Movies

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday July 16, 2007

Doug Anderson

Sea of Sand

(1958) ABC, 1.30am (Wed)

How very nice of the ABC to replay so many of Michael Craig's old films. They will doubtless regale the recently retired actor as he muses over a long and commendable career. Following his desert adventures in last week's The Black Tent, here he plays Captain Cotton, the leader of an Eighth Army desert group that fangs off into the dunes just before the Battle for El Alamein. Its job is to blow up one of Rommel's last petrol dumps. But discipline in Cotton's unit is not the snappy salute and straight creases variety, which offends copybook mine expert John Gregson when he joins the long-range desert patrol. Tempers flare well before the big bonfire but eventually the two see eye to eye.

The Elizabeth Smart Story

(2003) Nine, noon

Viewers who watched the recent ABC doco The Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart might find this dramatised account of the case somewhat more fanciful. That's not to say the 14-year-old girl's abduction from her Salt Lake City home by a religious nutter with messianic sexual obsessions didn't have a whiff of the lurid. A largish grain of salt might prove a useful condiment to this lunchtime serving of drama starring Dylan Baker and Lindsay Frost.

Unfair Competition

(2001) SBS, 1pm

In 1938, two rival tailors in adjoining shops in Rome try to outdo one another for market share. Umberto, a Catholic, frequently accuses Leone, a Jew, of sharp and unscrupulous practices - he plays the game hard and business is business. But when Fascist laws designed to discriminate against Jews are enforced with increasing harshness, Umberto shows he is capable of rising above both the rivalry and the racial separatism of Mussolini's regime. Director Ettore Scola tends to oversimplify the issues in his desire to ensure the points are made while clouding other aspects of the film by failing to clarify the identity of various characters.

Exorcist II: The Heretic

(1977) Nine, midnight

The spectacularly ludicrous mishmash of special effects and occultism that dominated the original film has not abated. Father Richard Burton, taking a break from his habitual extramarital dalliances, finds that Regan has not been cured of her demonic infestation by the late Father von Sydow's energetic exorcism. Satan is dormant within her. This provides abundant opportunities for teenage blasphemy, obscenity, festering wounds, masturbation and all sorts of lurid psychic phenomena. Big Brother, really.