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As Time Goes By (1988 film)

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As Time Goes By
Film poster
Directed byBarry Peak
Written byBarry Peak
Produced byChris Kiely
StarringMax Gillies
Bruno Lawrence
Nique Needles
CinematographyJohn Ogden
Edited byRalph Strasser
Music byPeter Sullivan
Release date
  • 1988 (1988)
Running time
96 minutes
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
Box officeAU $5,854[1]

As Time Goes By (originally titled The Cricketer) is a 1988 Australian science fiction comedy film directed by Barry Peak and starring Max Gillies, Bruno Lawrence, and Nique Needles. A few bars of the title song (extracted from the film Casablanca) are heard in the Australian version of the film but not in overseas prints, because of its high cost.[2]

Plot synopsis

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Mike, a surfer from Penong, South Australia, receives from his dying mother a letter, written 25 years earlier, instructing him to meet its author at a spot 50 miles (80 km) west of the small town of Dingo on a certain date in 1989. The writer turns out to be an oddball alien in a time-travelling spaceship disguised as a roadside diner, "Joe Bogart's", dating from Manhattan project-era Los Alamos. On the way he encounters Ryder, once a famous cricketer but now a small-town policeman, on the trail of a murderous motorcyclist and his sidecar-riding sidekick — accomplices of Weston, a land-grabbing weather watcher who believes the desert is about to become valuable pasture, and who develops a temporary alliance with McCauley, a UFO hunter who will stop at nothing in his quest for fame and fortune.

It is the surfer's pre-ordained purpose to recover the spaceship's power module, which had been lost overboard, but is frustrated in his quest by Cheryl, a ditzy fellow-hitchhiker, who fancies it as a hat (it is disguised as a "King Beer" emblem) and the UFO hunter, who believes he can discover something by prising it open. He is assisted by his love interest Connie, a beautiful Mini-moke-driving farmer. Other characters include a weathered old bone collector, who hauls his "finds" in an ancient hand-cart, and Dingo's town storekeeper, involved in a never-ending fight against dust in his shop.

Cast

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Accolades

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Nique Needles won Best Actor in A Science Fiction Film (billed as L'Australieno) at the 1988 Fantafestival.

Tony Harrison called the film "bizarre and entertaining".[3]

Home media

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The film was released to VHS but not DVD.

References

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  1. ^ "Australian Films at the Australian Box Office", Film Victoria Archived 9 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine accessed 24 October 2009
  2. ^ David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Pan MacMillan, 1990 p 282–283
  3. ^ Tony Harrison (1994). The Australian Film and Television Companion. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0731804554.
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