Crocodile Dundee

Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) is a reporter for Newsday. She’s working in Australia when she gets word of a man who fought a crocodile with his bare hands and lived. That man is Michael J. “Crocodile” Dundee (Paul Hogan). Sue travels to the small township of Walkabout Creek, Northern Territory, to meet him. She finds out that the stories might be exaggerated but the man himself is fascinating and she takes him back with her to New York City.

Before he made Crocodile Dundee, Paul Hogan was best known for his television work, notably a comedy series The Paul Hogan Show from the early 70s (which Channel 4 in the UK showed in the early 80s). He had played a leading role in the miniseries Anzacs and made his big-screen debut in a 1980 children’s film called Fatty Finn. It’s fair to say that for most people, especially outside Australia, Hogan – who was once a painter on the Sydney Harbour Bridge – was a complete unknown. Crocodile Dundee was a character that Hogan had created. He cowrote the script for the film, with his longtime manager John Cornell (who produced). Cowriter Ken Shadie and director Peter Faiman had worked with Hogan on his TV show. The result was a worldwide hit, and remains to this day the most commercially successful Australian film ever made.

If you consider that it’s possibly the only, or certainly one of the few, Australian films many people will ever see, Crocodile Dundee is a good example of how a country presents itself to the outside. Hogan was quoted as wanting to make what he called a “real movie”, instead of the “arty” films that Australia was making at the time. Dundee himself is an embodiment of the “larrikin”, a national stereotype that goes back a long way. Larrikins are very much men’s men, who like nothing better than drinking and fighting with their mates, and with an eye for the ladies. He also has a horror of pretension and a suspicion of “alien” cultures. Having said that, setting half the film in New York was a shrewd move to appeal to an international audience. The film goes out of its way to identify Dundee with the natural world, from his nickname onwards. His bush skills help him out on many an occasion, and in one scene he’s even accepted by Aborigines as one of their own. The mid-80s were a time when Robert Bly’s book Iron John was very influential, advocating that men shrug off the feminising trappings of “civilisation” and return to their natural state. Reactionary times, and Crocodile Dundee shows itself as a reactionary film even before it paints its picture of New York decadence. (Spot the cheap shot at Sue’s activist ex-husband, “probably marching for the gay Nazis”.) It’s a film that praises innocence and ignorance.

Having said all that, the film’s very Australianness was fresh to a wide audience at the time. Hogan’s performance is a relaxed, assured piece of comic acting. He was in his mid-forties when he made the film and that works for the role: Dundee is obviously a man who has lived a life and is no callow youngster. The film doesn’t have much of a plot, and resolves into a routine romantic comedy mixed in with a set of fish-out-of-water jokes in its second half. Peter Faiman’s direction is competent but no more: he’s only made one film since, 1992’s Dutch (aka Driving Me Crazy). Russell Boyd’s Scope camerawork is up to his usual standards but appealingly unslick – which may have been a side-effect of the smallish budget. Linda Kozlowski is a capable foil, and the chemistry between her and Hogan is clearly genuine: they married in real life. John Meillon, an actor with a long career that takes in Walkabout as well as work outside Australia in the 60s, gives an adept comic performance as Mick’s mate Wally. But this is very much a one-man show.

It may have dated a little, and has probably lost some public goodwill due to two inferior sequels, but back in 1986 Crocodile Dundee had that indefinable something. It’s easily Hogan’s finest hour, and nothing he’s done since has come close to it.

The DVD
The original Australian release of Crocodile Dundee ran 102 minutes. For international release it was trimmed by four minutes with some of the stronger Aussie slang toned down. The title also became ”Crocodile” Dundee, just in case foreign audiences assumed it was a film about a reptile. The version on this DVD is that released in British cinemas, which has a complex censorship history. There were some complaints at the time that the BBFC’s 15 certificate did not allow children to see a film which would undoubtedly appeal to them…which may have been a factor in the introduction of the 12 certificate three years later. That 15 certificate was consistent with the BBFC’s guidelines at the time and also now, as it’s been retained for this DVD release – it’s for “moderate drug use and one use of strong language”. A second use, by the pimp at 61 minutes, has very obviously been overdubbed with “screw”. I suspect that’s the MPAA’s doing, to reduce the rating to a PG-13. The cocaine-snorting scene at the party, along with Sue’s explanation that the drug “gives you a buzz”, was cut by the BBFC from some video releases but has been reinstated here.

Crocodile Dundee and its sequel have been available separately, but this edition consists of the DVDs in a two-disc digipack. The DVDs themselves appear to be identical to the single-disc releases. The film itself has an anamorphic transfer in the ratio of 2.35:1. Unlike most 80s Scope films shot with anamorphic lenses (including its sequel), Crocodile Dundee does make some use of its wide aspect ratio, so is best seen that way. There are no real problems with the transfer. The colours aren’t as vibrant as they are in bigger-budgeted films and there is some minor artefacting in the night scenes, but nothing too distracting.

The soundtrack is in Dolby Digital 2.0 with surround encoding, either in English or in a choice of four dubbed versions. This reflects the original cinema release. The surrounds are used quite extensively for Peter Best’s music score and left and right speakers are called into service for some directional sound effects. The dialogue is always clear. There are a range of subtitles for the feature, and sixteen chapter stops. The DVD is encoded for Region 2 only.

There’s only one extra, which is the theatrical trailer. This is anamorphic, in a ratio of 1.75:1 with 2.0 mono sound, running 2:19. It’s much softer and grainier than the feature, and has some film damage.

Crocodile Dundee isn’t, to my mind, a great film though it wasn’t a hardship to watch it again eighteen years later. Considering its status in the Australian film industry, a special edition would be in order but I suspect that will only happen in its native country.