Compelling real-life Kiwi dramas
Black Hands (debuting tonight on TVNZ1) is just the latest in a long line of dramatisations of real-life Kiwi events. The ‘‘recreation’’ of the buildup to the 1994 Bain family murders won’t appeal to everyone, but previous examples have proved there is definitely an audience for revisiting our bloody and sometimes controversial past.
Looking back over the past century, all the way back to 1922’s The Birth of New Zealand – of which only a few fragments remain – the truly compelling tales have been those made specifically for the silver screen.
One of the most haunting also focuses on a tragedy from my home town – ‘‘the Edinburgh of the South’’.
On November 13, 1990, David Gray went on a rampage and killed 14 people, including himself, in the small coastal settlement of Aramoana. Released just over 15 years after the event, Robert Sarkies’ Out of the Blue (NZFilm OnDemand) portrays the acts of heroism during the siege, rather than investigating why Gray ‘‘snapped’’.
The first 40 minutes are wisely spent developing a selection of the settlement’s characters and slowly revealing Gray’s increasing eccentricity, which adds to the
shock of the first hail of gunfire (delivered in a terrifyingly nonchalant fashion).
What follows is an exercise in tension building, as the remaining residents fear for their lives and the police search for the killer.
Borrowing heavily from the down-to
-earth docu-drama style perfected by British director Paul Greengrass ( United 93, Bloody Sunday), Blue makes extensive use of hand-held cameras and the full frame to deliver powerful, poignant drama.
More fantastical, but no less affecting is Sir Peter Jackson’s spellbinding 1994 take on Christchurch’s infamous 1954 Parker-Hulmemurder case, Heavenly Creatures (available to rent from Alice’s or Aro Video).
As schoolgirls Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker plot the latter’s mother’s demise, Jackson brings to life their alternative flights of fancy to giddying effect. Weta’s nascent effects are breathtaking, while the then-unknown actors Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey displayed immense promise that they would later fulfil.
Two decades later and it was the turn of our ‘‘multi-ethnic man in Hollywood’’ Cliff Curtis to take the spotlight in The DarkHorse (TVNZ OnDemand).
In an emotionally powerful tale – a cross between Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors – Curtis plays Genesis Potini, the late Gisborne speed chess champion who was widely admired for promoting the educational benefits of chess in poor communities.
The solid supporting cast includes James Rolleston, Kirk Torrance and Miriama McDowell.
Meanwhile, 40 years old in 2020, John Laing’s Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Alice’s, Aro Video) still holds up as a compelling, if somewhat British account of the investigation into the Crew murders that resulted in Arthur Allan Thomas spending a decade in prison.
The 1941 manhunt for police killer Stanley Graham was brought to life by acclaimed British director Mike Newall and Aussie star Jack Thompson in 1981. Bad Blood (Amazon Prime Video) caused a brief furore at the time of its release (it was shot just kilometres from where the actual action took place at Ko¯whitirangi), before almost being lost completely
(prints eventually turned up in an English film laboratory).
It’s fortunate they did, because it is now regarded as something of an early Kiwi classic.