with apologies to Frederick McCubbin
SCREENPLAY:
RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW
written by BOB BAGARIC & ROBERT BRUINEWOUD
GENRE: adventure/horror
LOGLINE:
In 1933 rural Australia, a reclusive WW1 veteran and a widowed grazier join a makeshift group of hunters to eradicate those guilty of slaughtering their livestock. Only to become hunted by the monstrous hominids responsible.
INTRODUCING RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW:
Red in Tooth and Claw is a terrifying new addition to the Bigfeet genre. Set during the Great Depression in the shadows of Australia’s Great Dividing Range, we meet Boyd, a reclusive war veteran with a tragic past, trudging the roads of rural Australia in search of work. He meets a widowed grazier, Amy Keenan, and desperate for a meal, he ignores the painful memories she stirs in him, and accepts a short-term job on her sheep station.
Despite some issues, the work is soon completed. Already feeling he has become too comfortable working for Amy, Boyd is anxious to hit the road. However, they soon learn one of Amy’s flocks has been slaughtered, and so he offers to do the right thing and help bury the carcasses. Only to find himself delaying his departure a second time, when Amy decides to join her neighbour, Gaites, and his makeshift hunting party, on the trail of the sheep killers.
The combined groups offer an array of distinctive characters through which the themes around society, our mutual obligations to each other, and the difficulties we have coping with disruptive change, are played out.
Over the next two days the group picks their way through dense bushland, while making a series of discoveries that slowly reveal aspects of what it is they are hunting. This is despite Gaites using his power as the wealthiest landowner in the district, to repeatedly distract them from interrogating what it is they have found, while trying to downplay the gravity of their situation.
So it is just mere hours before the attack, when Boyd and Amy finally force Gaites to admit to what he’s known all along. But by then it’s too late. It is dark and they are miles from anywhere. Their only course is to wait out the night by the campfire and leave at first light.
However Gaites’ breach of trust has undermined what little cohesion the two groups had, and so when they are attacked they are completely unprepared for the onslaught.
The brutality of the Yowies (Australia’s Bigfeet) will shock audiences. These are not simple animals hunting to eat and survive. Grinning in anticipation, they appear to relish the fear, pain and anguish they inflict.
Sharing aspects with movies such as: Prey (2022), The Revenant (2015), The Grey (2011) and The Ghost & the Darkness (1996) — Red in Tooth and Claw will take audiences on a dread-filled journey into a forbidding, yet beautiful world. A journey from which only a few will return.
NOTE: For a cheaper, contemporary Yowie movie, see Hairy Man Creek.
Red in Tooth and Claw is available to read at:
• Script Revolution or
• you can contact me via the contact form.