''Bullseye'' is an Australian comedy adventure film directed by

Carl Schultz Carl Schultz (born 1939) is a Hungarian-Australian film director. Early life and works He left his native Budapest during the uprising of 1956 with his brother Otto Schultz. They fled to England, and after arriving in London they moved to Man ...

.''Bullseye''
at

National Film and Sound Archive The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national co ...

The movie is also known as ''The Trailblazer'', ''Trailblazer'', ''Outback'' and ''Birdsville''.Suzanne Brown, ''Australian Film 1978-1992'', Oxford University Press, 1993 p266

Plot

In the 1860s, two friends, Harry and Bluey, steal a thousand head of cattle and trek it across country from Queensland to Adelaide.

Cast

* Paul Goddard as Harry Walford *Kathryn Walker as Lily Boyd *John Wood as Bluey McGurk *

Paul Chubb Paul Dunford (14 January 1949 – 9 June 2002), professionally billed as Paul Chubb, was an Australian film, television and stage actor and scriptwriter primarily in genres of comedy and drama. Early life He was born in Arncliffe, a suburb of Sy ...

as Don Mckenzie *

Lynette Curran Lynette Curran is an Australian actress known for many roles in Australian television series and films, including the soap opera '' Bellbird'', and the films ''Country Town'' (1971) and ''Bliss'' (1985). Theatre She started acting in the th ...

as Dora Mckenzie *

Bruce Spence Bruce Spence (born 17 September 1945) is a New Zealand–Australian actor. Spence has amassed over 100 film and television credits and has also acted in theatre. Biography Spence won an AFI Award for Best Actor for his role in the 1971 comedy ...

as Purdy *David Slingsby as Spence *

John Meillon John Meillon, ( ; 1 May 1934 – 11 August 1989), was an Australian character actor, known for many straight as well as comedy roles, he became most widely known internationally as Walter Reilly in the films ''Crocodile Dundee'' and ''Crocodil ...

as Merritt *

Kerry Walker Kerry Ann Walker is an Australian actress. She has had a lengthy career on both stage and screen. She was nominated for the AFI Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role three times, in 1985 for ''Bliss'', 1986 for ''Twelfth Night'' and in 1 ...

as Mrs Gootch *

Rhys McConnochie Rhys or Rhŷs is a popular Welsh given name (usually male) that is famous in Welsh history and is also used as a surname. It originates from Deheubarth, an old region of South West Wales, with famous kings such as Rhys ap Tewdwr. It is pronounced ...

as Judge

Production

Robert Wales' script was originally called ''Trailblazer''. It was based on the cattle drive of Harry Readford, known as

Captain Starlight Frank Pearson (1837–22 December 1899) was an Australian bushranger, operating under the pseudonym ''Captain Starlight.'' Pearson claimed he was the inspiration for a fictional figure of the same pseudonym: the character Captain Starlight in ...

, which inspired the novel ''

Robbery Under Arms ''Robbery Under Arms'' is a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne, published under his pen name Rolf Boldrewood. It was first published in serialised form by ''The Sydney Mail'' between July 1882 and August 1883, then in three volumes in ...

''. PBL Productions, then an offshoot of the Nine Network, bought the script and at one stage

Joan Long Joan Long (born Joan Dorothy Boundy; 20 July 1925 – 2 January 1999) was an Australian producer, writer and director best known for '' Caddie'' (1976). She was awarded as a Member of the Order of Australia in 1980 for her services to the film ...

was going to produce with

Peter Yeldham Peter Alan Yeldham (25 April 1927 – 20 September 2022) was an Australian screenwriter for motion pictures and television, playwright and novelist. Biography Peter Yeldham was born in Gladstone, near Smithtown, New South Wales, in 1927. Le ...

working on the script. Then

was hired as director and he wanted to turn it into a comedy, so Yeldham left the project. PBL formed a partnership with Dumbarton Films who had worldwide marketing rights to the film. The two leads were inexperienced: Kathryn Walker was an architecture student doing some modelling and Paul Goddard had only been in one small role."Blazing the trail from Birdsville", ''Cinema Papers'', January 1986 p45 The movie was shot on location in the Australian outback, with the town of Bourke standing in for Roma, and studio scenes shot at Mort Bay studios in Balmain, Sydney. Shooting finished on 14 November 1985."Production round-up", ''Cinema Papers'', November 1985 p48

Release

Hoyts wanted to release the film but Dumbarton held up the release hoping for a major Hollywood distributor to handle the film in the same way as ''

Crocodile Dundee ''Crocodile Dundee'' (stylized as ''"Crocodile" Dundee'' in the U.S.) is a 1986 action comedy film set in the Australian Outback and in New York City. It stars Paul Hogan as the weathered Mick Dundee, and American actress Linda Kozlowski as rep ...

''. This did not occur and the film was not released until two years after it was made. It was not a financial success. One critic wrote that "the film is entertaining in its contrived absurdity but lacks any substance behind the comic set ups." However

David Stratton David James Stratton (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer. Life and career Born in Trowbridge, ...

called the film "hugely entertaining".

Home Media

''Bullseye'' was released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in January 2011. The DVD is compatible with all region codes.

References

External links

*
''Bullseye''
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TCMDB Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of Atl ...

''Bullseye''
at

BFI The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...

{{Bob Ellis 1987 films Films set in colonial Australia Films set in Queensland Films set in South Australia Films set in the 1860s Films scored by Chris Neal (songwriter) 1980s English-language films