Summer City

1977
15
1h 30m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Steve Bisley, John Jarratt, and James Elliott in Summer City (1977)

The exploits of four boys who leave Sydney and head out for a weekend of surfing and adventure. Unfortunately the fun takes a serious turn when they find themselves involved in a murder.The exploits of four boys who leave Sydney and head out for a weekend of surfing and adventure. Unfortunately the fun takes a serious turn when they find themselves involved in a murder.The exploits of four boys who leave Sydney and head out for a weekend of surfing and adventure. Unfortunately the fun takes a serious turn when they find themselves involved in a murder.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

3.9/10

789

YOUR RATING

15User reviews

See production info at IMDbPro

User reviews15

Featured review

6/10

Flawed but watchable

Whoever wrote the last review simply doesn't get the film.

While there's a happy-go-lucky veneer to everything, like the surfing, the sex and "larrikin" behaviour (wild young lads basically), that's mostly on the surface. The scenery is actually far from cheery... in fact, it is used on some occasions in ways that could have been straight out of "Twin Peaks" (especially the shots of the sun rising over the sea), if it wasn't for the climate. The menacing Bush (no pun intended) is a common feature in Aussie films, perhaps too much so.

As for "slurred slang", this is how Australians speak. Sorry! There is only one part where I couldn't make it out, which is a rude remark Boo makes to a girl in a greasy burger joint. If Americans really need subtitles to work out Australian dialogue, I suggest they go and study the language at night class.

Mel Gibson is indeed wrongly touted as the star of the film on the packaging, but he is by no means a "very minor role", in fact he is one of the group of four young men on whom the action is centred, and who witnesses (and keeps quiet about) certain things which are integral to the plot.

Also the last reviewer is wrong about it being set in the seventies - it was made then, but from the title sequence, and the music which gets played it's clearly meant to be the sixties! So, I reckon the film has its flaws, but it's an interesting piece - if only to see Mel in his "introducing" role.

nephihaha
Jul 2, 2006
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Trivia
Director Christopher Fraser has said of this film: "It's been 23 years since I have commented on this film. I was the director and it was my first film. As far as I was concerned it was never finished. Despite the ludicrously low budget it could have been so much better than it turned out. All the leading actors fell into a serious argument with the producer and refused to continue working on the project. I never expected to see it on the screen. The producer and editor padded out the film with meaningless bits of irrelevant stock footage to make the required length of 87mins to qualify for a feature film. As you can imagine I was disappointed and embarrassed. Some parts of the movie actually work very well. There was a lot of spontaneous adlib especially between Mel [Gibson] and Steve [Bisley]. The first time we saw Mel [Gibson] in closeup in a viewing theater someone said "He's going to be a star". I thought so too. One day I'll tell the whole story. It's more complex and funny than the film itself."