peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2011 06 08 CaneToads AnUnnaturalHistory

Cane Toads: an unnatural history (1988)

/noise/movies | Link

I saw this 1988 (bicentennial?) documentary on the strength of the reviews of its recently released successor, Cane Toads: the conquest: here is Paul Byrnes looking back to the original with fondness while frying the rehash, and Liz Farrelly happily drawing parallels with other low-lifes.

I didn't find it as funny as I hoped, though the Queensland scientists seemed to be sufficiently in on the joke for the gallows humour to freely flow. The farmers brought the stupidity of the whole thing into sharp relief, playing the blunt straight men to the clowning of the urbanites. The druggy from wherever was a bit cheap, though the bloodless Joh-voters with "mate" toads were damn near scary. Queensland just isn't that much of a joke these days, I guess; probably due to all those Victorians moving up there with expectations of government services and other forms of socialism.

The mouse-eating sequence put me off my dinner.