Review of Skippy And The Intruders

Introduction

Skippy, skippy, Skippy the bush kangaroo. One of the most recognisable Australian tunes ever (bar Two Little Boys and maybe something by Inxs or Savage Garden…). Skippy is an Australian institution like Rolf Harris, but it seems clear that international distributors believed that non-native viewers would be confused by the sight of her and insisted on adding `The Bush Kangaroo` to the title.

Skippy as a TV series ran between 1969 and 1972 in Australia with 91 episodes being made. The series was all made in black and white, Australian TV not moving to colour until 1975. Sometime prior to that time though, a feature film of the series was spawned under the awe-inspiring name of Skippy And The Intruders.

After an opening sequence where we see a group of speedboats doing the nautical equivalent of wheelies, a couple of polite but earring-wearing fishermen come to Waratah Headquarters to ask Ranger Hammond (Ed Devereaux) for a permit to camp on the national park. They`re searching for abolone (pronounced a-baloney), an expensive shellfish-like delicacy, or so they say…

There`s more to them than meets the eye though. The duo belong to a diving collective who take on both legal and illegal salvage missions and this one involves smuggling gold from a sunken navy warship (although in true not-quite-real-villain mode prevalent in kids TV, they don`t actually know it`s gold…) to deliver to a man in a suit who will sell it overseas for a small fortune.

Sonny (Garry Pankhurst), the Ranger`s son, is naturally curious (when not playing hide and seek with a cheating Skippy) and he, Skippy and Clancy (Liza Goddard) are inadvertently kidnapped by the collective. Then Ranger Hammond gets a bit angry…

According to Wikipedia, this is a long-lost film but I`m betting that it`s not going to receive the kind of geeky admiration that long-lost Dr Who stories get when they`re found.

Video

Picture is bright and looks pretty good for its age. Some stunning underwater photography but not enough of it. There`s not that much visible print damage until the last couple of minutes where it becomes really obvious.

Audio

Stereo 2.0 soundtrack with no subtitles. The soundtrack is a little odd with folk music interspersed with simple yet caricatured orchestration for when anyone heroic or slightly ne`er-do-well comes into view.

Features

Skippy`s Playground - black & white extra filmed at Waratah Headquarters and hosted by Bobbie Roberta Paterson. Not really sure how to describe this, some small children get to meet Skippy, sing songs and listen to a story about their favourite Bush Kangaroo whilst looking intermittently excited and bored.

The Long Way Home - an episode from the TV series in which the evil-ish Professor Stark wants to kidnap Skippy for his zoo. Skippy has other ideas though…

Conclusion

This is a little confusing. It`s a Skippy film with not too much Skippy in it. I think this is because the story is a bit more complex than the writers were used to on the TV series. In fact Skippy is only seen a lot at the start where her cheating ways are exposed during a game of hide & seek and at the end where Skippy`s true violent ways are exposed when she twice tries to beat the brown stuff out of the main villain dude who has a gun. This whole thing reminds me of one of those Children`s Film Foundation features that we went to see for the Saturday matinee. It`s harmless stuff, the danger is not that real and most of the villains turn out to be not so bad after all.

The film itself is definitely a bit of an anachronism. The sight of the two divers with earrings causes some concern amongst the young Sonny and Clancy, with the two divers marked as `probably gypsies` and `belonging to the same club`, a subtle reference if ever I heard one. Hammond and his son also have a rather strange relationship when viewed thirty years later, Hammond clearly trying to butch his son Mike up when unloading groceries, but it`s clear that it was needed when the two pile into the bad guys later on - Mike throwing better delivered punches than his dad.

The real oddity for me is the ending. Previously it was all based around bush and sea, the ending takes us to a deserted beach with an old hut that leads to the Australian equivalent of the Sahara desert as the big chase sequence involves animal, boy and men chasing each other over massive sand dunes complete with sand storm sound effects. The strangest thing is where the main villain, who is the worst shot ever, is left to die after running over a sand cliff edge type thing (I`m not a geologist…) and being buried under sand.

The story telling is overall naïve at best and just plain bad when looking back. Mind, I was never a big kangaroo fan back in the day so I don`t have any rose-tinted glasses where Skippy is concerned.

I`ll be honest, I thought Skippy the Punjabi Kangaroo was much much better (and about the right length too...). Cheers, YouTube.

One for collectors only, I think…