Mad Bomber in Love
Producer: George Mannix
Director: James Bogle
Opens November 27 at the AFI Cinema in Sydney
Reviewed by Karen Fredericks
A week before they were due to start shooting Mad Bomber In Love, George Mannix and James Bogle still hadn't managed to find a camera. The went to Sony to ask to borrow a Beta SP and, according to Mannix, "sat there being really cool. If they'd known we were due to shoot in less than a week I don't know what they'd have thought. Boy, did we leap and slap hands in the car park after that one!"
The film (actually, it's a video, shot with the borrowed camera on second-hand Beta stock) was written in six weeks and filmed in 14 days in a Surry Hills house they found by advertising in the Sydney Morning Herald's "Column 8".
The project had no budget, required very little paperwork and relied on the raw creativity of a cast and crew driven mad by underemployment. Apart from a couple of hundred dollars each, which they threw in for caterers, neither Mannix nor Bogle, nor anybody else, put money into the production. Instead they begged and borrowed equipment, deferred payments and exchanged services for credits.
The result reflects the energy, talent and sense of humour which spawned the project. It is a low-budget cross between Dogs In Space, Alien and Cape Fear, destined for success on the cult circuit at least. It is the film adolescents, and adolescents at heart, talk up between themselves when they are dreaming of becoming film makers — bombs, blood, suburban icons, offbeat characters and distaste for "the system".
Julia (Rachel Szalay) takes Bernard (Craig Pearce) home after a party. When Bernard greets Julia's house mate, Gunther (Alex Morcos), on the morning after with a breakfast of bacon and eggs and announces he has moved into the spare room, it becomes clear that Julia's one night stand has become a domestic arrangement. Bernard is then gradually revealed as the house mate from hell, obsessed with rosters, washing up and kitty expenditure.
But Bernard is not your average annoying house mate. He also turns out to be the infamous Mad Bomber, a previously anonymous local hero who has been getting plenty of press for bombing widely hated symbols of yuppiedom throughout Sydney. Julia, who has been waging her own, more conventional but less effective, war against evil forces, eagerly joins Bernard's exploits and together they blast a sexist billboard (an act which certainly put me on their side) and then force everybody in Sydney to use public transport for one day by planting unexploded bombs on every major arterial road in the city.
When Julia suggests that they blow up the advertising agency which conceived the offensive billboard and Bernard insists that they should do it during the day, so as to kill the yuppie advertising executives, their relationship comes under strain. Julia, shocked by Bernard's es to participate, and Bernard labels her "just another lounge room anarchist".
But it is when Bernard calmly stabs a vegetarian art gallery curator and part-time solicitor (Marcus Graham in one of the many "spot the star" cameos, including Craig McLachlan, Zoe Carides, Max Cullen, Anthony Ackroyd, Roy and H.G and Andrew Denton) who has come about an available room in the house, that the household collectively realise they are in deep trouble.
This is share house drama at its most extreme: a household in which failure to fulfil one's quota of washing up could be fatal (hence the film's subtitle: "Pray it's not your turn to do the washing up!")
The script and design betray an intimate familiarity with share house dynamics, and the actors are right for their parts, although somewhat self-conscious.
I thought Alex Morcos, as Gunther, a scuba diving fanatic with a likable zen attitude and a baseball cap, stood out as the most relaxed performer, although he didn't have to do much. Zachery McKay, as Bill the Drummer, does a fantastic New Zealand accent, and Laura Keneally as his girlfriend, May Lou, delivers what was for me the best line in the film, in exactly the right tone. It occurs in the period of calm before Bernard's insane presence has really taken hold of the house. Mary Lou appears at the doorway of the batik-draped bedroom in which Bill is lolling listlessly and delivers the jarring, difficult news: "Bill, we've got to do some things ..."
Craig Pearce (who, in his other life as a screenwriter, co-wrote Strictly Ballroom with Baz Luhrmann) has a self-conscious try at a Roger Moore James Bond early in his role as Bernard the bomber and finishes with a pale imitation of Robert De Niro in Cape Fear. The role could have done with someone weirder. Pearce is cute, but not believably insane.
Szalay is more convincing, although she has some trouble with moving from chipper to terrorised, and despite the appropriate props didn't really pull off the tough, desperate "Ripley vs the Aliens" act in the final scenes.
However, the fact that this no-budget video can be viewed as cinema, albeit cult cinema, and appreciated and enjoyed as such is an amazing achievement. Its flaws may mainly be attributed to its short production schedule and complete lack of resources. Despite these severe limitations, it provoked a few laughs, many giggles and an affectionate appreciation of inner-city share house life, minus the homicidal maniac.