent countries, something that has dogged Aussie war policy as it followed Britain into World War One (and Gallipoli) and the USA into Vietnam.
But the material here is an Australian-ization of the typical political action film plot of American exploitation in the 1970s. Trenchard-Smith is less an imitator than an interpreter though and his intent in Deathcheaters (as it was in The Man From Hong Kong) is to see how American film formula is suited to the Aussie temperament: the Aussie-fication of genre cinema. It is this intent coupled with Trenchard-Smith’s technical skill which makes him one of the true pioneers of Ozploitation and Deathcheaters a standout achievement.
In addition to an informative commentary track by Trenchard-Smith, exec producer Richard Brennen and actress Margaret Gerard is a bonus second disc containing the documentary feature Dangerfreaks. Also by Trenchard-Smith, this is a feature documentary about film stunt-making. An ideal complement to Deathcheaters, Dangerfreaks uses the documentary form to examine both the mechanics of stunt special effects and the psychology of the men involved. It is with the benefit of hindsight that the director returned to the subject of stunt-work (and the person and persona of Grant Page) in Dangerfreaks that, sometime after the popular image of the Aussie male had been cemented in the USA with the release of Crocodile Dundee, Trenchard-Smith finally confronts what had underpinned his stunt-exploitation hybrids Deathcheaters and Stunt Rock.
His first stunt-film, Deathcheaters was a straight but self-conscious exploitation flick; his second film Stunt Rock was a post-modern creation of the stuntman as living legend; his third film Dangerfreaks is a psychological portrait of the man behind the legend.
This trio of films takes Page from escapist fiction to behaviourist documentary and together comprise exploitation cinema’s most rewarding and complex evocation of the stunt man. Indeed, these Aussie films stand together as an Australian complement and contrast to the brilliant use of the stunt man archetype in Richard Rush’s highly-acclaimed but barely-seen The Stunt Man. Grant Page was one of the most acclaimed of stuntmen and sexually appealing of rugged Aussie macho-men: an enduring image that begins with Deathcheaters.
______________________________________________
DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION:
Deathcheaters
AMAZON.COM DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Deathcheaters ( Death Cheaters ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ]
RECOMMENDED AUSTRALIAN VIEWING SELECTIONS
