The Naked Bunyip
Dir John B. Murray / 1970 / Australia
This is a title that had censorship problems in 1970, a year before the R rating was introduced. The period is not yet covered on the site, though the full horror of those years will one day be documented. THE NAKED BUNYIP will give you a taste of what censorship was like in those days. I highly recommend that you track down Umbrella Entertainment's DVD release of this taboo trashing Australian film.
An appeal against the eliminations to the Review Board in May 1970 was dismissed. The print submitted was on 16mm, and ran 5940 feet. A censored version was eventually passed. The story on how the film was cut is covered in depth on the Umbrella DVD, in the documentary titled, IN A FUNNY SORT OF WAY.
PHILLIP
ADAMS (Producer)
In the 1960's in this wide brown land. We had about the most repressive
censorship in the entire Western world, with the possible exception of
Northern Island. Every other book was banned, the most mild innocuous
little art film from Sweden was being scrapped by the censor. And it was a
fairly oppressive time for all the arts in terms of what you could say,
and what you couldn't say. So that was one of the impulses with THE NAKED
BUNYIP, was to stretch the envelope on matters of sexuality, particularly
as Kinsey reports are coming out. Sexuality is starting to be debated, at
least in the Northern Hemisphere. But there was another issue, the film
industry was as dead as sexuality.
Now we always knew that the result would get into trouble with the censor, one hoped for this intensely, and indeed it did.
John
B. Murray (Director/Producer)
I know that I had been very provocative because I had organised a
screening at the Palais, which is a huge cinema in St Kilda, near
Melbourne. I'd put a coloured light on one side of the screen, and another
coloured light on the other. I had wires trailing up to the lounge, where
I had a box so I could switch one off or the other on. And invited key
figures in the media, and there were about 150 journalists, and others
from radio, print media, and television came. And I ran the film in its original
form right through, and turned on the light when the censor demanded an
audio cut, and the other when he demanded an image cut. And for the first
time in Australia they could see exactly how the censor reacted to
material that, in quotes, was questionable. And we got, I wasn't thinking
so much of getting editorial coverage out of it, we got huge coverage, and
it helped the film tremendously. But I was really more interested in
opening up the subject, and letting them know how it was regarded. I was
asked by Mr RJ Prowse, who was the Commonwealth Censor at that time, to
come to Sydney after I'd written him a letter detailing what I was trying
to achieve in handling these subjects in the way I did. And I had a good
talk to him, and then he organised for me to sit with members of his censorship
board in the office in Sydney to see the film.
Graeme
Blundell (Actor)
And there was some kind of basement in the centre of Sydney, this sin city
place. And he'd been interrogated as the film was shown by these
censorship people. I think there was about a dozen of them sitting around.
I always had this impression of Barry Humphries kind of gargoyles, and Les
Patterson types, dibbling, drooling, and masturbating in the corner, with
a fag hanging out of one part of the mouth, and a can of beer going in the
other.
(Adopts Les Patterson voice) "See you've gotta cut that, rawhh, look at her, rawhh, no cut those out, rawhh leave those"
This is the impression one got. This sort of phantasmagoric set of characters that had descended upon the film to rip it apart, as they did on anything that those kind of people deemed offensive.
PHILLIP
ADAMS (Producer)
Now, John Murray discovered a fascinating truth, that the act that forced
us to comply with the censors ruling, did not require us to invisibly
mend. There was nothing in the act that said we had to put all the bits
together and hide the cuts.
John
B Murray (Director/Producer)
And I realised that whilst he was demanding that these pieces or
sections should be deleted from the film. If I left them in, and blacked
them out, and made them part of the film itself, attitudes to sex and censorship,
then he really couldn't force me to cut the footage out. And then I told
Phillip about that and he immediately suggested Peter Russell-Clark
do some sketches of a bunyip, and we could put that on, which I did, and
supered them over the black, to show the nature of the material that was
cut. The naked bunyip is a mythical animal, and I thought that pretty much
fitted us in Australia in the late 60's. And the naked bunyip is reported
to have said to someone "I don't know what I am, can someone please
tell me?". And I thought that was the position regarding sex and
censorship. Our attitudes to them, and I wanted to strip it bare, that is,
open the subject up for discussion.
PHILLIP
ADAMS (Producer)
So when we opened at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne, the biggest cinema
in the country, packed to the rafters, the most popular parts of the film
were the parts that were missing. Think about that, the parts the audience
really adored, weren't there. The censor was off his face about it. He got
very, very angry, threatened us with all sorts of legal problems. I
remember Barry Humphries decided to have a press conference, to aggravate
the situation further. So Barry gets the media there. And I have to reveal
at this point that Mr Prowse, the Chief Censor, was, well he reminded me
on the one legged Tarzan, he had one arm. Perhaps is was from over zealous
film cutting. And Barry told the assembled throng that Mr Prowse would
give his right arm to be here today, or Mr Prowse told me this straight
from the shoulder. Now these kind of ironic comments do not endear
ourselves to the Chief Censor. So the situation got nastier and nastier
and nastier. But for us it was a godsend. We could hardly afford to make
the film. I think I managed to raise, I think about $40,000 from a couple
of friends of mine who were in the used car business. Bob Jane, and his
brother Bill. And we certainly couldn't afford to promote, we couldn't
afford to advertise. But with Russell Prowse's help, with all his
agitations about the films sins and shortcomings, the thing just took off.
It was mildly cathartic for Australia. Because this showdown with Russell Prowse, the showdown with the censoring. I think began, or accelerated the process that brought the whole censorship structure in Australia tumbling down. What happened was the censorship system fell over from absurdity, a bit like the collapse of the Kremlin, or the Berlin Wall. And almost overnight Australia had the most progressive censorship in the world. We went from one extreme to another. And in that change of attitude, that paradigm shift, I think THE NAKED BUNYIP played a small, but modest part.
***
The film is presented on the DVD in the censor- approved version. A picture of a naked bunyip appears over visuals that required cutting, and a siren masks audio cuts. The problem parts of the film are shown again in the deleted scenes extra.
They are as follows:
Life
Class: (Visual) Full frontal nudity.
Lesbians: (Visual) Kissing
Lesbians: (Visual and Audio) In bed talking about one another.
Carlotta: (Visual) Topless shot.
Abortion: (Audio) Description of backyard abortions.
Gang Rape: (Audio) Men talking in car.
Doctor: (Audio) Talking about anal and oral sex.
So, thirty-five years after its first brush with the censors what
rating did they give it? The Umbrella DVD was passed in February 2005 with
an M (Sexual References, Adult Themes, Nudity). The film runs 138min
50sec, with 6min 43sec of deleted scenes.
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