1. The Stratton Account:
David Stratton provided a detailed account of the film, as a classic example of all that went wrong with the Australian film industry and its films in the early rush to exploit the new federal government tax investment break (which initially offered a generous 150% break on the investment and a 50% break on returns) known as 10BA (though there was also a slightly different form known as 10B).
The film isn't well known. It never achieved a theatrical release. It wasn't reviewed by specialist film magazine Cinema Papers, which fancied itself as the magazine of record, it isn't listed in Murray's 1995 Australian Cinema, and Tony Harrison in his Australian Film & TV Companion dismisses it briefly with the comment A family is menaced by a killer stalking their suburban community. This is a mundane thriller, filmed in western Sydney as Something Wicked, with director McDuffie understandably removing his name from the credits.
There's a lot more to the story of McDuffie and his credit, as explained by Stratton in his 1990 The Avocado Plantation (a joking reference to other Australian tax scams, which frequently involved pine plantations, olive groves, jojobas, mangos and avocados):
Early Frost (1981) was a more traditional whodunit, but the mystery was not so much. Who was the murderer? as Who directed the film? This is the only Australian feature on which there is no director credit, not even a mythical name like 'Alan Smithee' (used on American films where, for whatever reason, the director does not want to be named). The director was, in fact, Brian McDuffie, who had worked in New Zealand television and made a few short films at Film Australia in the early 80s (with eye-catching titles like The Federal Parliamentary System and A Cyclone Warning). Producer Hannay believes this was the first 10BA film, and it was part of a package of films financed by Filmco.
The project dates back to 1974, when Hannay was running the short-lived production arm of Greater Union. A GU publicist, Geoff Brown, brought Terry O'Connor's script to Hannay's attention, but it took seven years to get it off the ground. O'Connor lived in Blacktown, to the west of Sydney, and his story was very specifically set in this working-class western suburb. Once money had been raised through Filmco, Hannay tried to secure Brian Trenchard Smith as director (they had worked together on The Man from Hong Kong), but Trenchard Smith was unavailable and so were other possible starters.
Brian McDuffie, according to Hannay, assured the writer and producers that he could and would make the film they had in mind. 'But then he went off and shot his own film. We fought him every day. We'd look at a scene and tell him him: "Look, you didn't get the emphasis right, will you please shoot it again." And he'd go off for a conference with the cast and crew and decide I was a philistine trying to take his picture way from him. I decided not to sack him - the sacking of Keith Salvat from Wall to Wall (later known as Crosstalk) had just occurred, and had given such things a bad odour. I decided to try to make it right afterwards, but, of course, it was never going to be right.'
It was always intended that Blacktown would be almost a character in this film about a woman who, as a result of some disastrous relationships, had neglected her children who had then turned evil. The decision was made to shoot in Blacktown, with cast and crew commuting there every day. 'But McDuffie hated being in Blacktown,' says Hannay. 'And he decided to transform it into Paddington. He took a perfect Blacktown house, and made it trendy.' Nor did the film make much sense: 'McDuffie liked to extemporise,' says Hannay, 'so a lot of the logic got lost along the way.'
The original screenplay was titled Something Wicked This Way Comes (a quote from Macbeth), and during production it became, simply, Something Wicked. The film was shot during a State election campaign and one unwary politician, visiting the set, was photographed wearing a Something Wicked T-shirt; the photo appeared in the newspapers the next day, and was a source of much mirth. However, Walt Disney owned the rights to the Ray Bradbury book of the same name and, to avoid a lawsuit, Hannay decided to change the title to Early Frost. Hannay received a letter from Disney's legal department, filled with ominous warnings about courtroom battles; the letterhead incongruously featured Mickey Mouse in one of his most endearing poses.
McDuffie was handed a letter at the wrap party informing him he was fired, and Hannay, Brown and O'Connor handled the post-production themselves. 'We assembled a director's cut to see if we could understand it; but we couldn't. So we started again and completely recut it. I personally worked on the sound design to try to bring back the sounds of Blacktown. But visually it wasn't what we intended at all. (Cinematographer) David Eggby gave it no feeling of place.'
Early Frost represents the worst kind of tax-shelter film produced in the early 80s. One crew member recalls: 'It was a film made for all the wrong reasons; a classic 10BA film. A rort from beginning to end. The crew was really pissed off having to drive all the way to Blacktown to shoot every night inside a house. No-one had any passion for the film, they only cared about the money. The original first assistant director was very inexperienced and only lasted a few days, but he learnt he was being fired only when he saw the call sheet on it. It was an example of everything that could go wrong; it was tainted from the word go. To top it all, it is supposed to be summer and boiling hot and the actors are so cold you can see the breath coming out of their mouths.'
