The Last Wave ***½ (1977, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia Hamnett, David Gulpilil) – Classic Movie Review 11,185

‘The dream that became a nightmare. His was a premonition of doom. Hasn’t the weather been strange… could it be a warning?’

Director Peter Weir’s serious-minded 1977 Australian apocalyptic thriller The Last Wave is a slightly elusive chiller, but it is always intriguing, disturbing and beautifully done, and it provides a very useful role for Richard Chamberlain as David Burton, a tax lawyer living in Sydney, Australia.

They have a lot of bad weather Down Under and lawyer David Burton (Chamberlain) is wondering why, when he dreams about an Aborigine whom he later meets when defending a ritual murder case in a trial of five Aboriginal men accused of murdering a fellow native. The lawyer is introduced to an aboriginal elder who offers clues to Chamberlain’s ancestry and an old tribal prophecy about a flood.

The puzzle is far less irritating than the one in Peter Weir’s previous film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), though the film would still have been more enjoyable as a straight thriller.

Also in the cast are Olivia Hamnett, David Gulpilil, Frederick Parslow, Vivean Gray, Nandjiwarra Amagula, Walter Amagula, Roy Bara, Cedrick Lalara, Morris Lalara, Peter Carroll, Athol Compton, Hedley Cullen, Michael Duffield, Wallas Eaton, Jo England, Greg Rowe and John Frawley.

The Last Wave is directed by Peter Weir, runs 106 minutes, is made by Last Wave Productions, Ayer, McElroy & McElroy, The South Australian Film Corporation and The Australian Film Commission (AFC), is released by United Artists (1977), is written by Peter Weir, Tony Morphett and Petru Popescu, is shot by Russell Boyd, is produced by Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy [James McElroy], is scored by Groove Myers [Charles Wain], and designed by Goran Warff (Production Design) and Neil Angwin (Art Direction), with special effects by Robert Hilditch and Mont Fieguth.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,185

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