Ghosts .... Of The Civil Dead

Ghosts .... Of The Civil Dead (1988)



Intense. The IMDB list this one as 'Drama/ Horror' which is perhaps not the most accurate classification. What it certainly isn't is an easy film to watch.

Set in the sweltering Australian desert and told in documentary style, John Hillcoat and Evan English's deadly grim Ghosts ... Of The Civil Dead charts the events leading to the imposition of 24 hour lock-down at the high-tech Central Industrial Maximum Security Prison following the brutal murders of a warden and at least three inmates. The staff's lot has become impossible since the prisoners in General Population were deprived of the heroin, violent porn and satellite TV that keeps them relatively docile. With the majority of the cons going through enforced cold turkey, the administration - intent on inciting a riot to illustrate the need for a new, even harsher institution to contain these monsters - next transfer in the psychopaths, the most spectacularly disturbed of whom, Maynard (Nick Cave), stokes the resentment between prisoners and staff with his round-the-clock howling. The powers that be eventually get what they wanted when a violent headcase, brooding over a strip search by riot cops, procures a blade and goes to work on a guard to the rapturous encouragement of his fellow cons.

As far as i recall, we're not told what crime(s) new arrival, Wenzil (Dave Field) has been convicted of, but it's clear he's a first timer and totally out of his depth. The Central Industrial's resident tattooist, Robbins (convincingly played by Freddo Dierck, one of several ex-cons or former jailers in a cast which can boast only four professional actors), does his best to show him the ropes, advising him to serve his sentence junked out of his skull and get plenty of tattoos! Unfortunately, to pay Robbins for his services, Wenzil steals a radio belonging to a drug dealing heavy who, with the support of his equally imposing minder, beats him senseless. The new boy gets his permanent ink; the word 'c**t' scrawled across his forehead. By close of the film, and, if he wasn't one before, Wenzil is now a murderer, having smashed out the brains of the glamorous, glue sniffing transvestite Lilly (an incredibly degenerate performance by Dave Mason of the Reels. Mick Harvey of The Bad Seeds is in there somewhere too) on a toilet bowl. Despite the incident being caught on CCTV, Wenzil is released back into the community, in worse mental condition and a far greater menace to society than when he went inside. We last catch sight of him descending the escalator on the underground, eyeing up the woman in front ....

Our other lead, Correctional Officer David Yale (Mike Bishop), is based on David Hale, a former US warder who witnessed first hand the grisly events at Marion Penitentiary on which Ghosts ... Of The Civil Dead is loosed based, the other major inspiration being Jack Henry Abbott's memoir, In the Belly of The Beast. In the film 'Yale' is a hard-nut (he'd need to be) but just about the closest thing we get to a sympathetic character this side of Robbins and the aging con, Glover. He realises the Administration are deliberating provoking the prisoners but can do nothing about it beyond making sure his men follow every safety precaution. Inevitably, it isn't enough. His face when Maynard is inflicted upon him reads like the end of the world, and he's not far wrong. Extracts from an interview with Hale are incorporated into the soundtrack album to good effect, more on which, possibly later.

clips:

Trailer.

Nick Cave's extraordinary acting debut.