Part of the film's problems were connected with the 'bunching' of films brought about by the way the tax scheme worked. So many films were produced at the same time that top people - directors, crews, actors - were in short supply and the result was often compromised productions like this one. It never had a cinema release and is justifiably forgotten, though Jon Blake, in one of his early roles, appears as one of the suspects. But the characters and situations, as presented here, are so laboriously one-dimensional that to call it comparable to a telemovie is to demean that modest art form.
A couple of addendums, as Stratton clearly relies only on the account of the producer and an anonymous crew member.
(1) There is a director credit of a sort - Geoff Brown and David Hannay share a second to last head credit as "post production directors", whatever that might mean, but in a form suggesting they sort of accepted responsibility for the final form in which the film was presented. (David Hannay would later, on Imdb, repeat Stratton's claim that it was the only Australian film not to have a director's credit, which makes the term 'post production director' even more peculiar. Few producers who supervise a cut in post production - a common enough practice in Australian television drama - would reward themselves with this form of wording).
(2) Any objective viewer of the film would find it hard to sustain the charge that McDuffie transformed a perfect Blacktown house into a trendy Paddington one (an inner eastern Sydney suburb). While there's the odd art work on the walls which might appear out of place in the drunken mum's bogan fibro house, these were most likely the art department trying to whip up a bit of visual interest. Most of the house interiors would strike even a casual observer as true to period working class style.
(3) It is perfectly understandable why a director, and the crew, would hate to travel each day to film interiors in Blacktown. That's travel time, morning and night, wasted, that might have been better spent on the shoot, rehearsals etc. Either accommodation should have been arranged on location (Blacktown is 34 kms west of Sydney's CBD), or better logistics worked out. That's not the business of the director, that's the business of the producer.
(4) On a scale of 10BA crimes, Early Frost was in the minor leagues, and stakes its claim as being one of the first, if not the first 10BA financed flop, and a typical example of Filmco's investment strategy (more on Filmco at Ozmovies' A Dangerous Summer).
Other producers who managed to misuse the federal tax scheme to produce woeful films did so on a grander scale, including but not limited to producers Phillip Emanuel and Antony Ginnane, and production company Boulevard Films (there is a risible, self-serving wiki listing for Boulevard on wiki here).
In any case the result is a mess, but the film isn't forgotten. It is still remembered in Blacktown, even much later down the track.
2. Locations:
Blacktown was at the time a relatively isolated outpost for working class Sydney. It is now much more intimately linked to Parramatta as part of greater western Sydney. Not being noted then or since as a common location for feature films, some still remember the film and its locations, as in a facebook listing available at time of writing, here.
According to correspondents to that site, the carpark in which the Jaguar was blown up belonged to the East Blacktown pub, and filming took place in Taronga Street and 68 Dora Street, with one claiming that writer Terry O'Connor, one of eight O'Connor children, and his parents had lived as long time residents in Booreea street. (This writer suggested O'Connor had subsequently died).
Another says that Booreea street was used for the scene where someone walks up the street, and into a death scene filmed in the O'Connor's backyard pool. Another pool scene, it is claimed, was filmed in Burke street.
Producer David Hannay would later claim on Imdb that the Jaguar XJ-6 that was blown up in the east Blacktown hotel car park was his, and not that of the writer, Terry O'Connor.
3. Cast:
One of the best scenes in the film - though it has little to do with the surrounding mystery thriller elements - involves elder brother Peter, played by Jon Blake, discussing life and their mother in a car with younger brother Joey, played by Daniel Cumerford. It has an artless feeling of emotional truth, but a different kind of tragedy would unite the actors.
Jon Blake would die in May 2011 at the age of 52, having suffered a road accident on the way back from the set of The Lighthorsem*n in December 1986 which left him in a totally incapacitated state. There is a valedictory to Blake at Adelaide Now, here, though it may be paywall affected.
And on Imdb Daniel Cumerford's father notes he was picked out during an open cast call and after winning the part, took an acting course, and then won the role of Ginger's rival Eddie Coogan in Ginger Meggs in 1982.
He bought a pinball machine and a skateboard with the proceeds, and retired from acting, but at the age of 19, he was killed when taking a short cut across a suburban train line near Rockdale.
