Barry McKenzie Holds His Own – review

Director: Bruce Beresford

First released: 1974

Contains spoilers

You know, perhaps it is me. However despite the Barry McKenzie character first being suggested to Barry Humphries by Peter Cook and despite the character first appearing in Private Eye Magazine, and despite the strong, positive reviews of this movie over at IMDb, I found myself less than impressed with this movie.

Despite Barry Crocker injecting the Barry character with a great deal of good natured sympathy, I found this a product of its time and, quite frankly, rather embarrassing and offensive now. That said, it is an equal opportunities offender – every nation and race portrayed in the film are shown in a stereotyped light. The French (or frogs as the film habitually names them, even calling the French airline frog-air) are seen as drunken letches, Australians are displayed as alcoholic, brash idiots, the English are shown are effete snobs and immigrants to the UK are shown as state spongers (you see, Mail readers, there is nothing new under the sun). The racial language would be unacceptable in a modern film. I do not subscribe to the idea that this is ironic and self-defacing in nature – indeed the film appears to celebrate its distasteful side.

Nevertheless, there is a vampire in this – so let’s get on with it…

Barry and his Aunty Edna (Barry Humphries) are en route to France. The plane lurches around as the drunken French pilot gets it on with a stewardess. A caption informs us this is ‘the first English language film with English subtitles’ – just in case you can’t understand Barry’s colloquialisms. Edna tries on a tiara and two Eastern block (vampire) agents mistake her for the Queen of England and assume that Barry is her bodyguard.

This leads to a farce of them trying to kill Barry so that they might kidnap Edna – they fail in the first but eventually succeed in the second. Why do they want to kidnap Edna? Because their master – Erich Count von Plasma (Donald Pleasence; Dracula, Vampire in Venice and the Monster Club), who is the Minister for Transylvanian tourism – wants her brought to his castle to attract the tourist trade.

It will be up to Barry, his twin brother the Reverend Kevin McKenzie (also Barry Crocker) and a group of ex-pat Aussies to rescue Edna – whose life expectancy is no longer than the time it takes for Plasma to realise the mistake he and his men have made. Now, despite Plasma suggesting otherwise, these really are vampires and thus we have some lore to look at.

Plasma claims an immunity from holy objects but he cannot stand against Kevin when he approaches him, bible in one hand and a cross made out of Fosters cans in the other. The power of God is enough to despatch the vampire. Plasma himself actually subscribes to communism and thus it is Kevin’s faith that finishes the vampire off.

They can also be staked – although the only staking we see is from the sharpened end of a French loaf wielded by Colin the Frog (Dick Bentley). Sunlight does not appear to be an issue for these vampires. A bite can turn a person into a vampire.

We see blood drinking. Plasma’s waiter (John James) has a tap in his neck from which he gives Plasma an aperitif. A tap in the neck was nothing new – the year before it had been used to horror rather than comedy effect in Vault of Horror – though, to be fair, the self tapping aspect was a new idea. Plasma also has a blood cellar, rather than a wine cellar.

The method of filling it involved a machine called the Auto-Vamp, which drains a victim dry whilst the Count does other things. There is a second Auto-Vamp into which the hunchback Dorothy (Robert Gillespie) places one of the Australian rescuers, causing it to blow up when it draws pure fosters from his veins. There is a female vampire, Clothilde (Nancy Blair), whom Plasma refers to as a slave.

As I say, this just didn’t do it for me. Perhaps I am doing the film a disservice… but I think not. 2 out of 10. The imdb page is here.