Turkey Shoot

Released by: Severin Films
Released on: September 22nd, 2015.
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Cast: Steve Railsback, Olivia Hussey, Michael Craig, Roger Ward
Year: 1981
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The Movie:

Known domestically as Escape 2000 and released in its native Australia as Turkey Shoot (and in other countries as Blood Camp Thatcher), Brian Trenchard-Smith's 1981 picture was subject to various cuts in various countries including the U.S.A., due to some of the graphic violence and nudity in the film. Anchor Bay released it uncut on DVD back in 2003 and now Severin Films gives the film its North American Blu-ray debut in a stacked special edition.

So yeah, Brian Trenchard-Smith (the man behind Dead End Drive In, The Man From Hong Kong and Stun Rock) directs Steve Railsback (Cockfighter), Olivia Hussey (Black Christmas, Zeferilli's Romeo And Juliet) and Michael Craig (Vault Of Horror) in a film set in the future of, well, the year 2000 (ok, so the film dates itself a little bit here, but we can all look past that, right?). The world is now under the control of a strict totalitarian regime and those both accused and found guilty of 'deviant behavior' are sent to government run prison camps. Here they are then subjected to horrific rehabilitation techniques, most of which end with the inmates beaten, raped, or both.

Every so often the camp's leader, Charles Thatcher (Craig at his sinister best) selects a few inmates to participate in a 'turkey shoot.' Basically what this entails is the inmates are given a head start and after a few minutes, they're hunted down by Thatcher and his gang of cronies, Most Dangerous Game style. If they're caught then the inmates are killed, but there is the slight chance that they'll be able to escape their captors and make it to freedom. Chris (Hussey) and Paul (Railsback) are just two of the inmates that are selected this time. They're in for the race of their lives as they escape the camp and are hunted down along with some other inmates like animals.

But of course, some of the inmates are smarter than their captors, and a few of them are able to turn the tables on them. They're going to try to make it out of the camp's surrounding area alive and eventually… to freedom. Oh, and there's a beast man here too.

Brian Trenchard-Smith directs this low budget movie, shot in twenty eight days for just over $3,000,000 in Australia, which quite a bit of flair. He uses the cheaply constructed sets to their maximum potential and is able to frame things up nicely enough so as not to give away just how economical a production this is.... sometimes. There are also a few instances where things backfire and look horribly hokey, but for the most part Trenchard-Smith pulls it off.

All in all though, the movie is a lot of fun. It's very fast paced, and chock full of the kind of violence that exploitation fans know and love. Inmates are impaled with arrows and then run over, guards find themselves on the receiving end of some grisly battering ram type weapons, limbs are severed, torsos explode, and an implied lesbian rape scene is thrown in just for good measure. With an obvious influence taken from George Orwell's 1984, at times the movie also looks like it borrowed from Planet Of The Apes, Max Steiner's The Most Dangerous Game, and maybe even a little Island of Dr. Moreau. Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale, based on the novel by Koshun Takami, also has a similar vibe going on throughout the movie. So we're not in unfamiliar territory with this film, it does wear its influences on its sleeve.

Performances run the gamut in the film. Olivia Hussey, who I never get tired of looking at, gives the perfect 'deer in the headlights' performance, looking absolutely terrified in every scene that she's in. Railsback does his best as the noble hero who refuses to bend to the sinister Thatcher's whims regardless of how much they torture or beat him. And speaking of Thatcher, Craig gives a suitably evil performance as the evil warden supreme of the camp, at times both campy and scary and just a complete blast to watch. Other players in the film include Roger Ward of Mad Max fame as Chief Guard Ritter, Thatcher's right hand man who is always happy to smack around the inmates. Carmen Duncan as Jennifer is also an amusing part of the movie, waving around her gun or crossbow with more phallic symbolism than you can shake a stick at.