Early Frost is a film that's rarely been reviewed or thought about since David Stratton in The Avocado Plantation dismissed it with the cruel words "to call it comparable to a telemovie is to demean that modest art form."
Yet it is comparable in many ways to a standard telemovie. The cast are all strictly television, and relatively well known as workers in Australian television drama, though a few had feature credits.
OTR star Guy Doleman (whom producer David Hannay said was his mentor when Hannay was a young actor) had appeared in such films as The Ipcress File and Thunderball in the 1960s, though he was best known in Australia for his radio work, while Kit Taylor had appeared as a young lad in the feature Long John Silver and the spin off TV series up against prime ham Robert Newton, and later appeared in feature films such as Don's Party.
But the two female leads were best known for television - Diana McLean had been a regular in The Young Doctors (and later Neighbours), while Janet Kingsburgy was also a TV regular, appearing in shows such as The Restless Years and later A Country Practice, not to mention many Crawfords appearances. Joanne Samuel was also a Young Doctors regular, as well as the TV airline soap Skyways, though she did get to be Max's wife in Mad Max, and be tortured in Alison's Birthday.
Jon Blake had done duty on The Restless Years. David Franklin, who would much later turn up on Farscape, was also a regular on The Restless Years. Danny Adco*ck had been a regular on Crawfords shows such as Matlock Police, Division Four and Homicide, and would continue with other TV such as the soapsPrisoner and Sons and Daughters.
In short, the pedigree was television, while director Brian McDuffie's pedigree was sponsored documentary and New Zealand television drama.
The budget certainly looks television, with much time spent indoors and in modest surroundings and with very little time spent on Blacktown exteriors. Even the opening establishing shots of the main drag show Blacktown shrouded in darkness, dawn just breaking on the horizon, a missed opportunity to get a sense of place, with a radio jingle and an announcer instead doing atmosphere duties.
4. David Hannay:
David Hannay had a long, if eclectic - some might even say eccentric career - in the Australian film industry, before his death in 2014.
At that point, Andrew Urban provided this farewell for the Sydney Morning Herald, with the original available here, with photos,at time of writing:
David Hannay is not easily categorised as having been either a failure or an unqualified success as a film and television producer. He is far from being a household name but some of his productions are, like The Man From Hong Kong (1975) and notably the seminal bikie-cop hit Stone (1974) made with first-time director Sandy Harbutt. Therein also lies his greatest professional disappointment, he frequently said, that a second Harbutt feature never eventuated.
Harbutt saw Hannay as a great encourager and stimulator. ''When we started on the script in 1970 it seemed impossible that we could write an Australian film. It was an impossible dream, but David said, 'Yes, you can do it'. He was executive producer, which could mean anything – in this case, it meant he did everything.''
A particularly significant Hannay production was the Human Rights Award-winning South African anti-apartheid gangster movie, Mapantsula (1987), also with a first time director, Oliver Schmitz, who has always admired Hannay for taking such a public stand against apartheid.
That was made the year after his production of the fact-based World War II story, Death of a Soldier, directed by Philippe Mora, starring James Coburn and Bill Hunter.
His co-producer on Gross Misconduct (1993) was Richard Sheffield, who saw his great strength "as a line producer. I couldn’t fault him for looking after a film and getting it on time and on budget and getting it finished … a great hands-on producer, well organised and also a showman; he [loved] the business".
Writer Paul Harmon saw him as "almost Machiavellian and sometimes threatening. We had a supreme argument over casting on Shotgun Wedding (1992): we were like two bulls in a field and had moments of hating each other. However, once this was resolved, he was a delight".
There have been times when Hannay was one of the Australian film industry’s untouchables, regarded as a ratbag, a maverick, and a heavy drug user; he was unofficially banned by (many) film bureaucrats. Later in his life he admitted to also being "politically stupid. I would be in screenings and I would light up a joint. I didn’t have to do that with people who clearly were offended by what I was doing. I certainly did not do myself any favours".
But even through those days, he did get financial support for his projects; he’s been involved in the development and production of almost 50 films and countless hours of television in his 46 years as a producer.
David Hannay was born in New Zealand on June 23, 1939 and educated at Scots College, Wellington. He was first attracted to the theatre through his multi-talented father, Norman, who was Entertainment Officer for the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Rome. When Norman returned home, he reprised a play he had directed, and cast his wife, Mary, in it. Hannay was eight, and impressed. In 1948, he followed Norman into radio with children’s productions.
