COLOR ME DEAD

Australia, 1970, 95 minutes, Colour.
Tom Tryon, Carolyn Jones, Rick Jason, Tony Ward.
Directed by Eddie Davis.

Color Me Dead, along with It Takes All Kinds and That Lady From Peking, was an American production, filmed in Australia. These films were the work of writer-director Eddie Davis for Commonwealth United. The films were very much B-movies with somewhat fading American leads imported to Australia. However, the supporting cast and technical crew were Australian - a boost prior to the cinema revival in Australia during the 70s. Tom Tryon, of The Cardinal and In Harm's Way, is the hero. (He was later to abandon acting and have a very successful career as a writer.) This film is a re-make of Rudolf Matte's thriller D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien. The New South Wales settings are enjoyably used - but the main focus of the film is for the American audience.

1. The impact of the film as a thriller?

2. The importance of the Australian setting? In photography?
in language? in atmosphere? The integration with an American screenplay based on an original American screenplay? How American was the film? The puzzle of the title, its irony and its explanation of the plot? A sense of anticipation?

4. How effective was the structure of the film? Robbery and mystery, the journey, the investigation culminating in death? How well did it involve audiences for suspense?

5. The atmosphere of robbery, money deals, violence and murders, the criminal world and criminal atmosphere? Did it seem authentic? Typical film criminal world?

6. How heroic was the central character, Frank Bigelow? The portrayal of him as a man, his marriage and its puzzle, his work? The significance of his holiday? His needing to be away from his wife? His being involved in the mystery without his knowing it?

7. The portrayal of the wife? Romantic attitudes? Trying to heal the marriage, her being worked into the plot? The portrayal of Surfers Paradise and its atmosphere? An atmosphere for holiday?

8. The portrayal of the villain? How much attention to characterization, to plot and function? Taylor and uranium, Paula as a gangsters' moll, the attendants and their violence?

9. The portrayal of the main villains and their characters? Stanley Phillips' wife, the secretary? The importance of Bigelow being murdered halfway through the film? His capacity for staying alive? The inevitability of his death? Did audiences believe that he would die? The drama of the chases, the suspense?

10. How satisfactory was the final resolution? The end and death?

12. The dramatic impact of the ending and Bigelow's death? Why do thrillers entertain? What sense of right and wrong In audiences do they pre-suppose? how well do they play on the sense of right and wrong?