Scobie Malone

Sydney shines and is the star of this 1970s Ozploitation detective mystery. Jack Thompson plays Jon Cleary's Scobie Malone investigating the death of a high class prostitute/model at the Sydney Opera house. Scobie lives in a singles apartment complex surrounded by plenty of bare breasted young women lazing by the pool and only too willing to jump into bed with him. We get a tour of the bowels of the Sydney Opera House as one of the characters is chased by the suspected bad guy down stairs, ladders and endless corridors. (Why didn't she run out the front door?) Jack Thompson plays his role in a cheeky laconic manner and Judy Morris overacts as Helga. Look out for Bryan Brown in a bit part as a uniform cop at the Opera House. This is a time capsule of 1970s Sydney and cinema.

This is an awful adaptation of Jon Cleary's detective novel with shocking dialogue and poor direction resulting in a muddled cop story about the murder of a high-class call-girl.

The best thing about the film are the incidentals - the shots of sunny Sydney, especially the Rocks area, and the fashion. Jack Thomson shows his limitations, and comes across as a smug but wooden bastard, though the writing must take most of the blame.

Judy Morris is ok, but her character is a bit over-the-top. Everyone else looks as wooden as hell. No wonder this was Terry Ohlsson's only outing as a director.

"Scobie Malone" is a ridiculous attempt at an Aussie noir with added flashes of "Alvin Purple" style nudity and semi-humour.

The story is the usual thing about a dead girl who it turns out was trying to blackmail the politician she was having an affair with. This is shown in a flashback sequence which is depicted so badly you won't even realise it's a flashback you're watching.

The nudity, and the bizarre touch of making the hero an Alvin Purple- type ladies man, is so at odds with this material that it takes all the "noir" out of the "film". Yes, it's about corruption, blackmail, murder - but look! There's another pair of breasts next to Scobie Malone's face. And he appears to live in a resort populated entirely by topless models?

There have been erotic noir before, obviously. But nudity is used here less for pleasure than punchline. It's like an episode of Benny Hill but with unbelievably badly orchestrated violence. When we finally see how the girl bought it, it's impossible to believe she was killed by the inept thug sent after her. Scobie Malone has to get rough with a crook, and he does so in the least threatening way I have ever seen in a movie, just taking the guy's collar as if trying to chase dust from it. I expected the guy to thank him and ask if he could do his tie as well.

The movie may be absurd, but don't expect it to be entertaining. The clichés are just that tired, even by the mid-seventies, that there is nothing about this movie that makes it worth watching, and nothing about it that will surprise you, apart from maybe how bad it is - and how at odds that dreadful '70s nudity-as-a-gag shtick is when put up against a story of blackmail and murder.