Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (1974)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio Audio Commentary-Barry Crocker (Actor) Featurette-Barry Humphries Gives Us The Good Oil Featurette-Barry McKenzie: Ogre or Ocker Featurette-Behind The Scenes Teaser Trailer-3 TV Spots-6
Rating
Year Of Production	1974
Running Time	93:05
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Bruce Beresford
Studio Distributor	Reg Grundy Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Barry Crocker Barry Humphries Ed Devereaux Dick Bentley Tommy Trinder Derek Guyler John Le Mesurier Frank Windsor Arthur English Roy Kinnear Donald Pleasence Gough Whitlam
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Peter Best

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Fosters beer
		Action In or After Credits	No

    If you are hankering for some good ol' Ocker humour, and you believe Australia is the greatest nation in the world and Aussies are far superior to the British and French, then this film will go down almost as well as a can of Fosters.

    This is the sequel to The Adventures Of Barry McKenzie (not yet released on DVD in R4, but curiously available in R2). The first film represented the directorial debut of Bruce Beresford, and he also directed this one, which is entitled Barry McKenzie Holds His Own.

    Barry McKenzie (Barry Crocker) is on a plane from London to "gay Paree" with his aunt Edna (Barry Humphries). On board the flight, he meets a few of his mates - including Scrotum Baker (Andrew Lodge) - and they decide to have a good time in Paris.

    In the meantime, two shady characters - Hugo Cretin (Louis Negin) and Modeste Imbecile (Paul Humpoletz) mistake Edna for the Queen of England - supposedly travelling incognito. They relay the news to Erich Count von Plasma (Donald Pleasence), who is planning to kidnap the Queen in order to boost the tourism industry of his native country Transylvania (don't ask). The Count is of course a practising vampire, along with his cohorts the beautiful Clothilde (Nancy Blair) and the humpback Dorothy (Robert Gillespie).

    Whilst in Paris, Bazza and his mates catch up with expatriate artist Colin 'The Frog' Lucas (Dick Bentley). Bazza even runs into his own pious twin brother Kevin and his wife Cherylene (Beatrice Aston).

    Once Bazza realises his Aunt has been kidnapped, he and his friends set off on a mission to rescue her. On the way, many strange adventures befall them, including a stint as a Prisoner Of Her Majesty (P.O.H.M.), and a visit to Australia House where a barbeque is in progress in the main hall and a quiz show is held for prospective emigrants. When the Count finds out the Queen is really a housewife from Australia, he might want to bottle up her blood in his cellar!

    One of the fascinating aspects of the film is the chance to see a younger and slimmer looking Clive James (with hair no less) playing a cameo role as one of Bazza's buddies who is forever either opening or drinking from various cans of Fosters all throughout the film. Barry Humphries of course play a variety of roles including Dame Edna, and there are some well crafted split screen effects combining the various characters into a single frame. The ending of the film even features a surprise appearance from the then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

Video

    This is a widescreen, 16x9 enhanced, transfer presented in approximately 2.26:1, which is close enough to the intended aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

    To be honest, I was expecting the worst so I was rather pleasantly surprised that the transfer wasn't too shabby - in fact, it is quite decent and watchable. Admittedly, there is lots of grain present. In fact, the film - or "fillum" as Bazza would have called it - is probably better described as "gritty" rather than grainy.

    However, detail levels were reasonable and surprisingly colour saturation levels are good - maybe colours look a touch faded and dull but they are certainly better than many transfers of films made more recently.

    The film source also looks reasonably clean. A few black marks or vertical lines can be seen every now and then, and some of them are even rather large and noticeable - but again given the age of the film probably to be expected. There is a fair amount of wobble around 24:15-24:18, but I think this is due to camera shake rather than telecine wobble.

    The good news is that there was nary a video artefact in sight. No edge enhancement, and no compression artefacts.

    This film claims to be the "first English language film with English subtitles." Well, I'm not sure whether that claim is true, but in any case the subtitles are used during periods where the Strine accent gets a bit thick, so undoubtedly that would help non-Australian viewers. Unfortunately, the subtitles are burned in and there are no additional subtitle tracks on the disc.

    This is a single sided dual layered disc, but not a reverse spiral one. The entire film is contained on Layer 0, whilst extras are positioned on Layer 1.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two audio tracks on the disc: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s), and English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s). I listened to both tracks.

