The genre dominated film making period of the 80's gave birth to many a cult feature, including Ghosts of the Civil Dead directed by John Hillcoat. The film made in 1988 and released in 1989 was the first feature made by director John Hillcoat and producer Evan English who had previously only directed music video clips. It is considered one of the most shocking and confronting works to emerge from the cinema of the 1980's in Australia.
Ghosts of the Civil Dead is set in a futuristic prison called Central Industrial, located in some isolated part of the Australian outback . It presents a stark and extremely raw view of prison life and the impact that incarceration has upon prisoners. It explores the issues of prison reform and prison violence in an extremely graphic and blunt manner. Ghosts of the Civil Dead argues that the problems that exist in prison are created centrally by the prison system itself.
The film gives us an all rounded view of life, from the prisoners side and from the guards side. It traces the events that lead up to the 'lock down' a state of emergency where all the prisoners are confined to their cells and stripped of all their privileges. It begins with Wenzil, (David Field, who went on to be Acko in Two Hands) standing nude against a white wall, having his prison identification photos taken. Immediately the film has plunged in at the deep end, not bothering to ease the viewer into the film, rather choosing to be confronting right from the beginning in a truly Australian style. We then see the process of Wenzil being introduced into the prison, his first steps into the open area that all the cells face towards, and he sits and observes the prisoners and his surroundings. From these beginnings we assume that Wenzil is the main character, however Ghosts of the Civil Dead really has no main character, instead it chooses to give the viewer a general idea of what happens inside the prison without actually focusing on one person, we observe the plight of the prisoners, and of the guards as a whole rather than the internal conflicts of individual characters. The film takes its time to unfold, giving us short glimpses of the different characters that dwell within the prisons walls. The viewer is exposed to all the illegal going ons of the prison, the smuggling of drugs and weapons into the prison, what lengths the prisoners go to to hide them. We also ýsee how the inmates choose to amuse themselves, with pornography, self mutilation or by committing acts of violence against each other. What is presented, is a highly realistic and fiercely raw view of prison life. We go on to see Wenzil knock someone out and steal his radio so that he can trade it for a handmade tattoo from another inmate, of course his actions are followed by a brutal reaction. Wenzil is ambushed in the tattooist cell, beaten and raped by the friends of the radio owner and left in a bloody mess, barely able to walk with an extremely explicit four letter word tattooed roughly on his forehead.
Events like this continue to increase the tension between the prison guards and the prisoners and between the prisoners and themselves in Ghosts of the Civil Dead. More violence occurs between the prisoners, a transvestite is beaten to death for no real reason then for his sexual preference, and so the authorities crack down, removing all of the prisoners' belongings and submitting them to inhumane and invasive acts of brutality. The prison then begins to descend into madness, the prisoners are driven to insanity by boredom, acts of self mutilation become a regular occurrence and the inmates dare not leave their cells since many that have, do not come back. You could cut the air with a knife, the tension is so thick. The wardens are going secretly delirious as they watch the prisoners get angrier and angrier, they can feel a revolt of some sort is upon them . Although we do not see all the incidents that occur in the riots, we see the most violent act and that is plenty, a prisoner stabs a guard to death, stabbing him over 50 times although he is already dead. This is all to the horror of two other guards who have locked themselves in a prisoners cage. The killing is egged on by cheers of encouragement and psychotic laughing coming from the other inmates.
The ending is somewhat vague but we see that strangely enough some time after the riots, we're not told how long, that a few of the prisoners are released, Wenzil included. He has been released into an innocent and unsuspecting society, we watch him descend the escalator behind an unknowing woman, a product of a violent and malfunctioning prison system.
