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The Saint and Australia This is not only the Saint in Australia, but also every mention (?!) of Australia, and people or things Australian, in the Saint books, films, and episodes. A couple of additions from Michael Robinson: In The Story of a Dead Man (Alias The Saint), Chief Inspector Teal manages to trip up the Saint and Stenning (alias Vanney) with a trick question on the geography of Melbourne, where Stenning claims to have spent time. In The Art Photographers (The Saint Intervenes), the Saint masquerades as Sebastian Tombs, the heir of a wealthy and puritanical citizen of Melbourne. The Loving Brothers An episode of the Roger Moore series, The Loving Brothers is set in the fictional Stoney Creek, and in Sydney. The Saint's Land Rover can't handle the outback and Templar comes across a gold miner in Stoney Creek, Queensland. The miner's two sons, played be Ed Devereaux (who co-starred many years later in the Simon Dutton Saint adventure Fear in Fun Park) and Ray Barrett, try to swindle their father out of the new gold ven he's discovered. Of course, the Saint outswindles the two sons. The Talented Husband In the first Roger Moore episode, the Saint is after a man who may have murdered his first wife by pushing her out of the ninth-floor window of a Brisbane hotel. Andrew Clarke - The Saint in Manhattan This is the one-hour pilot for an American Saint tv series that never eventuated. It was made in 1987 and stars Australia's Andrew Clarke (THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER, SWORD OF HONOUR) as Simon Templar. It turns up (very, very, very, very rarely) on Channel 7, usually in small hours of the morning. Fear in Fun Park (Simon Dutton) A Saint adventure set in Sydney. This is one of the six telemovies made in 1989 with Simon Dutton as the Saint. Simon is asked by a Chinese friend to find his missing daughter and finds himself involved in some shady dealing over the sale of a theme park. Locations used in the filming include Luna Park, Darling Harbour, and Sydney's Chinatown. The Saint is chased through Darling Harbour and he escapes by leaping onto a passing tallship from part of the monorail. Features Charles Tingwell, Rebecca Gilling, Nikki Coghill, and Ed Deveraux (who also appeared the RM episode The Loving Brothers). Philip Noyce Noyce was born 29 April, 1950, in Griffith, New South Wales. The Saturday matinee films popular in his youth may have been his first exposure to film, but they apparently had little affect on him. It wasn't until he saw small-budgeted, independent films made in Australia with Australian actors using Australian accents that he began to pay serious attention to films. He hired films from films societies and watched them voraciously. With encouragement from independent filmmakers who ran the film societies, Noyce made his own short film. Better to Reign in Hell ran fifty minutes, and was financed by $10 dollar donations from his friends who were rewarded with parts in the film. Not expecting that one could make a career out of filmmaking, Noyce enrolled in a Law degree. However, he soon after enrolled in the Interim Film and Television School, which provided a creative and supportive environment. Among his classmates was Gillian Armstrong. While there, he made Castor and Pollux, a fifty-minute film about two middle aged men 'living outside of conventional society'. This won him the Rouben Mamoulian Award at the 1974 Sydney Film Festival, and was shown in competition in Europe. Newsfront (1978) is now regarded as an Australian classic. It tells the story of newreel photographers in Australia in the 1950s, with issues of identity, politics, and the threat to the newsreel industry of the coming of television. In the 1980s and 1990s, Noyce has found great success in the United States. Dead Calm, (1989) filmed in Australia with Sam Neil, Nicole Kidman, and Billy Zane, was a taught thriller that found international success and gave Noyce entrČe into Hollywood. His best known films made in the US are the Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford thrillers Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, Sliver with Sharon Stone and William Baldwin, The Saint, and, his most recent, The Bone Collector, with Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. (Sources, Internet Movie Database, The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival, David Stratton) Graeme Revell Revell was born in New Zealand in 1955. According to his biography on the Internet Movie Database, Revell has degrees in economics and politics, has worked as a regional planner in Australia and Indonesia, and is a classically trained pianist and French horn player. He was the keyboard player for 70s 'industrial' band SPK. His first film score was for Philip Noyce's Dead Calm (1989). Revell has been extremely busy ever since, scoring many films (the IMDB lists 53 films) including The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Body of Evidence, Hard Target, The Crow, Strange Days, The Craft, Spawn, The Big Hit, The Negotiator, The Siege, Pitch Black, and, most recently, Titan AE. (Source: Internet Movie Database). The Saint The recent Val Kilmer film was directed by Australian Philip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Sliver, Dead Calm, The Bone Collector). When the Saint breaks into Tretiak's headquarters to steal the microchip, near the beginning of the film, and is surprised by Ilya, he adopts an Australian accent (no doubt learned on his previous film, Ghost in the Darkness, with Michael Douglas, and filmed in Queensland, Australia). The Man Who Could Not Die The man blackmailing Miles, and later killed by him, is Australian. The Crooked Ring The crooked boxer is Australian The Smart Detective The Smart Detective's girlfriend is Australian, or has been in Australia. Do the Maori use boomerangs? In Chapter 11 of THE SAINT CLOSES THE CASE Norman Kent arrives at the Saint's Brook Street flat where Inspector Teal has just interrupted Roger Conway and Marius' Hermann. As Norman enters: "Hanging on the walls of the hall were a number of curious weapons, relics of the Saint's young lifetime of wandering in queer corners of the globe. There were Spanish knives and a matador's sword; muskets and old-fashioned pistols...a boomerang from New Zealand..." (p. 111) |
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