Release
The film was released in Australia and the US and performed disappointingly at the box office, returning to the producers an estimated $100,000. Mora later wrote:
The finished film immediately polarised audiences in Australia. The nascent film bureaucrats of the day were shocked, even horrified, when they saw the film. It was mentioned to me that Max Fairchild raping Hopper in prison, with Bill Hunter leering, was not their idea of promoting tourism in Australia. My wisecracks that I thought this, in fact, would encourage tourism didn’t help.
However the movie sold well around the world - including a $300,000 sale to the US - and achieved good reviews.
Mora tried for several years to set up other films in Australia - including the movie that became Newsfront (1978), an adaptation of For the Term of His Natural Life and a science fiction story called The Black Hole - but was unsuccessful. He moved back overseas where executives at United Artists, who had been impressed by Mad Dog Morgan, hired Mora to direct The Beast Within.
Read more about this topic: Mad Dog Morgan
Famous quotes containing the word release:
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)