Overall, despite the heavy handed anti-right wing politics of the film (they're not inaccurate, just a little too overdone) and obvious budgetary slip ups, Turkey Shoot still manages to be a thoroughly entertaining movie. Perfect with a bowl of popcorn and a few cold ones. It's not Academy Award material, nor does it try to be - this is simply riotous entertainment and nothing else. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that and in this case, there's a whole lot right.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Severin Films offers up Turkey Shoot in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 2.35.1 widescreen in a new scan taken from the original negative. This is a pretty solid upgrade over that previous DVD release. Detail and clarity are substantially improved over what we've seen before and color reproduction looks great. There isn't any obvious noise reduction here and the picture is pretty clean, with only the occasional speck to note in terms of print damage. Black levels are solid and skin tones look good. Fans of the film should be quite pleased with Severin's efforts here.

Audio chores are handled by an English language DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo track and it's both effective and problem free. Dialogue is clean and clear and there are no problems with any hiss or distortion. Brian May's score has good range and even some decent depth in spots as well.

Plenty of nice extras on this disc for the fan! First up is the twenty four minute documentary on the making of the film entitled Turkey Shoot: Blood And Thunder Memories which was originally included on the Anchor Bay DVD. This features interviews with stars Michael Craig, Lynda Stoner and Roger Ward. Ward and Craig remember the movie quite fondly while Stoner really has nothing good to say about it at all, and while good natured enough to appear on this documentary, she really doesn't remember the movie with any positive connotations at all and recalls how she was pushed into doing the nude scene and how she eventually really regretted having anything to do with the movie at all. Craig and Ward see it as a good entertaining popcorn movie and talk at length about the fun they have making it despite the budgetary concerns and schedule mishaps.

Also carried over from that DVD is a ten minute interview with the director of the film, Brian Trenchard-Smith. Clad in a snazzy Hawaiian shirt, Smith recalls the shoot with quite a bit of detail and is well aware of the film he made with no false pretenses coming up about his work on the movie or the end product. That being said, Smith comes off as an amiable sort and is very good natured about all of his work, shortcomings and all.

Smith is also on hand for a feature length commentary track (again, from the old DVD). While some of the information is repeated here and in the documentary and interview, this is still an excellent and informative track and Smith is certainly keen to talk about some of the mishaps that he encountered during filming, like how they were stopped by a police helicopter while they were shooting Stoner's death scene, and how Olivia Hussey was deathly afraid of snakes but still managed to pull off the scene in the trench where she gets very close to one. He's a funny and interesting commentator and it's a blast to listen to him heckle some of the less successful effects in his own film, but he's able to realistically see what worked in the movie and what didn't.

New to this release is a twenty-six minute featurette called The Ozploitation Renascence that gives us a nice look back at the boom years of Australian genre films. There is some great footage in here along with some interesting interviews conducted with the likes of Antony Ginnane, Vincent Monton and Brian Trenchard-Smith himself. Along with this we get almost eighty minutes of interviews that Mark Hartley conducted when putting together his Not Quite Hollywood documentary a few years ago. The interviewees from the featurette are here again (less Monton) as are Steve Railsback, Lynda Stoner, the mighty Roger Ward, Gus Mercurio, and Bob McCarron. There's a lot of great stuff here and while some of Brian Trenchard-Smith's input is already covered in the other featurettes and commentary, getting input from the rest of the cast and crew members on some of the toils and tribulations that arose while making this film means this is absolutely worth checking out.

Rounding out the extras are the previously seen two alternate credit sequences - one for Escape 2000 and one for Blood Camp Thatcher, the original trailer under the Turkey Shoot title, menus and chapter selection.

The Final Word:

Turkey Shoot is a pretty bad ass mix of a trashy prison movie and a futuristic take on the tried and true Most Dangerous Game formula with an awesome cast of B-movie veterans helmed by a director with a taste for sleaze. All of that adds up to a pretty fun viewing experience, and this Blu-ray offers up a very nice upgrade over the previous DVD release not just in terms of the A/V presentation but the supplements as well.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!