All comments by Johnny Moronic

Obscure: The films of Boulevard Films

Boulevard Films was a production company started by Melbourne writer Frank Howson and Peter Boyle (not the awesome 70s character actor/Everybody Loves Raymond patriarch Peter Boyle) and they decided to take advantage of the controversial funding statute 10BA where the investor received 150% back on investments in film, which inspired a slew of mostly forgotten movies made in the 80s/early 90s.

Some of Boulevard's movies actually got some sort of release, even if it was very small. There's also a bunch of movies that never got a proper release, or in the case of one, was never released because of contractual reasons or something. I was able to get a hold of a couple of them on VHS, so I'm going to go through them today.

Crimetime

1993

Crimetime was the aforementioned movie that was apparently not allowed to be released for some baffling reason. You know what movie accounting is like. Anyway, I came across a workprint of the movie and well it needs a lot of work to be completed. Sound is low, picture isn't colour coded, no credits; the usual workprint unfinished look. The movie itself is a mostly forgettable corrupt cop thriller where Marcus Graham and the film's writer Bruce Venables are the only non-corrupt cops in the force who come across a plot of something dastardly that seems to be run by their boss (Steven Grives) and also from high-ups in government. A determined young journalist (Lucy Bell) annoys the cops, at first thinking they are corrupt, but they enlighten her to something much bigger. Turns out that a secretive group is sell live babies on the black market or something, it's so baffling that the reveal is actually a pretty wild shot of a bunch of babies on a plane ready to be transported. The movie barely tops out at 80 minutes and the plot could've done with some more explanation but it's not entirely a write-off. Graham and Venables work well together and there's a pretty fun vibe throughout best exemplified by a joke about a man dying while having sex.

Well, there's a brief nude scene in the movie from a character named Susan who I swore was mighty familiar, but with no credits, it's hard to confirm. So, I did some research and well... OK, I was going to go through how I come to working out who it was, like I did a few years ago, but I can't find the information online any more and her agency credits list doesn't have it listed like it used to. Anyway, it's Melbourne character actress Nicole Nabout in her first movie, at least 5 years before she has any credits listed on IMDB. She's still working regularly, turning up in the new series of Jack Irish just released but is probably best known as the Muslim librarian in the sitcom The Librarians. As far as I know, it's her only nude scene so this is a hell-of-a-find that was almost lost to history.

Nicole Nabout film clip (sample below)

The Final Stage

1990 (?) - 1995 (?)

In 1990 (or maybe earlier), Howson made a movie called Friday On My Mind which never saw the light of day, so what better thing to do when you need to show investors a finished product and you don't have one, than to substitute in the 'finished' Friday On My Mind as a new movie. Sounds like fraud and Howson was convicted although he still claims that it's bullshit. Anyway, the movie was renamed The Final Stage and was never released despite a 1995 listing from various sources while a 2005 Melbourne Underground Film Festival listing claims that its screening there was the first ever public showing of the movie. Well, I've got a copy of the movie and it's basically a filmed play starring Abigail and Adrian Wright as a married couple who are going through stuff. I've got to be honest, I tuned out while watching it as the movie became interminably insufferable very quickly and even at a strangely short 65 minutes, felt like absolute torture.

For some reason, I thought that this movie was rated PG as I'm sure I've seen it listed as such and because of that I wasn't going to watch it. There are two PG sex scenes featuring Abigail, but then, just before the end of the movie at 1:01:00, Abigail takes off her dress and strips naked revealing her breasts and then bottom for the next couple of minutes. Got to say, it was unexpected and feels unnecessary and I have no idea why such a scene exists (I could say that for much of the movie to be honest). My understanding is that this was Abigail's final nude scene, it was definitely her final movie with the rest of her career just TV appearances including in the notorious Chances, so I can't be sure if it is her final nude scene.

Abigail film clip (collages below)