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TOUCH AND GO

Maxwell-Pellatt in association with The Queensland Film Corporation and the Australian Film Commission presents TOUCH AND GO. Alternative title: 'Friday the Thirteenth' (working). Š1980 Mutiny Pictures. Made with the assistance of the Queensland Film Corporation and the Australian Film Commission. Budget: $541,000. Locations: Maroochydore, Noosa Heads (Queensland); Sydney. Filmed: November-December 1979. Australian distributor: GUO. Opened. 12 June 1980. Video: Syme Home Video. Rating: NRC (May 1980; 2550.99m). 93 mins.

Producer: John Pellatt.
Executiveproducers: Peter Maxwell, Peter Yeldham.
Scriptwriter: Peter Yeldham.
Director of photography: John McLean.
Camera operator: Kevan Lind.
Production designer: David Copping.
Wardrobe: Kate Duffy.
Editors: Sarah Bennett, Paul Maxwell.
Composers: Jon English, Charlie Hull.
Sound recordist: Brian Morris.
Sound editors: Paul Maxwell, Sara Bennett.
Mixers: Peter Fenton, Gethin Creagh.

Cast

Wendy Hughes (Eva), Chantal Contouri (Fiona), Carmen Duncan (Millicent), Jon English (Frank), Jeanie Drynan (Gina), Liddy Clark (Helen), Christine Amor (Sue), John Bluthal (Anatole), Brian Blain (George), Vince Martin (Steve, Policeman), Barbara Stephens (Julia, Head Mistress), Pamela Martin (Bank Manageress), Joe James (Radio Producer), Roger Ward (Wrestler), Lex Foxcroft (Husband), Beryl Cheers (Wife), Alan Wilson (Freddie, the Voice), Bevan Lee (Fisherman), Marcus Hale (Waiter), Adrian Bernotti (Taxi Driver), Sally Arming (Telephonist); Gavan Arden, Geoff Mills, Peter Molineux (Policemen at Roadblock).

This disastrously unfunny comedy... thriller concerns three attractive young society sophisticates working for charity, who turn to robbery at a luxurious island resort on the Great Barrier Reef to keep a special primary school for underprivileged children in operation. It is a slapdash attempt at the caper genre, relying on the gimmick of its main female cast, but it resembles a handme-down rip-off of television's Charley's Angels.

Chief investors were the fledgling Queensland Film Corporation, backing only its second major feature in that state (the other was the equally unsatisfying Final Cut, Ross Dimsey, 1980), Greater Union and the Australian Film Commission.

A month's shooting began in November 1979 at Maroochydore and Noosa Heads in
Queensland, with eight weeks of night filming in Sydney. Scenes supposedly set on a Barrier Reef island were shot at a Maroochydore hotel for budgetary reasons.

English expatriate producer John Pellatt had previously worked on Age of Consent (Michael Powell, 1969) and was associate producer on They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966).

The film was initially shot under the working title 'Friday the Thirteenth', but it was changed when the producers were informed about the horror film of the same name then being made in the US.

Much play was made of the fact that the film was unashamedly commercial and boasted the strongest female cast of any Australian movie (Wendy Hughes, Chantal Contouri, Carmen Duncan, Jeanic Drynan). But it closed in June 1980 after only three weeks of release in Brisbane.

PAUL HARRIS

References
'Peter Yeldham', a career interview with the scriptwriter by Paul Davies, Cinema Papers, no. 27, June-July 1980, pp. 176-9, 214.
'Wendy Hughes', an interview with the actor by Richard Brennan, Cinema Papers, no. 40, October 1982, pp. 428-32.