One of the most noticeable attributes of Ghosts of the Civil Dead is that it looks like a documentary. At the beginning of the movie, in a very military style we are given information, such as prisoner reports, reports of violence in the prison and other such facts in the form of text on the screen. We also see dates marking the passage of time. All of this is John Hillcoat attempting to make the prison seem as if it really does exist. The documentary style of the film makes the graphic imagery much more confronting. The camera work is also very documentary like, with the camera only catching snippets of the action, through doorways or through video surveillance tapes. Hillcoat has chosen not to film the action in the normal narrative style, where the viewer has a complete view of all important events in order to form the narrative, instead the viewer is allowed only to see fleeting moments of action rather than purposely set up scenes (Bertrand, 2002). This adds to the realistic documentary feel. Ghosts of the Civil Dead also is very documentary like in the way that it goes about focusing on the 'facts' so to say about prison life rather than creating an entertaining feature that is suitable for main stream consumption. The cast was also made of some professional actors and some actual ex-convicts, which made the performances in Ghost of the Civil Dead disturbingly convincing. In fact it was made with the assistance of about than 50 criminals, and David Field who played Wenzil put it perfectly.
"I reckon if you're a good con you'll probably make a great actor. If you're a good actor, you might get by as a con - if you're lucky!"( Miller, 1989)
There is no real depth of character in the film and little exploration of any of the characters emotions or internal conflicts, we only see how they are feeling from their external behavior. This sometimes makes Ghosts of the Civil Dead quite difficult to follow, since we have no real main protagonists to lead us through the narrative , and with the narrative being so loose the film at times seems have no real direction at all. At some points in the film it seems to be one long mise-en-scene really, relying on a montage of brutal and shocking images to communicate its meaning with little use of dialogue. Ghosts of the Civil Dead has an art house feel about it, using very dark and coloured lighting, The cinematography is often very blurry, and focuses on obscure and often haunting images. The music also plays an important part in shaping the films mood, eery melodies combined with children's voices and painful moaning fill the prison corridors with notions of ghostly presence and misery. Interestingly the entire soundtrack is composed and performed by one of Australia most acclaimed singer-songwriters, Nick Cave (The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party and The Badseeds), the music in Ghosts of The Civil Dead is closely related to the style and themes present in Cave's own work which deals mainly with dark and somber issues. The film is also co-written by Cave and features him as psychotic new inmate who rants and raves for his entire on screen time as well as painting the cell walls with his blood. The huge part that the music plays in the film is definitely significant of the fact that John Hillcoat and Evan English previous work was with music video clips, the most famous of these the INXS video.
Ghosts of the Civil Dead with its small cast and limited setting is an example of Australia's medium sized English Language cinema. Australia, being a medium sized country, and having to compete with Americas international cinema industry is forced to produce films of a different nature, films that are similar to the high budget Hollywood cinema yet not too similar as to pose direct competition. The end result is a national cinema that deals with the unusual and the quirky. (O'Regan, 1996) It displays the quirkiness and the offbeatness that is associated with Australian cinema. However Ghosts of the Civil Dead clearly did not aim to compete with the Hollywood blockbusters of its time at all, or even to draw a mainstream audience. The film is an example of political film making, film making with a conscience, full of social commentary. Hillcoat and English have chosen not to be concerned with the entertainment elements of the film but rather on the social commentary that it makes. With the decline in film production in the late 80's Hillcoat may have been looking towards a new genre of film rather than the blockbusters(Crocodile Dundee, Mad Max) that had dominated the early to mid eighties(O'Regan, 1996)
Ghosts of the Civil Dead is also an example of the way that Australia cinema is a vehicle for social problematization. As well as the basic plot being a social problem itself, their are many other social problems that exist within the plot. Clearly the film problematizes the issue of prison reform, arguing that the problems that exist in our prison system are created by the system itself. The film can be closely linked to Jack Henry Abbott's book In the Belly of the Beast, which is an autobiographical work about Abbott's life in prison and the inhumanity of incarceration. Ghosts of the Civil Dead in no way suggests that criminals should not be punished for their crimes but rather that the system in which they are supposedly being 'rehabilitated' in does not work. It suggests that people who have authority in the prisons abuse it and provoke the prisoners into acts of violence against each other and themselves, simply because they can. The systems breeds a cycle of violence with the prisoners being submitted to inhumane acts of brutality, then revolting violently against these acts and subseÿquently the guards suffering the consequences. Ghosts of the Civil Dead also problematizes social issues of race and of sexuality. Nick Cave's character Maynard who plays a psychotic new inmate rants and raves about 'niggers' when he sees an Aboriginal man in a nearby cell. We also hear a conversation between two guards who are talking about how they sent a black man to do outdoor recreation with to well known 'black killers' and he was murdered. In relation to issues of sexuality we see an outcast transvestite beaten to death by a bigoted inmate. All these issues are examples of the way that Australian cinema becomes a vehicle for social problematization(O'Regan, 1996)
In conclusion Ghosts of the Civil Dead is still a very important film in the study of öAustralian Cinema. It is an example of what happens when film makers draw on other art forms to influence their work and how in this case the director/producer teams experience in the music video industry makes the content of the film much more powerful. At the time of its release Ghosts of the Civil Dead made a huge impact on the public packing out cinemas all over the country, and in today's society the film is still highly relevant. The problem of prison reform is still a debated issue in today's society, and the social problems caused by our prison systems are as real as they were in the 80's. Ghosts of the Civil Dead makes a bold statement, it hits the nail on the head, and with its haunting soundtrack it is a film that you are unlikely to forget.