It was Norman’s connections established in Rome with filmmakers such as Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini that prompted the interest in, and eventual move to, cinema. At the time, Hannay didn’t distinguish between Australian and New Zealand films and he readily identified with some of the iconic Australian films of the 1940s (Bush Christmas, The Overlanders, Eureka Stockade).
But Norman had loved "being an Italian". He would have preferred to stay in Italy and be part of the artistic regeneration of the country that he loved. The last place he wanted to be was New Zealand, but was dragged back to New Zealand by the family – for the sake of the family. So he came home angry, which Hannay sensed even as a seven-year-old and he grew to believe that he was in large part responsible for that anger; his relationship with his father was thereafter a combination of fear and rage.
In David's early teens, in 1953, Norman was so worried about David’s evident sexual aggression (he first had sex at age 9), his temper and his propensity for depression that he sent him to a psychiatrist – with whom David promptly fell in love, notwithstanding she was much older. So much older that she had personally known Freud. He had a tendency to get excessively emotionally attached to people, which was often overwhelming for both them and for him.
Hannay saw himself as a New Zealand Scot, a volatile blend of two warrior cultures: the Maori warrior culture and the Scottish warrior culture. He was brought up to be a warrior. Violence was part of his life, and fear; he was constantly frightened of upsetting his father, of his extraordinary rages.
Norman had been a boxing blue at university; David also boxed for five years, so he could stand up to him. He once talked about "the first time that I actually decided to shape up to him. I’ll never forget the glint in his eyes – 'Oh, you want to have a go!' – and that fist came straight at me. He broke my nose; you can still see it. The last time my father and I had a physical fight is when I was 25; he was 56 for God’s sake. A 56-year-old and a 25-year-old beating the sh*t out of each other! I thought, 'I don’t have to do this anymore. This is stupid'."
When Hannay ran away to sea, he went from one brutal environment to another, spending a couple of years as a merchant seaman, but he came to love it. He eventually left New Zealand and arrived in Sydney in 1958, to avoid becoming a "hard man"; he saw Australia as a place of light and openness – the opposite of New Zealand.
At the tail end of his life, he reflected that there were four relationships that defined him: his father, his brother Charles Hannah (alternate spelling of family name), his wife Mary Moody and Sandy Harbutt. He met Harbutt in 1967 at Channel Seven when they were both acting on You Can’t See 'round Corners.
Hannay once described his life at the time as "a kaleidoscope of drugs, drag queens, prostitutes, crims, musos and a mounting pile of dead bodies. I was really enjoying myself. Then I bumped into Sandy again a couple of months later. He radiated good health and good fellowship. He was like the rescue boat coming for the drowning man. He was the right person, at the right moment. And, more than that, he turned me around and defined the rest of my life. He gave me inspiration and he tested me like no other person has since my father. I cleaned myself up".
Hannay met Mary Moody at Channel 9 in 1971. By this stage, his professional life was in good shape, but his personal life was in disarray after the breakdown of his first marriage, to Kathleen Bourke in 1961.
He and Moody worked together for some months before getting together romantically – and have been together, personally and professionally, ever since.
David Hannay is survived by Mary, his children Tony, Miriam, Aaron and Ethan (the boys were named after characters in one of Hannay’s favourite movies, John Ford’s The Searchers (1956)), his brother Charles and sister Gillian.
A private funeral will be followed later by a public memorial.
For other obituaries see Vale David Hannay at if, here, and at Urban Cinefile, cached here, may be slow to load, Andrew Urban and Hannay's brother Charles offers further insights and tributes to Hannay. For more on Hannay's relationship to Mary Moody, and its convolutions and complications, see the ABC's Australian Story transcript, Something About Mary, here.
5. Geoff Brown:
Co-post production director Brown had his own website, still active at time of writing available here at Combridge International, here.
Inter alia, the site provided a biography, with the portion below taking Brown's story up to Early Frost and the mid 1980s:
I started working at T.C.N. 9 Sydney in the staging department in March 1969.
Over the next 12 months I worked on some truly classic shows The Don Lane Show, Bandstand, the original New Faces,The Golden Years of Hollywood with Bill Collins, live television what a blast!
Leaving 9 in the early 1970's, I started making ‘Pop clips’ for a few popular artists and their record companies.
A highlight of this period being my production of The Man In The Crimson Hat, a 25min ‘promo’ piece for the high profile 70's bands The Flying Circus. The boys where trying to break into the international market and decided to promote their new album with the promotional film, a new concept at that time.
