Entry 77: Turkey Shoot (1981)

Turkey Shoot (AKA Escape 2000, Blood Camp Thatcher-1981)

Dir: Brian Trenchard-Smith

"Hunting is the national sport...and people are the prey!"

 

For the first time since Mad Max: Fury Road, I'm journeying into the dark future of the "land down under."  Head down to the Basement, make yourself a Vegemite sandwich and buckle the fuck up as I take part in the Turkey Shoot! 


After opening credits set to newsreel footage showing the collapse of society (like in Mad Max 2), we are introduced to a trio of political dissidents being hauled to a prison camp in totalitarian, "future" 1995 Australia.  There's pirate radio broadcaster Steve Railsback (The Stunt Man, Lifeforce), arrest-resister Olivia Hussey (Black Christmas, It) and Lynda Stoner (Shark's Paradise), a politician's mistress who tried to break off the affair.  They are brought to an internment camp run by Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig, Vault of Horror, TVs Doctor Who), a stuffy, silver-haired gentleman who smokes a pipe and enjoys playing chess on a comically huge board.  After a camp initiation that involves Railsback being choked and beaten and the women sexually assaulted by the guards, they are brought to assembly, in which head guard Roger Ward (Mad Max, Long Weekend) makes the prisoners repeat litanies of self-abasement ("I am a deviant; the lowest form of life!") and administers beatings to those who don't pronounce enthusiastically enough.  Thatcher invites a group of high-ranking government officials to the camp, and the woman among them gets off while watching the guards burn a malnourished teenage dissident to death.  Thatcher offers our initial trio, along with longtime prisoners John Ley (Mad Max, BMX Bandits) and Bill Young (The Matrix, Chopper), a chance at freedom if they agree to participate in the titular event, in which they will be hunted, unarmed, through the outback by the weapon-equipped visiting officials.  What follows is an unbelievably gory game of cat-and-mouse, complete with foot-dismemberment, back-breakings, multiple arrow-piercings, mummified corpses, a dude getting pulped beneath the tires of a futuristic SUV and impalement on Rambo-style punji sticks.  Did I mention the sanity-doubting moment in which Thatcher reveals he has a circus freak wolfman at his disposal (he looks a lot like a technicolor version of the creature from The Mad Monster)?!  Can Railsback, Hussey and their compatriots survive this loaded game, or will their oppressors reign supreme? 

I didn't have time to mention it before, but it's worth noting that the "wolfman" bites it by being bisected by a bulldozer blade and one of the government officials casts off his mortal coil by being shot in the dick and burned.  Goddamn, I love this fucking movie.  It's as if Richard Connell took The Most Dangerous Game, hooked it up to Nigel Tufnel's amp cranked to 11, then pulled down your pants and hooked that amp directly to your genitals while also running a jackhammer on them for 92 minutes.  Director Trenchard-Smith made the equally fantastic Dead-End Drive-In and the 80s cult hit BMX Bandits before fading into (completely undeserved) obscurity (he's currently making Asylum-style DTV knockoff flicks).  He's certainly in need, and worthy, of a George Miller-style comeback...perhaps Quentin Tarantino naming him as one of his all-time favorite directors will help?  This Ozploitation gem was severely cut to secure an R-rating when it was released in the USA by Hemdale as Escape 2000 in 1982, and even more-so when it was released in the UK as Blood Camp Thatcher (get it?).  Seek out the region 1 DVD (as Escape 2000) and Blu-ray (as Turkey Shoot)
 releases, as they're fully uncut.