WATCH SURRENDER IN PARADISE ON YOUTUBE
ABOUT SURRENDER in PARADISE
Surrender in Paradise was shot in 1975 in and around Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Ipswich, Rathdowney and a few other spots. Regarded as the first feature film fully made in Queensland.
Written Produced and Directed: Peter Cox
Music: Ralph Tyrell
Cinematography: Don McAlpine
Editor: Bob Blasdall
with: Carolyn Howard, Errol O’Niell, Ross Gilbert, Bill Reynolds, Rod Wissler. Gaye Poole, Gavin Patterson, Harry Gibbs, Robby Ireland, Jeff Blow.
Plot: Before the turn of the century (which one?) a bushranger and his hapless buddies are chased by an equally hopeless police squad across the Queensland countryside and through time – for a final showdown – on the beach in Surfers Paradise!
original poster 1976
click to download an A3 version
music:
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tagline’ from the poster: 'An amazing, amusing, semi-sweaty, sub-tropical, leap into mock fiction through a disorientating rip in the funny-fabric of time and space, outside the law, above the bitumen, between the flags, beyond the breakers and much more.'
"A low budget revenge film starring two men and a dog (?) - which begins in the bush as a Western and ends up in Surfers Paradise. Deliciously offbeat, it contains both a time warp and a style warp."
- note from AFI/Chauvel Cinema Sydney programme 1988
Running Time - 78 minutes
more:
“Surrender in Paradise is a ‘lost’ text of truly mythic reputation. Like most such reputations, it may be richly undeserved. Meaghan Morris helped propel it into this status by dropping references to it in her film criticism in the seventies and early eighties, as a film impossible to see but a touchstone example of many and various things if it ever could be seen… It was always hinted to be deliciously delirious (an important attribute of the era immediately following it), a valuably unstable work…postmodern even before the word had been re-released in the early eighties… I think it is fairest to leave its ‘unspeakable’ and uncheckable qualities intact, before the rarest of occasions, its public screening.
“A cult film, seen only by a tiny and very inner cabal. Isn’t that enough? More? It is a road –movie through the territory of the simulacrum, even before Baudrillard was being post-maturely taken up in delayed English translation. It is a time-warp western that ends up on the modern day beaches of Surfer’s Paradise (that scene of countless tawdry occasions for wonder, only ever taken up again many years later in another cult movie, Goodbye Paradise). I’ve already said too much. Enough to say that attendance at this screening will make you a member of a group even more select than the one that has seen the Journalist. In the long period between its completion and (by dint of sheer inertia) its eventual, appearance on our television screens.”
from
THE SCREENING OF AUSTRALIA VOL. 2 – Anatomy of National Cinema - Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka - Currency Press / April 1988)
WATCH SURRENDER IN PARADISE ON YOUTUBE
contact Peter Cox: email here
chapters:
1. TITLES AND CRICKET: CRICKET MATCH ON HILL
2. GETS THE MESSAGE: RUTTER AND RUSTY GET MESSAGE AND SET OFF
3. THE STOCK SQUAD: RUTTER ASSEMBLES 'STOCK SQUAD'
4. VALDA JOINS THEM: THEY COLLECTING VALDA
5. FIRST NIGHT: RUSTY'S GROUP CAUGHT AND ESCAPE
6. MORTLAKE ARRIVES: HE JOINS THEM IN THE CHASE
7. RUSTY ARGUES: RUSTY ANGRY AT OLD RAILWAY STATION
8. A ROAD …A CAR: THEY FIND A ROAD - AND A VAUXHALL!
9. COL'S VALIANT: RUTTER COMMANDEERS A VALIANT
10. CAR BREAKS DOWN: VAUXHALL BREAKS DOWN AND RUTTER TRIES TO CATCH THEM
11. SEPARATE HIGHWAY: SONG IN THE PONTIAC PARISIENNE
12. RED SANDMAN: RUSTY GETS A RED SANDMAN WAGON
13. VALIANT DIES: VALIANT BREAKS DOWN AND RUSTY'S DREAM
14. HOLDEN, HOLDEN…: VALDA DEFEATED 'HOLDEN… FALCON… DUNNO' + TRACKERS SONG
15. PARADISE: ARRIVE AT SURFERS + CECIL, DULCIE, FRANKIE AT AIRPORT
16. AIRPORT DREAMING: DULCIE'S POLAROIDS + FRANKIE'S DREAM
17. CHASING VALDA: RUTTER AND MORTLAKE CHASE VALDA
18. NIGHT LIFE: BROWN & GREEN IN SURFERS FUN
19. RUSTY & MUM: ILUKA - MUM DIES. CECIL AND OTHERS ARRIVE
20. SURRENDER: RUSTY SURRENDERS - AND STRUNG UP
21. BEACH GUNFIGHT: GUNFIGHT SHOWDOWN BETWEEN THE FLAGS
22. END CREDITS: CLOSING TITLES