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AN INDECENT OBSESSION

Hoyts/Michael Edgely International presents A P.B.L. Production. An Indecent Obsession. 1 @ 1985 P.B.L. Productions Pty Ltd. Budget: $2.1 million. Location: Lord Howe Island. Australian distributor: Hoyts. Opened: 23 May 1985. Video: RCA-Columbia-Hoyts. Rating: M. 35mm. 106 mins.

Producer: Ian Bradley.
Executive producers: Michael Edgely, John Daniell.
Associate producer: Maura Fay.
Scriptwriter: Denise Morgan. Based on the novel by Colleen McCullough.
Director of photography: Ernest Clark.
Camera operator: David Foreman.
Production designer: Michael Ralph.
Costume designer: Graham Purcell.
Editor: Phillip Howe.
Composer: Dave Skinner
Sound recordist: Ken Hammond
Sound editor: Tony Vaccher
Post-production sound: Max Hensser
Mixer: Gethin Greagh 2.

Cast

Wendy Hughes (Honour Langtry), Gary Sweet (Michael Wilson), Richard Moir (Luce Daggett), Jonathon Hyde (Neil Parkinson), Bruno Lawrence (Matt Sawyer), Mark Little (Benedict Maynard), Tony Sheldon (Nugget Jones), Bill Hunter (Colonel Chinstrap), Julia Blake (Matron), Caroline Gillmer (Sally Dawkins), Marina Finlay (Sue Peddar), John Sheerin (R.S.M.), Andrew Martin (Pennyquick), Mark David (Colin), Masayuki Fujioka (Japanese Soldier).

Committed though one may be to the notion that there is no correlation between the quality of a film and that of a novel from which it is adapted, An Indecent Obsession must give one pause. Directed by Lex Marinos, it offers persuasive evidence of the intransigence of trash. The situations, the characters and the dialogue are instinct with the original authjor, Colleen McCullough.
    Sister Honour Langtry (Wendy Hughes) runs, with remarkable incompetence, the psychiatric ward of a military hospital on a Pacific Island during World War II. All the inmates, in there variously bizarre ways, dote on 'Sis' as they affectionately call her.
    The inmates - just and ordinary cross-section of cranks - include a rowdy officer type, Neil Parkinson (Jonathon Hyde), who comes from The Same Background as Sis, something he believes gives him the edge over mad-eyed Luce Daggett (Richard Moir), a former actor of lowly social origins and sexual ambiguities. Then there is a religious nut and mother's boy called Benedict Maynard (Mark Little): Nugget Jones (Tony Sheldon), a hypochondriac who is forever reading medical works in search of new symptoms: and Matt Sawyer (Bruno Lawrence), who may or may not be blind.
    Tensions runs high, and Sis gets no support from Colonel Chinstrap (Bill Hunter) or Matron (Julia Blake). In fact, they, not unreasonably, get very tired of her.
    Into this seething microcosm of lunatic fancies and unrequited passions comes handsome young Michael Wilson (Gary Sweet), who is apparently normal. What, then is he doing in Ward X? Well it transpires - via a feverish dream sequence - that the RSM whom he'd tried to kill had made some very indecent suggestions to him. The same thing happens again when Luce does something provocative to him under the showers.
    This time, though, Mike finds refuge in Langtry's bed. And, while they're making some love, something very nasty is happening to Luce. You can just imagine how Sis blames herself for this next day.
    An Indecent Obsession is the sort of film where to outline the main events is virtually an art of criticism. But plenty of enjoyable - even remarkable - films have taken preposterous plots and manipulated them so as to foreground striking dramatic patterns (Jacques Tourneur's Experiment Perilous, 1944, and Otto Preminger's Angel Face, 1953, to name but two).
    Here, however, Marinos simply lets McCullough's bunch of cardboard loonies gather round a table or on a verandah until someone drives someone else into a frenzy.
    It is not just the money that is wasted (though that matters, too), it is the spectacle of usually competant actors demeaning themselves in such hysterical twaddle. Richard Moir curls his lip (above which sprouts a cad's moustache), Gary Sweet ripples his chest muscles, Wendy Hughes again bares her left breast, and Bill Hunter and Julia Blake fume and fret.
    Not that An Indecent Obsession is really any worse than television's The Thorn Birds or Tim (Michael Pate, 1979) the movie. All of which leads me to believe that McCullough, like blood, will out.

BRIAN MC FARLANE

1 Title is preceded, on a separate card and after the principle caast, with 'in Colleen McCullough's'
2 Should be 'Gethin Creagh'

References

'M*U*S*H: An Indecent Obsession', a review by Brian McFarlane, Cinema Papers, no. 53, September 1985, p.64
'An Indecent Obsession', a review by Kathe Boehringer, Filmnews, May 1985, p.13.