Page 9 - RD_Dec2012.pdf

Links about search and lead film

Meg Labrum’s conversation earlier this year with the Dial M for Movies team
on ABC Radio 774: http://dialmformovies.net/2012/05/16/1092

Scene still from ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ as heading on NFSA website page:
http://nfsa.gov.au/collection/nfsa-most-wanted-collection-works/

Same still with Harp McGuire used to head another page in the NFSA site:
http://nfsa.gov.au/collection/film/australias-lost-films/

Well informed background with excellent production and scene stills on
another part of the website:
http://nfsa.gov.au/blog/2010/05/28/captain-thunderbolt-and-
the-search-for-lost-films/

While no adult members of cast or crew for ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ are known
to be living, various related parties have been located, notably the family of
the distinguished cinematographer Ross Wood. Two then-young cast
members of the flashback to the child years of Thunderbolt have been
located. Queensland film buff and poster expert John Reid’s interview with
Phillip Hawkes is on his website devoted to Australian film history
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y682mZG95yU

The Archive’s education-purposed website Australian Screen Online has no
mention of ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ as yet, but some good soul has put the
entire trailer up on Youtube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdFUO7lTfc&feature=related

Commenting on that trailer in the 2010 festival session, the professionally
erratic and irascible Bob Ellis was reminded of some lesser Randolph Scott
movie. It has to be understood for what it is, an attempt by the minor
distributor Ray Rushmer to appeal to his own clientele i.e. the suburban
action houses, minor country cinemas, and the drive-ins. After several
years of the trade refusing any release, Ray Films had picked the film up
and Greater Union opened it into the bottom-rung Lyric near Railway
Square, Sydney. In that trailer from 35mm, and for the first time in over
fifty years, we can see Wood’s inspired cinematography allied to Cecil
Holmes’s vigorous direction. With an overlay of pseudo-American style
traileratics, so what? And what was wrong to look like Randolph Scott?

All the above will be added in January to the story at the specific site
www.captainthunderboltfilm.vpweb.com.au/

David Donaldson, Adelaide