#SLEEPING DOGS 1977 PLUS#
#SLEEPING DOGS 1977 TV#

The most noticeable thing is that when Sleeping Dogs was released internationally it did zero business вЂ“ there it was what it just a standard issue dystopia-come-action film вЂ“ whereas back home in New Zealand all the resonance was in the sense of familiarity being overturned.ДЄctor and later director Ian Mune вЂ“ see Bridge to Nowhere (1986) вЂ“ adapted SmithвЂ™s Dream (1971), a novel by C.K. The scary thing about Sleeping Dogs was how prophetic such imagery was as only a matter of years later (1981) would see the very same images of helmeted police battering crowds with batons in the streets during the nationwide protests against the Springbok rugby tour.

#SLEEPING DOGS 1977 TV#

A further sense of immediacy, that this really was happening, is reinforced by the image of Dougal Stevenson as a newsreader on tv screens, a role that Stevenson also conducted in real life on the then sole nightly news broadcast on one of the countryвЂ™s two tv channels. The filmвЂ™s world is a nightmare that is very peculiar to New Zealand in the late 1970s вЂ“ one in which the country is rent by union strikes, Mideast oil shortages and petrol rationing (this was the infamous era of government induced Carless Days in an attempt to cut petrol consumption). cards for citizens, armed resistance movements, arrest without due process вЂ“ must have had an electrifying shock effect. To such a placid and dull country as New Zealand, where police today still donвЂ™t carry guns and the national crime rate barely runs above half-a-dozen murders a year, the sense for audiences in 1977 in seeing all of that overrun by the imagery of fascism вЂ“ helmeted riot squads beating up mobs with batons in the street, i.d. The success that Sleeping Dogs had was in the shock image of the country it reflected back. The success of Sleeping Dogs directly led to the setting up of the New Zealand Film Commission the same year вЂ“ a government-funded body that both finances local filmmaking and acts as an international sales agent. Most importantly though, it was local accents and locales being seen up on screen. It saw a local director relentlessly incorporating international styles of filmmaking. Sleeping Dogs was the first film to be a major home-made Kiwi success.

As Neill notes, it was strange going to local cinema screens when he was growing up and seeing only international faces and accents reflected back. As Sam Neill points out in his excellent documentary Cinema of Unease: A Personal Journey by Sam Neill (1995), the New Zealand cultural image was (and to a large extent still is) determined by foreign influences, first as colony of England and mostly through the overwhelming prevalence of American films and television. It is hard to believe in the same year that also produced Star Wars (1977) that the total output of New Zealand feature films up to that point could be counted on one hand and a couple of fingers.

Sleeping Dogs was the cornerstone of the New Zealand film industry. It was NZвЂ™s second ever science-fiction film вЂ“ the first feature-length one вЂ“ with that distinction being held by the now lost A Message from Mars (1903).

Of course, Sleeping Dogs introduced two major talents that would go onto great success internationally вЂ“ actor Sam Neill in his first screen performance and director Roger Donaldson (see below for his other credits).

#SLEEPING DOGS 1977 PLUS#

The countryвЂ™s filmic output is negligible вЂ“ maybe 3-4 films per year and television production limited to a single teen soap opera Shortland Street (1992вЂ“ ), plus maybe a sitcom and one dramatic series produced a year.Д¬ertainly, for such a minuscule output, the countryвЂ™s film industry has had some surprising success stories in the international arena вЂ“ directors like Vincent Ward of The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey (1988) and What Dreams May Come (1988), Peter Jackson of The Lord of the Rings fame, Lee Tamahori of Die Another Day (2002), Jane Campion who made The Piano (1993) and In the Cut (2003), Martin Campbell who made GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006), and actors such as Russell Crowe, Lucy Lawless, Kerry Fox, Anna Paquin, Temuera Morrison, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Karl Urban and the late Bruno Lawrence. It is a country that has around the same landmass as the United Kingdom, yet only a population that topped four million in the last decade.

Sleeping dogs 1977