SECOND WORLD war adventures of a bunch of characters played by actors who seemed to star in every other Australian film and television drama at the time. Redmond Phillips (baddie in Phoenix 5) was your pompous colonel replete with glamorous sidekick played by Katy Wild. They would send Jack (xenophobic digger) Thompson and the German Peter “Adolf” Sumner into New Guinea, etc. to give jip to johnny Nippon. Katy Wild’s character was once captured and had her clothes ripped off by brutal Japanese soldiers. Both the male leads were working under duress, Sumner was a German alien internee and Thompson was a draft dodger or something. Obviously inspired by yank tripe ‘Garrison’s Gorillas’. All-action intro with explosions and falling bodies and, naturally, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ theme.
Mr Grimsdale
July 27, 2010 at 8:59 pm
This was on around midnight on whatever day of the week. I used to watch it on the principle that it was so awful it was brilliant. You were never quite certain if they actors knew it was so bad that they deliberately played up to it.
There was one episode where a Japanese general-type genuinely said to his prisoner “we have ways of making you talk”, and there was nothing to make you think they weren’t taking it seriously.
George White
November 1, 2022 at 8:22 pm
Possibly an influence on Danger 5.
George White
May 24, 2023 at 8:17 am
Reminded of this via the latest Video Archives podcast Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary did, a tribute to Once Upon A Tie in Hollywood’s Rick Dalton, who it is revealed, before his 80s reinvention as a sub-Bronson action star, in the 70s, stars in an Aussie action show called Dingo Dan, that sounds like a weird fusion of the Andrew Keir series the Outsiders, BJ and the Bear, the Seven Network/ITV Ty Hardin vehicle Riptide and maybe some Solo One. About a Texan truckie down under with a pet dingo named Marsha, and featuring guest stars Jack Thompson, Wendy ‘Return to Eden/Deanna Troi’s sister in TNG’ Hughes, Tony ‘Skippy’ Bonner, John Jarratt, Steve ‘Call Me Mister’ Bisley and his Mad Max cohort, a Sullivans-era Mel Gibson.
Now imagining this as a fixture of Look-IN, c.1977, with possibly an annual tie-in.
Richardpd
May 25, 2023 at 10:12 pm
While Australian soaps are well known for their quirks, the action dramas seemed be even more gimmicky!
The likes of Bluey, Boney & such make Dingo Dan seem not too far off the mark!