Eliza Fraser

This big-budget period romp, which was based on a true story, has much to recommend it: an excellent cast, led by British actress Susannah York and Aussie heartthrob John Waters; a good script written by Australia's best playwright David Williamson, plenty of action including sex, seduction, murder, treachery, intercultural missing and lots of flogging of convicts; and great costumes for both the white folk and the Aboriginal tribe.

It's very well done, in the style of the 19th century British adventure novels like Tom Jones, Vanity Fair, Midshipman Hornblower or Flashman, but was considered a bit of a box-office failure as it did not do well overseas.

Both York and Waters are very good, as well as Noel Ferrier as the comicly pompous Captain Fraser, English actors John Castle and Trevor Howard as randy self-centred English officers, and Australian stalwarts Charles Tingwell, John Frawley, Bruce Spence, George Mallaby, Bill Hunter, and Gerard Kennedy as various colonial types. The scenes of Eliza Fraser and her husband among the Aborigines was particularly well-done.

Though the film suffers a little in the long post-Queensland epilogue, it is very good light entertainment overall.