    The sound of the audio track is obviously dated, but quite listenable. I suspect the audio track is in mono, since I did not hear any stereo panning of dialogue, music or sound effects. Fortunately, there are no audio synchronization issues.

    Although I did not have any problems understanding the dialogue, I suspect some of the lines may be hard to decipher to non-Australian ears.

    The background music is vaguely orchestral, with the original music score composed by Peter Best. In addition, there are several songs sung by Barry Crocker throughout the film, of which the most memorable is probably the "Rat Bag" song.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The DVD authors have gone overboard looking for extras, and this disc is crammed with surprising and unexpected features, including nearly two hours of featurettes, not to mention a commentary track and several trailers.

Menu

    The menus are 16x9 enhanced and static, but include background audio.

Audio Commentary-Barry Crocker (Actor)

    This features Barry Crocker giving a retrospective commentary (well, of course it was going to be retrospective, duhh!). He reminisces about the first film, the cast and crew, and various other events associated with and around the film. He points out quite a few things that I hadn't noticed whilst watching the film, such as "Adolf Hitler" hiding in the plane behind the curtain, the part of Nereda Brealey being played by Nell Campbell (who went on to play "Columbia" in the film adaptation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show a year later), and that the voice of Four Eyes Fenton (Michael Newman) was replaced by that of Bruce Beresford himself. Barry speaks for most of the duration of the film, apart from a few quiet spots here and there. Although Barry's voice is quite clear in the track, the original soundtrack is mixed in at a very low level and barely distinguishable.

Featurette-Barry Humphries Gives Us The Good Oil (24:07)

    This is a retrospective interview with Barry Humphries, presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s). He covers some interesting ground, including the origins of the "Buster Thompson" character in Private Eye, which became Barry McKenzie when the character was put in a comic strip, the origins of Oz Speak, the popularization of Fosters, and the making of the first film as well as the second one. We also get excerpts from both films and behind the scenes footage. The most intriguing thing for me was the ending where Barry hinted that the story of Crocodile Dundee came from him musing over lunch about what a third Barry McKenzie film would be like.

Featurette-Barry McKenzie: Ogre or Ocker (50:58)

    This is a a very long (by today's standards) featurette presented in black & white, full frame, and Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s). It covers the film's opening night premiére in Melbourne, excerpts from the film, back stage footage, plus rather lengthy interviews with:

• Reg Grundy (producer)
• Barry Humphries (co-writer, as well as starring in several roles in the film)
• Barry Crocker ("Barry McKenzie")
• "Dame Edna Everage"

plus one or two critics. I was quite taken aback by the depth and candour of the comments made in the interviews, as well as the degree of b****iness in some of the remarks compared to today's sanitised and rather bland statements. I guess it was a more innocent age back then, when men were real women, and furry creatures from Alpha Centauri really drank Fosters. The documentary is narrated by Tony Ward.

Featurette-Behind The Scenes (32:17)

    This is an unedited collection of B-roll footage captured during the shooting of the film, presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s). The key scenes being filmed are those on board the "FrogAir" flight and in the plane just before they parachute into Transylvania.

Teaser Trailer-3 (3:46)

    These are three variations of Barry Humphries (as Dame Edna Everage) and Barry Crocker (Barry McKenzie) introducing the film. I love Dame Edna's (deliberate) "Freudian slip" of using the word "crutches" instead of "clutches" in the first trailer. All three trailers are presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

TV Spots-6 (2:21)

    These are variations of Barry Humphries (as Dame Edna Everage) and Barry Crocker (Barry McKenzie) "interviewing" each other as they come out of a cinema showing the film, combined with more traditional "trailer" material consisting of excerpts from the film together with voice-overs. All trailers are presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    This title does not appear to be released in other regions at the time of review.

    Barry McKenzie Holds His Own is the further adventures of the quintessential "everyman" Aussie. His aunt Edna Everage (Barry Humphries) has been mistaken for the Queen of England and kidnapped to bolster tourism in Transylvania, and Barry (Barry Crocker) has to get all his mates to help stage a rescue!

    The video transfer quality is surprisingly good.

    The soundtrack quality is mediocre, but consistent with the film's age.

    There are quite a lot of extras, including a commentary track and several rather lengthy and substantial featurettes.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall