433 Harlequin

[domino harvey]

HARLEQUIN
(Simon Wincer, 1980)
Release date: 18 March 2025
Limited Edition 4K UHD (World premiere)

Pre-order on 4K UHD (UK/US) or Blu-ray (UK/US)

Robert Powell (The Survivor), David Hemmings (Fragment of Fear), Carmen Duncan (Turkey Shoot), and Broderick Crawford (The Mob) star in Harlequin, a mysterious and fantastical thriller from director Simon Wincer (Snapshot) and writer Everett De Roche (Roadgames).

When eccentric faith healer Gregory Wolfe (Powell) apparently cures the terminally ill son of Senator Nick Rast (Hemmings), Rast’s wife (Duncan) places her faith in Wolfe’s powers. But when Wolfe begins meddling in sensitive government business, political fixer Doc Wheelan (Crawford) decides to make the problem go away...

Inspired by Rasputin’s influence over the Russian court, Harlequin (released in the US as Dark Forces) is a classic Australian chiller from producer Antony I Ginnane (Patrick).

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION 4K UHD SPECIAL FEATURES

• Brand-new 4K HDR restoration from the original negative by Powerhouse Films
• 4K (2160p) UHD presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) - 4K UHD version only
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with director Simon Wincer and producer Antony I Ginnane (2004)
• Archival TV interview with actors David Hemmings and Robert Powell (1980)
• Archival audio interview with Simon Wincer (1979)
• Archival audio interview with associate producer Jane Scott (1979)
• Archival audio interview with production designer Bernard Hides (1979)
• ‘Not Quite Hollywood’ Interviews (2008): extensive selection of outtakes from Mark Hartley’s acclaimed documentary on Australian cinema, featuring Wincer, Ginnane, writer Everett De Roche, and actor Gus Mercurio
• Appreciation by the academic and Australian cinema specialist Stephen Morgan (2024)
• Destruction from Down Under (2018): Kim Newman revisits the Australian genre film boom of the 1970s and 1980s
• Isolated score
• Original teaser trailer
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity material, and behind the scenes
• Limited edition exclusive 80-page book with a new essay by Julian Upton, exclusive extracts from producer Antony I Ginnane’s unpublished memoirs, archival interviews with director Simon Wincer and art director Bernard Hides, and film credits
• World premiere on 4K UHD
• Limited edition of 10,000 individually numbered units (6,000 4K UHDs and 4,000 Blu-rays) for the UK and US

[colinr0380]

Excellent, although the release of this is making me hope for the films David Hemmings directed during his "Australian period" with the James Herbert adaptation The Survivor (perhaps the most faithful out of all the James Herbert adaptations, along with 1995's Haunted), although the real obscurity I would like to see some time would be The Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr/Race For the Yankee Zephyr.

[Thornycroft]

Excellent, although the release of this is making me hope for the films David Hemmings directed during his "Australian period" with the James Herbert adaptation The Survivor (perhaps the most faithful out of all the James Herbert adaptations, along with 1995's Haunted), although the real obscurity I would like to see some time would be The Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr/Race For the Yankee Zephyr.

Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr is very forgettable, mostly of interest due to some dangerous stuntwork and bit parts from stalwart local actors Bruno Lawrence and Grant Tilly. It's also quite amusing to see Donald Pleasance half-heartedly attempting a New Zealand accent, though his is nowhere near as disastrous as the one attempted by John Lithgow a few years later in the even more obscure Mesmerized. Yankee Zephyr was originally scheduled to be shot in Australia but a union dispute caused Ginnane to shift the whole thing across the Tasman. There was an English-friendly Blu-Ray released in Germany but that appears to be long OOP.

If a label really wants to work some magic they'd try to dig up the completely unreleased Ginnane-Hemmings NZ production Prisoners (1983) starring Tatum O'Neal. The film was shelved upon completion by 20th Century Fox and nobody has ever confirmed exactly why.

[colinr0380]

It looks as if Lithgow is going to be giving the accent another go if the trailer for The Rule of Jenny Pen is anything to go by.

I did note on going through the listings for the Christmas fortnight over the weekend that Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr is showing tucked away at 1 or 2 in the morning on the Talking Pictures channel on one evening, so it is getting a television showing somewhere on UK television soon!

If a label really wants to work some magic they'd try to dig up the completely unreleased Ginnane-Hemmings NZ production Prisoners (1983) starring Tatum O'Neal. The film was shelved upon completion by 20th Century Fox and nobody has ever confirmed exactly why.

