Goodbye Paradise

Maybe you need to be a Queenslander of a certain age to fully appreciate the subtlety of the Bob Elllis script, as no doubt Ray Barrett playing Michael Stacey (a disgraced former Queensland Assistant Police Commissioner)understood not only the irony of the Ellis screenplay but also the time and place of the setting. While it is believed the film was in part financed by Hoyts Cinemas, it never received wide release given the sensitivity of the time (it was released prior to the Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption in Queensland, Australia). In short Stacey, recently kicked out of the police force, retires in a drunken fog to the back blocks of the glamorous Gold Coast to write a tell-all memoir. However, greater forces are at work and Stacey is drawn into the search for a Senator's daughter who has disappeared with a famous artwork. While Stacey, the alcoholic, guilt-ridden Catholic, begins a quest with schoolboy innocence he cannot escape his past and former associates from his military service during the communist insurgency in Malaysia. The "cinematic" Gold Coast possesses large off-shore oil reserves, and in a chaotic finale, a military coup is staged to deliver the oil reserves into the hands of an overseas power. No doubt, critics at the time, lacked the vision to see the wit and irony of an Australian state seceding from the rest of the country in pursuit of offshore energy profits and low taxation. The brilliance of the Ellis screenplay and the skepticism of the Barrett character result in some truly memorable lines. While the part, written especially for Barrett, has him as an narrator rather than the protagonist, the resulting film is notable for its understated but pointed humor. e.g. "shadowy military commander: 'this place reminds me of the east coast of Africa' and Barrett's reply: and getting more so every day". Who can forget the Robin Nevin/Ray Barret duet of 'Bye Bye Blackbird'. Other memorable performances come from Lex 'the swine' Marinos, as the proprietor of a bus line specialising in erotic tours for pensioners. The release of this film is limited and obtaining a copy has become a "holy quest". While the film is not widely known, it is a cult classic.

This hilarious political satire is on of the best films of the 80s to emerge from the International ideology of this period: meaning simply that many great films were made in Australia at that time that suited world cinema release. GOODBYE PARADISE is a big production about an attempted coup in Queensland, directed by Carl Schultz (the equally superb Careful He Might Hear You) and written by Bob Ellis with a poison pen, GP starred battered old Ray Barrett at possibly is most laconic and crumpled. This film deserves a major release on DVD for new cynical audiences can embrace its wit and hilarious ridicule of all things to be found in 'the sunshine state' and it's 80s corruption. Seen Muriel's Wedding and the awful inhabitants and businessmen living in Porpoise Spit? Well you have a wicked appetizer for a sumptuous feast of genuinely uproarious Aussie political satire at it's stinging best. This is a great film unjustly neglected. The DVD release will fix that.

No, you don't have to be Australian to enjoy this. I'm an American who was in Oz when this was released, went to see it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. True, there were a few bits I wouldn't have got had not my g.f. told me (the name of the detective's dog was a big political name in Papua New Guinea), but such things numbered fewer than half a dozen, as I recall, and even before I was told the reference it didn't matter. Parts were hilarious, parts were suspenseful, all of it was well acted and directed, and everything added up neatly at the end. I mainly recall the screen going black when the detective fell asleep in an alcoholic stupor. Been trying to find this for years first on VHS, now on DVD. I think Godot will arrive sooner than this one.

One of the wonderful things about Australians is that they proudly refuse to take themselves seriously. It's there in "The Dish", and it's there in "Goodbye Paradise". But "Goodbye Paradise" had the added ingredient of razor-sharp political satire. This is, without a doubt, one of the great "lost" films of Australian cinema. It combines quintessentially Australian self-parody with a political commentary that is so sharp and so accurate that it only manages to skate over the thin ice of the libel laws due to the hilarious level of absurdity at which it is pitched. The airborne assault on the hippie vegetable patch by helicopter gunships, for example, is remembered fondly by all who saw it back in the early '80s. God, I hope someone releases this on DVD. It richly deserves it.

Yes one of my favourites.

Came from a time when Australia made the best cinema.

I enjoyed this immensely it has good music, good photography and the best acting imaginable.

I have it on video I had to order it direct from Australia. It was shown once on BBC a long time ago.

The plot is very fascinating too about an attempted coup in Queensland.

It also has some very good action scenes, and the main character is convincing as someone who still has his wits about him about how to deal with danger, for instance at the end he grabs a machine gun off a dead soldier and blows away another who is about to kill him. This is very plausible as he has the police training.