''Malcolm'' is a 1986
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
n
cult film
A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage ...
comedy, written by the husband-and-wife team of
David Parker and
Nadia Tass
Nadia Tass is an Australian theatre director and film director and producer. She is known for the films ''Malcolm'' (1986) and ''The Big Steal'' (1990), as well as an extensive body of work in the theatre, both in Australia and internationa ...
, and directed by
Nadia Tass
Nadia Tass is an Australian theatre director and film director and producer. She is known for the films ''Malcolm'' (1986) and ''The Big Steal'' (1990), as well as an extensive body of work in the theatre, both in Australia and internationa ...
(who made her debut as a feature director on this film). The film stars
Colin Friels
Colin Friels (born 25 September 1952) is a Scottish-born Australian actor of theatre, TV and film and presenter
Early life
Friels was born in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland.Interview with Colin Friels, ''George Negus Tonight'' (ABC Television ...
as Malcolm, a
tram
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...
enthusiast who becomes involved with a pair of would-be bank robbers. His co-stars are
Lindy Davies
Lindy Davies (29 August 1946) is an Australian actress, director, actor trainer and performance consultant. She played Ruth Ballinger in the Australian soap opera ''Prisoner'' in 1985, and won the AFI (AACTA) Award for Best Supporting Actress ...
and
John Hargreaves. The film won the 1986
Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film
The AACTA Award for Best Film is an award presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), a non-profit organisation whose aim is to "identify, award, promote, and celebrate Australia's greatest achievements in film and ...
, and seven other AFI awards including
Best Original Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with the ...
and
Best Director Best Director is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards. It may refer to:
Film awards
* AACTA Award for Best Direction
* Academy Award for Best Director
* BA ...
.
Plot
At the start of the film Malcolm is working for the
Metropolitan Transit Authority (then operator of
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
's
trams
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...
). Autistic Malcolm is obsessed with trams, but he is also a mechanical genius whose modest inner-city cottage is fitted with a variety of remarkable gadgets. When his boss (
Bud Tingwell
Charles William Tingwell AM (3 January 1923 – 15 May 2009), known professionally as Bud Tingwell or Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, was an Australian film, television, theatre and radio actor. One of the veterans of Australian film, he acted in his ...
) discovers that Malcolm has built himself a cut-down tram during work time and using work materials, and has taken it out on the tracks, Malcolm is sacked. With his mother dead and no other income, the local shop-owner advises him to take in a boarder, Frank (
John Hargreaves). Frank's brassy girlfriend Judith (Lindy Davies) soon moves in with him, and Frank reveals that he is a petty criminal who has recently been released from gaol. Despite their differences, the trio develop an awkward friendship, and when Malcolm learns of Frank and Jude's plans to stage a robbery, he decides to use his technical ingenuity to help them. In his first demonstration, he shows Frank the "getaway car" he has built, which splits into two independently powered halves, and they use this to successfully elude police after Frank steals some cash from a bank customer.
For his next demonstration, Malcolm stages a near-successful hold-up of a payroll delivery, using a radio-controlled model car and trailer, fitted with a
video camera
A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film). Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other ...
, a speaker, and a gun loaded with blanks with which to threaten the guards. Frank walks in on Malcolm's bedroom "control centre" while the robbery is in progress; joining in, he helps Malcolm to steal the cash, although it is eventually lost when the planned getaway route (through a street drain) proves too small and the bag of cash is knocked off the trailer.
The trio then devises an audacious plot to steal the weekly
$250,000 cash delivery from a major bank, and Malcolm collaborates with Frank and Jude to create a set of ingenious inventions. They plant a set of armed, remote-controlled motorised robot rubbish bins inside the bank, which are then secretly manoeuvered up to an overhead walkway between the two bank buildings. When the guards cross the walkway with the cash on a trolley, they are bailed up by the robot bins. With Frank's specially modified
Ford Transit
The Ford Transit is a family of light commercial vehicles manufactured by the Ford Motor Company since 1965, primarily as a cargo van, but also available in other configurations including a large passenger van (marketed as the Ford Tourneo in ...
delivery van, stationed below, a spring-loaded arm fitted with a hammer swings up, breaks the glass of the walkway window, and the robots push the cash into a chute fitted into the roof of the van. The trio then make their escape, stopping in a lane to disguise the van as an ice-cream truck; they also set loose a
Ned Kelly
Edward Kelly (December 1854 – 11 November 1880) was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout wi ...
