• Directed by Stephen Jopkins
• Written by Peter West
• Starring
  • Miles Buchanan
  • Marcus Graham
  • Stephen Grives

I think we should sponsor a bill to prevent foreign directors like Stephen Hopkins from being Hollywoodized and churning out big-budget crap like Lost in Space; instead, they can stay in their home countries and make little gems like Dangerous Game (which, though it was released in 1991, was completed in 1988, before Hopkins’ Hollywood days).

In a nutshell: An on-the-edge cop has it in for a college student, the son of his former superior. So when the student and his friends hack through the security at a big department store and run around inside, the cop decides to terrorize them — but it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt…

What I really appreciated was how fully characterized the psycho cop, Murphy, was. Most movies assume that a “crazy” person will therefore have no remorse and likes nothing better than to mow down hapless teens. By contrast, Murphy is a tortured and conflicted person, and wonderful acting helps us see the person inside. Watch his face as he accidentally kills one kid: We can see his whole life drop out from under him as he realizes what he’s done. And again, when he calls 911 (or whatever Aussies dial), he then realizes that, no matter what he says, he’ll be responsible for the death. He hangs up without saying anything.

Great cat-and-mouse here, and the notable totables (below) support that. If you’ve actually managed to inject suspense into your storytelling, you won’t need tons of extraneous breasts or corpses to keep the audience interested.

Umm… so, was everyone in Australia still dressing like A Flock of Seagulls in 1988?

And note the national pride — see the massive INXS poster?

(And by the way, big lit signs don’t go up in sparks like that.)