Seconded! That sounds very interesting. I'd also love to see some more films written by Everett De Roche (who wrote Patrick, Harlequin and Road Games. Plus Russell Mulcahy's Razorback and The Long Weekend!), particularly Rachel Ward playing a schoolteacher turned avenger in Fortress!

[MichaelB]

Final specs:

[zedz]

Excellent, although the release of this is making me hope for the films David Hemmings directed during his "Australian period" with the James Herbert adaptation The Survivor (perhaps the most faithful out of all the James Herbert adaptations, along with 1995's Haunted), although the real obscurity I would like to see some time would be The Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr/Race For the Yankee Zephyr.

Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr is very forgettable, mostly of interest due to some dangerous stuntwork and bit parts from stalwart local actors Bruno Lawrence and Grant Tilly. It's also quite amusing to see Donald Pleasance half-heartedly attempting a New Zealand accent, though his is nowhere near as disastrous as the one attempted by John Lithgow a few years later in the even more obscure Mesmerized. Yankee Zephyr was originally scheduled to be shot in Australia but a union dispute caused Ginnane to shift the whole thing across the Tasman. There was an English-friendly Blu-Ray released in Germany but that appears to be long OOP.

If a label really wants to work some magic they'd try to dig up the completely unreleased Ginnane-Hemmings NZ production Prisoners (1983) starring Tatum O'Neal. The film was shelved upon completion by 20th Century Fox and nobody has ever confirmed exactly why.

I'd agree that Race for the Yankee Zephyr is quite mediocre.

I have some hearsay information about Prisoners, because my parents now live on the farm where it was shot, and the locals have all the gossip. Word is that after the film was completed, Ryan O'Neal bought it back from the producers to bury it because Tatum O'Neal's performance was so embarrassingly bad. Like a lot of New Zealand features from the 1980s (including Yankee Zephyr, I believe), it was funded as a tax write-off, so nobody really cared if it was released or lost forever. A lavish kill fee was probably the ideal outcome for all concerned.

If you want a long-lost Kiwi movie to seek out, you could do worse than Richard Turner's Squeeze (1980). It was New Zealand's first gay feature, and it's pretty clunky (and according to people I know who were involved in the scene at the time, quite inauthentic), but it's a fascinating time capsule of Auckland in 1980 and has a great soundtrack of contemporary punk and new wave (the title comes from the Toy Love classic). I think it's tied up with producer James Wallace, however, and it will probably be a long time before people find a bargepole long enough to deal with any of the films he was involved in.

On a more pleasant note (i.e. look at this box of puppies!), here's Toy Love:
Squeeze

[Thornycroft]

I'd agree that Race for the Yankee Zephyr is quite mediocre.

I have some hearsay information about Prisoners, because my parents now live on the farm where it was shot, and the locals have all the gossip. Word is that after the film was completed, Ryan O'Neal bought it back from the producers to bury it because Tatum O'Neal's performance was so embarrassingly bad. Like a lot of New Zealand features from the 1980s (including Yankee Zephyr, I believe), it was funded as a tax write-off, so nobody really cared if it was released or lost forever. A lavish kill fee was probably the ideal outcome for all concerned.

If you want a long-lost Kiwi movie to seek out, you could do worse than Richard Turner's Squeeze (1980). It was New Zealand's first gay feature, and it's pretty clunky (and according to people I know who were involved in the scene at the time, quite inauthentic), but it's a fascinating time capsule of Auckland in 1980 and has a great soundtrack of contemporary punk and new wave (the title comes from the Toy Love classic). I think it's tied up with producer James Wallace, however, and it will probably be a long time before people find a bargepole long enough to deal with any of the films he was involved in.

That story about Prisoners is the main one I've heard myself. Given the quality of most of the films being made in that period before the tax rules were tightened up I sincerely doubt it's a long-lost masterpiece, but the prospect of an unreleased film from that era is always going to be tantalising.

I have in fact seen Richard Turner's Squeeze! A friend and I spent a few years doing a podcast where we watched every New Zealand film in chronological order starting with Sleeping Dogs - we made it up to around 50 episodes and the year 1984 before it fell apart because I couldn't keep up with the workload (and have since allowed it to fall off the internet, which is something I should rectify as many episodes I'm still proud of). Squeeze is a really fascinating time capsule - extremely rough around the edges but clearly made with a lot of passion and enthusiasm. It's a film I often think about revisiting and deserves far better than the obscurity it currently languishes in.

[Aunt Peg]

I saw Squeeze back when it was first released in Sydney in 1981 at the Sydney Filmmakers Co-Op in William Street, Darlinghurst. Good, interesting film from what I recall. So many curiosities from that era where shown there and most of those films appear to haven fallen into almost complete obscurity.

[sabbath]

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