Benvenuti a Woop Woop

How can you give a bad rating to this film? This movie rocks. It is so unique and different. Just imagine that you are a grifter that a mobster is trying to kill. Oh yeah, you catch and sell cocateaus (I think that is how you spell it). So you decide to run off to Australia (you can catch some of those birds there). However, while you are in Australia you end up having sex with a lovely lady, who drugs you and marries you while you are passed out. Then she takes you to live on a compound deep in the outback that is run by her charismatic and psychotic father. Played incredibly by Rod Taylor. OK that is enough, you have to watch the rest and you will be happy that you did. This movie is eye and ear candy!

I'd never heard of this movie, never knew Rod Taylor was Australian (this from someone who saw Hitchcock's "The Birds" in a theater during its initial release) and I really need to see it again when it is not interrupted every five minutes by a string of commercials, as on the Sinclair (Charge!) station where I did see it. No need to say much more; the other reviews tell you as much as you need to know, but I will say the opening sequence in New York probably probably nails the world's view of American gun culture and the two endings (preceding and following the closing credits) are worth the wait.

I did love the throwaway line about the asbestos mine burning for weeks.

I can understand how non-Australians might not get "Welcome to Woop Woop". As an Aussie, I don't get it either.

Australian cinema has produced some off-the-wall comedies over the years, but this one is in a league of its own.

Teddy (Johnathon Schaech), an American rare bird smuggler on the run ends up in the Australian outback. He meets Angie (Susie Porter), a sexually veracious girl who drugs him and takes him to her community in the ex-asbestos mining town of Woop Woop run by her father Daddy-O (Rod Taylor).

Teddy wakes up to find he is married to Angie. He gets caught up in the weird lifestyle of the isolated community whose only source of entertainment and connection to culture is old videos of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals - a little like "Galaxy Quest" where the alien Thermians only understand human behaviour through the signals they have received of old television shows.

Along with the most strident of Australian accents, the changes of mood in the film are bewildering - singing, dancing and fornicating one minute and shooting dogs the next. This slice of Australiana makes the characters in "Wake in Fright" seem like Oxford dons.

I only saw "Woop Woop" recently (2015) when it appeared on "World Movies" about the same time as a documentary called "Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!" Apparently Quentin Tarantino championed the documentary and I must admit it was more entertaining than most of the films it featured, including "Welcome to Woop Woop"

The cast gave it everything they had, and seemed to be in on the joke. Rod Taylor has one great scene where he does an electric tap dance to "Shall We Dance" on the bar with leads on his shoes connected to a battery. But as far as I'm concerned these were the only sparks generated in the film.

Stephen Elliott had made "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" the year before. "Priscilla" was outrageous with souvenirs of ABBA, ping-pong balls etc. - but it was funny. "Welcome to Woop Woop" is outrageous and tedious.

Would I recommend the film? Well that all depends on what you like. Some people relish a good bad movie. By bad, I don't mean poor editing or shoddy sound, far from it, "Woop Woop" is polished as far as production values are concerned - I mean bad in concept. It has a certain cult following, but that's one cult I managed to escape.

"Welcome to Woop Woop" takes Australian cliches to the extreme. When con-artist Teddy escapes to the Australian outback, he finds himself drugged, unconsciously married and trapped in "Woop Woop" an outback town inhabited by zany hooligans.

I enjoyed it. Initially, I didn't want to rent it after reading several negative reviews, but I'm glad I finally did proving that critics are often wrong.

There's one scene which I won't spoil that hit the film's high-point, and let's just say I will never look at the Sound of Music again, or at least Mother Abbess.

The soundtrack was fantastic (especially the "Climb Every Mountain" remix) and the cast were great. Johnathon Schaech and Dee Smart gave nice performances, but the show stealers were arguably Rod Taylor and Susie Porter. Both reigned with charisma and succeeded in entertaining and disgusting audiences with their amazingly repulsive father/daughter performance . Paul Mercurio also makes a humorous cameo reiterating one of the stricter rules of "Woop Woop" ~ "Nobody leaves".

Although some scenes caused me to wince, such as the Woop Woop abbatoir scenes and a funny, yet disturbing incestual relationship, I suggest you check it out.

Welcome to Woop Woop is a brilliant satire of Australian culture.

7.5/10

One of the wonderful aspects of cinema is that all the various originality of a culture can be presented, in any combination, with their indigenous visual and aural realities. The arid outback, the aussie dialect, and the Down Under idea of Wacky combine in this oh-so-funny film to bring you to tears from laughing so hard. You'll find yourself rewinding to see a great slapstick scene again, or to hear exactly what someone said. A quick take will clarify a confusing one several scenes earlier causing renewed laughter yet again. When the credits began rolling I began laughing again at remembered shots still teasing my memory. And laughter isn't all this film has to offer - bits of poignance, ire, and mystery are added to the recipe to round out its flavor. The story could only have been told in Australia by Australians to acheive so great result. So, Laugh me dead, Mate, if this wasn't a gem of a film!