Summer City (1977)

An Exercise In Nonsense

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Blistering performances.

SUMMER CITY is a low budget independent film from Australia. The story involves a quartet of young men who pack up their gear for a journey of boozing, surfing, girls and fun, but who eventually find something much darker instead: betrayal, revenge, and murder. This film's shortcomings are all too obviously a result of the low budget, which leads to standard point-and-shoot direction and hurried scripting. A lot of the story seems rather padded and it takes a while for the proper narrative to kick in, although it gets interesting when it does so. This is mostly worth watching to see now-famous actors in early roles, notably Mel Gibson and John Jarratt.

This is a very slow moving movie, and the plot is very erratic. The story make very little sense, and is only worth watching once, just to say you did. The movie quality gets 2 out of 10. The acting gets only a 3. I give the plot a 1, the story a 1, and the cover a 1. The 'thriller' connotation is ludicrous. There is not much else to say about this movie other than it was Mel Gibson's first movie. He did a fairly good job, and went on to do bigger and better things. I applaud Mel for choosing this movie, considering it was not very thrilling. Mel Gibson is THE MAN and will continue that way until he retires. I will be reviewing all of his movies because I am collecting them. This is my first Mel Gibson review.

Firstly, this is an old film so don't expect state of the art production, sound values etc as some reviewers have expected. This film is a warm ride through the past annals of Aussie film history. Mel Gibson's first true role, Steve Bisley in an emergent role...even Abigail, bless her sexy cotton socks makes an appearance. This film was the start of Producer, Phil Avalon's long career in indie film making and he's still doing it today! A sort of surf story wrapped around the road trip of four good friends, this one started a trend which has finally arrived at the point where surf movies are now big screen box office hits. So sure, the acting's not the best, production, direction and audio are poor for our 21st Century ears...but watch it and smile for a lot of talent was squeezed out of this little gem. And, I'd love to hear Chris Fraser's 'behind the scenes' story one day!!

The only reason to see this film is to get a glimpse of Mel Gibson at the beginning of his career. Unfortunately he is not the star, and the other characters are not interesting enough to carry the film. The plot is very thin, and the sound is almost unintelligible. However, Mel looks cute in his swim trunks. It's worth a bowl of popcorn and a giggle.