Through my association with David Hannay I worked for Robert Bruning's company Gemini Productions on The Godfathers the Logie Award winning series written by Michael Lawrence (71 eps, starred Robert Brunning, Eric Oldfield, Anna Volska & Harold Hopkins).
I was credited as Assistant Director which meant 1st AD second unit director/cameraman on location, assistant director in the studio as well as co-ordinating schedules, props, wardrobe and taking film stock to location. I loved it!
I also worked for Gemini on the following shows Crisis – TV pilot starring Sandy Harbutt & Helen Morse and Marty Feldman Down Under and The Beach Boys in Australia, all shows screened on T.C.N 9.
After we released The Man From Hong Kong I spent the best part of the year working for B.E.F Film Distributors under John Fraser and publicity chief Ray Steel.
I was writing advertising copy, producing radio and TV spots for a string of movies. I was publicity liaison to Greater Union for the production of Picnic at Hanging Rockand worked as an adviser to Alan Rydge (then working in the GUO publicity department).
After working as a ‘free lancer’ on various productions in 1978 I formed O.B.Productions with marketing man Terry O'Connor.
O.B. was conceived as a unique service company offering the traditional production company services as well as function as a small advertising agency and marketing company. OB was the perfect vehicle to harness the diverse skills of both principals.
O.B. provided a full creative service to a diverse cross section of clients: Maritime Services Board, Kosciusko Thredbo, Country Comfort Motels, Granada Book Publishers, Benson & Hedges Nastar, O'Reilly Computer, Attaché Software Theatre Royal, Lend Lease Corporation, Roadshow Film Distributors, Greager Union Film Distributors.
In the early 1980's I produced, with associate David Hannay, the feature film Early Frost (also working as supervising editor) for Roadshow, as well as the TV special Brazzakas Reef shot in F.N.Q on the Great Barrier Reef.
I then worked with long time associate Harvey Shore, ex Roadshow P.R., for the Australian release of Can't Stop the Music starring The Village People.
OB also provided promotional and photographic support for the visit of Tom Baker aka Dr Who when he ‘dropped by’ in the Tardas on a publicity tour for the popular series.
During that period my old chum Harvey Shore, now Executive Producer, offered me a gig as freelance Cameraman on Simon Townsend's Wonderworld. After shooting 50+ stories Harvey ‘promoted’ me to the roll of Associate Producer on the show. I was responsible for all the post production as well as the entire studio taping of the show.
In 1985 I left Wonder World to be producer and director of photography on the Showcase Video feature film Leonara, for director Derek Strahan the long time writer/composer of the ground breaking TV series Number 96.
After Leonora I was employed as location producer/director for the ABC TV series Flying Start with responsibilities for shooting all the location ‘mini’ stories used on the show.
I returned to ‘freelance’ production and was director of photography on a number of T.V. documentaries and commercials for various agencies.
For Brown's later career and activities, see his site.
6. Director Brian McDuffie:
There's little on record about director Brian McDuffie, though he is listed as one of the directors on the ill-fated 1996 TV soap Pacific Drive, as noted at the NFSAhere.
A number of McDuffie directed sponsored docs - he did films for the SAFC, the NSWFTO, Film Australia and others - are also listed by Trove here- most of these documentaries seem to have been done by McDuffie before he worked on Early Frost.
McDuffie had started in New Zealand, but the sole directing job listed for him onNZ on Screen is the 1978 episodeNgaio Marsh Theatre - Died in the Wool, more detailshere.
7. Music:
For more details on composer Mike Harvey, see this site's pdf of music credits.
The lyrics for the song that runs over the end credits are as follows - they tend to hint at a solution to the film's mystery:
All the growing things
That start with hope and seed
Grow up to sun and rain
Through early frost and weeds
Except the newborn child
Who will not ever grow
Unless you love him well
And always let him know
A child is not a rose
And that's why, I suppose
An early frost can kill
More than you think it will
Love can bloom again
And they forget the frost
Children get but one chance
And then the bloom is lost
A child is not a tree
And that is why, you see
A child can always hide
His twisted parts inside
Trees will bear fruit again
Despite an early chill
But children quickly learn
That early frost
Can kill...
That early frost can kill …
All the growing things
That start with hope and seed
Grow up to sun and rain
Through early frost and weeds
Except the newborn child
Who will not ever grow
Unless you love him well
And always… let him … know …