Bibliography
Online References
Smith,J, 2000, Ghosts of the Civil Dead, The Lonesome Road, Movies, viewed the 30th of April
http://www.lonesomeroad.com/viewtext.asp?textID=219
Bertrand, I, 2002, Bordering Fiction and Documentary, Senses of Cinema, viewed 29th of April
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/ghosts.html
Miller,R, ND, Ghosts of the Civil Dead...Welcome to Hell, The Cave Inn, viewed 1st of May
http://www.bad-seed.org/`cave/reviews/films/89-06-7_ob_gotcd.html
Print References
O'Regan, T, 1996, Australian National Cinema, Chapter 4, pg 96, Routledge, London and New York
O'Regan, T, 1996, Australian National Cinema, Chapter 11, pg 261-73, Routledge, London and New York
GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL DEAD
Crew
Director - John Hillcoat
Producer - Evan English
Director of Photography - Evan English, Paul Goldma, Graham Wood
Production Company - Correcetional Services In Assosciation with Outlaw Values
Script - Gene Conkie, John Hillcoat, Evan English, Nick Cave, Hugo Race
Music - Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld
Distributors - Diapha Distribution, Electric Pictures/ Contemporary Film LTD, Up Link
Cast
Dave Field ...........................Wenzil
Mike Bishop........................David Yale
Chris de Rose.......................Jack Grezner
Nick Cave.............................Maynard
Freddo Dierck......................Robbins
Vincent Gil...........................Ruben
Bogdan Koca........................Waycheck
Kevin Mackney...................Glover
Dave Mason........................Lilly
Ian Mortimer.......................Jack
Tony Clark..........................Simone
Mick King...........................Edwin Neal
Made - 1988
Released - 1989
Running Time - 93 mins
Genre - Horror/Cult/ Exploitation
Film Festivals it was screened at - Cannes and Venice Festival, invited to film festivals in London, Toronto, Hoff and New York.
Ghosts of the Civil Dead - presence on the web
Smith,J, 2000, Ghosts of the Civil Dead, The Lonesome Road, Movies, viewed the 30th of April
http://www.lonesomeroad.com/viewtext.asp?textID=219
Bertrand, I, 2002, Bordering Fiction and Documentary, Senses of Cinema, viewed 29th of April
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/ghosts.html
Miller,R, ND, Ghosts of the Civil Dead...Welcome to Hell, The Cave Inn, viewed 1st of May
http://www.bad-seed.org/cave/reviews/films/89-06-7_ob_gotcd.html
Ghost of the Civil Dead Movie Review, MSN Entertainment, viewed 28th of April
http://entertainment.msn.com/Movies/Movie.aspx?m=479087
Ghosts of the Civil Dead, IMDB, viewed 28th of April
http://www.us.imdb.com/Title?0095217
Note: The film was quite obscure and could not be found on many Australian movie databases. I was able to locate a few reviews on the internet, but many sites contained the same reviews. Due to a lack of presence on the web, I was unable to locate the exact release date, the box office figures or interviews with any of the crew, probably since this was they debut feature. My main source of information was the net as I could find no literature about the film.
New: 6 May 2003 | Now: 6 May 2003