-like dummy in a radio-controlled wheelchair, armed with two shotguns, which they send out as a decoy for the
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
while they make their escape. They manage to elude the pursuing police, but they are nearly caught when two officers on a routine patrol pull up beside them and ask them for an ice-cream. Frank speeds away, with the police in hot pursuit, and they now employ their backup getaway plan. They dump the van in a suburban street and decamp on foot, but when the police arrive moments later and scan the area for the fugitives, they see only the back of a tram, pulling away into the distance. However, when we see the front of the tram, it is revealed to be Malcolm's custom-made mini-tram, with the trio and their loot aboard.
In the final scene, Frank is leaving a bank in
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
,
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
(another city with a major tram network) where he has just deposited the proceeds of the Melbourne robbery. He then meets up with Malcolm and Jude at a local cafe, and as the film concludes they lay plans for another daring robbery.
Production
As revealed in the closing credits, the character of Malcolm was inspired by Nadia Tass' late brother, John Tassopoulos, who died after suffering an epileptic seizure after being hit by a car in 1983. As portrayed by Friels, Malcolm exhibits many traits that are characteristic of someone with
high-functioning autism
High-functioning autism (HFA) is an autism classification where a person exhibits no intellectual disability, but may exhibit deficits in communication, emotion recognition and expression, and social interaction. HFA is not included in either t ...
or
Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in Interpersonal relationship, social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and re ...
, including a peculiar walk, reluctance to make eye contact, poor social skills and a deep-focus, obsessive interest (in this case, trams).
David Parker had never written a script before and he did it while working on location of ''Burke and Wills'' as a stills photographer. Raising money was very difficult. Channel Seven agreed to provide $175,000 as a presale, Film Victoria came in for $100,000, and the rest of the movie was raised from Parker and Tass mortgaging their house and via 10BA.
All of the gadgets in Malcolm's house and the ingenious inventions used in the robbery sequences were devised by writer David Parker.
Filming locations
The scenes of the exterior of Malcolm's house were filmed at 23 Napoleon Street,
Collingwood. The house has since been demolished and redeveloped with apartments. The interior scenes were filmed at a house in John Street,
Flemington, an inner city suburb of Melbourne.
A
façade
A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a Loanword, loan word from the French language, French (), which means 'frontage' or 'face'.
In architecture, the façade of a building is often t ...
was constructed in Napoleon Street for the exterior scenes of the Milk Bar. The interior scenes were filmed at the former milk bar located on Peel Street near Napoleon Street.
The Leinster Arms Hotel, located in Gold Street, Collingwood, was used for filming the inside scenes at the pub Frank often frequents.
The scenes of the headquarters of the fictional ''Anglo Swiss Bank'' were filmed at two locations. The building where Frank and Judith deliver a number of ashtrays is the
Commonwealth Bank
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), or CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of financial services including retail, busines ...
in
Collins Street near the intersection with
Queen Street. All signage related to the Commonwealth Bank was removed for the purpose of filming.
The overhead bridge featured in the robbery of the bank is located at the William Angliss
TAFE
Technical and further education or simply TAFE (), is the common name in English-speaking countries in Oceania for vocational education, as a subset of tertiary education. TAFE institutions provide a wide range of predominantly vocational cours ...
, on LaTrobe Street.
The tram depot featured in the beginning of the film is the former
South Melbourne
South Melbourne is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km south of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Port Phillip local government area. South Melbourne recorded a population of 11,548 at t ...
Depot which was located on Kingsway at the corner of Dorcas Street (and is now a
BMW dealer).
Kew
Kew () is a district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its population at the 2011 census was 11,436. Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is a ...
Depot features briefly in a dawn scene of a tram depot, prior to Malcolm taking his own tram for a test run. The foreman's office in which Malcolm is sacked is located in the body shop at
Preston Workshops
Preston Workshops is the heavy maintenance facility for the Melbourne tram network. The workshop is located on a block surrounded by Miller Street, St George's Road, Oakover Road and the Mernda railway line in Preston, a suburb of Melbourne, Au ...
. The scene in which Malcolm, Frank and Judith switch from a getaway van to Malcolm's tram was filmed near the Workshops in Miller Street,
Thornbury.
Vehicles
![Malcolm tram at TMSV-MTM Bylands 27-1-2013](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Malcolm_tram_at_TMSV-MTM_Bylands_27-1-2013.jpg)
The model tram that Malcolm "built" ran on a motorbike engine, the rest having been put together by Ian McClay. A wooden pole was used to simulate the power input pole. After the film was completed, the tram was donated to the
Tramway Museum Society of Victoria
The Tramway Museum Society of Victoria Incorporated (TMSV) owns a large collection of trams from Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong, Adelaide, and Sydney as well as preserved buses and other work vehicles. History
The TMSV was founded in 1962 with ...
