Number 96

Number 96 is without doubt the most pathetic film ever made in Australia. It is so pathetic that it is brilliant. Although the film makers did not intend to do it, they have created a messterpiece ? (masterpiece).

This film was a spinoff of a popular TV show, Number 96, that ran for five nights a week from 1972 to 1977. The show was a late-night adult soap opera, and broke new ground for Australian television by showing regular nudity, by its frank inclusion of regular unmarried sex and promiscuity, and by its inclusion of a sympathetic non-effeminate gay man as one of the main characters.

The show consisted of the interlocking stories of the various inhabitants of the apartment building: the gossiping Dorrie Evans (Pat McDonald), her hen-pecked husband Herbert (Ron Shand) and their flatmate Flo Patterson (Bunney Brooke), English battlers Alf and Lucy Sutcliffe (James Elliott and Elisabeth Kirkby), bumbling shop assistant Arnold Feather (Jeff Kevin), gay lawyer Don Finlayson (Joe Hasham), elegant fashion designer Vera Collins (Elaine Lee), shopkeepers Aldo and Vera Godolfus (Johnny Lockwood and Philippa Baker), the bitchy Maggie Cameron (Bettina Welch), wine-bar operators Les and Norma Whittaker (Gordon McDougall and Sheila Kennelly), the very camp Dudley (Chard Hayward) and many others.

The film is like a big-screen extended TV episode, and was popular on release with the show's many fans. The film did not include the show's most famous character, the sex-symbol Bev Houghton (Abigail) who had recently left the show, but Rebecca Gilling fills in as the 'bad girl' flight attendant Diana Moore, and she has the main nude scenes in the movie. Nowadays it's hard to see what all the fuss is about, with the corny humour and unbelievable plot twists, though some people like it because 'it's so bad it's good!'

Number 96 encapsulates the best of the 1970s TV series of the same name which has been a major influence on more recent comedy shows like Kath & Kim. Number 96 also captures the flavour of the 1970s in Australia which was a transitional time from the values of the 195os represented by Dorry Evans to the coming of age of the baby boomers most strongly portrayed by Don Finlayson. The different values are not, however, placed in conflict, but are presented as a continuum comically sharing the same world.

As the movie is about the lives of the occupants of a block of flats in Paddington, the film is fast paced and holds your attention as you jump from a snippet of the life of one character to another which are all finally connected through various events at the flats. Apparently some viewers became so engrossed in the TV series that the makers received requests from viewers for a a flat at Number 96.

Well, once again, an excellent performance from the brilliant actress, Rebecca Gilling. Leading an all-star cast, this hilarious satire is a must for all extreme Right Wing-Australians.

This story of love, hate and Nazism is perhaps one of the best films from Australia in a long time.

An 8/10 for Number 96.