Crocodile Dundee II
Clip 2: A bush telephone call
3 min 0 sec
Taken from the feature Crocodile Dundee II (1988)
Original title classification PG – this clip chosen to be G
Availability of the complete title
Curator’s clip description
Mick (Paul Hogan) has taken Sue (Linda Kozlowski) back to the Northern Territory to keep her safe, but Rico (Hechter Ubarry) and his henchmen follow. They abduct Wally Reilly (John Meillon) hoping to force Dundee to help him. Mick uses an Aboriginal ‘bullroarer’ to make a bush ‘telephone call’, calling on help from whoever is nearby. Wally invents yet another story to explain the noise to the spooked criminals.
Curator’s notes
The reaction of the animals is like a scene from a Tarzan film of the 1930s, but Mick uses a bullroarer rather than a blood-curdling cry. Nevertheless, the scene isn’t treated as comedy. The slow rise of the camera up the rock to where Mick is framed in the golden light of sunset continues the process of ‘Aboriginalising’ Mick (just as in clip one, where there is a didgeridoo on the soundtrack). The scene is meant to give the film a deeper sense of mysticism, and to suggest forces that are only dimly understood by the uninitiated.
Paul Byrnes, curator