.
The split car gag was achieved with three different
Honda Z
The Honda Z (marketed also as the Z600) is a two-door hatchback kei car/city car manufactured and marketed by the Honda Motor Company, from 1970 until 1974. Exports mostly ended after 1972, when the domestic market models received redesigned pil ...
's. One was tricked up with two motorbikes bought from Albert Park Golf Club - these were the split cars that the stunt riders drove in the movie. The second car was used for the actors on a caravan base towed behind a tracking vehicle generously donated for the job by Sydney grip, Ray Brown. The third car remained as a driveable - pre-split car. It is now housed in Cascade Films Foyer in South Melbourne. The drivable split car is now stored at th
National Film and Sound Archive Canberra.
The remote controlled car used by Malcolm to rob his first bank is a
Tamiya Sand Scorcher
{{unreferenced, date=September 2013
The Tamiya Sand Scorcher was the sixteenth 1/10-scale electric radio controlled car kit released by Japanese model manufacturer Tamiya Corporation. First introduced on December 15, 1979, its high level of detail ...
, model number 58016.
All the remote control cars, including the ashtrays, were built by David Parker, Tony Mahood and Ian McClay. The split cars were built by Tony Mahood, Steve Mills (from Ted's Camera Store) and David Parker.
The staged television news item which screens during the movie, detailing Malcolm's failed remote-control payroll robbery was read by long-serving
Channel Seven Melbourne news reader
David Johnston
David Lloyd Johnston (born June 28, 1941) is a Canadian academic, author, and statesman who served from 2010 to 2017 as Governor General of Canada, the 28th since Canadian Confederation. He is the commissioner of the Leaders' Debates Commis ...
, who was at
Channel Ten at the time.
Music
The music used in the film was composed by
Simon Jeffes
Simon Harry Piers Jeffes (19 February 1949 – 11 December 1997) was an English classically trained guitarist, composer and arranger. He formed, and was the primary performer of, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. He was the composer of the ballet ''Sti ...
and performed by him and fellow members of the
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra (PCO) were an avant-pop band led by English guitarist Simon Jeffes. Co-founded with cellist Helen Liebmann, it toured extensively during the 1980s and 1990s. The band's sound is not easily categorized, having elemen ...
.
Reception
Box office
''Malcolm'' grossed AU$3,482,129 at the box office in Australia, which is equivalent to A$10,726,973 in 2021 terms.
Critical response
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
the film has 3 positive reviews and 1 negative review.
Walter Goodman of
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
wrote: "Malcolm is likable, albeit a touch slow, and the same can be said of the new Australian comedy that bears his name."
Desson Howe of the Washington Post wrote: "The story line meanders like a sunstroked wallaby, the hackneyed characters fail to interact logically or even interestingly, and the gadgets are just so many mildly diverting toys."
Accolades
Home media
''Malcolm'' was released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in November 2001. The DVD is compatible with all region codes and includes special features, such as the trailer, a photo montage, location map, the press kit, a
Popcorn Taxi
Popcorn Taxi was an Australian independent non-competitive film festival that presented regular film screenings followed by a live Q&A with related 'talent' immediately afterward. The unique nature of each screening was that the events provide pat ...
Q&A, ''More Malcolm Gizmos'' and audio commentary with Nadia Tass and David Parker.
In 2021, Umbrella Entertainment released a region-free Blu-ray of ''Malcolm'', retaining the special features from the DVD release and adding exclusive new features.
See also
*
Cinema of Australia
The cinema of Australia had its beginnings with the 1906 production of ''The Story of the Kelly Gang'', arguably the world's first feature film. Since then, Australian crews have produced many films, a number of which have received internati ...
*
Trams in Melbourne
Trams are a major form of public transport in Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, Australia. As of May 2017, the Melbourne tramway network consists of of double track, 493 trams, 24 routes, and 1,763 tram stops. The system ...
References
External links
*
Malcolm at the National Film and Sound Archive''Malcolm''at
Australian Screen Online
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 ...
''Malcolm''at Oz Movies
{{Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film 1970–1989
1986 films
1980s heist films
Australian crime comedy films
1980s crime comedy films
Films directed by Nadia Tass
Films set in Melbourne
Films shot in Melbourne
Australian heist films
Rail transport films
Vestron Pictures films
1986 directorial debut films
1986 comedy films
Films about autism