by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

No, not the (brilliant) Rose Matafeo-helmed comedy (season 2 coming soon), I mean the Australian feature film Starstruck, released in the US on Australia Day (aka January 26) of 1982! It didn’t seem to make much of an impact at the time, in the US or in Australia, and that’s such a shame because it absolutely deserves to be celebrated! It’s an incredibly fun musical comedy stuffed with wildly catchy music and a unique sense of humor and, for the life of me, I cannot understand why it isn’t already a sensation. Where are our Starstruck Blu-rays? Remastered soundtrack releases? Stage adaptations?

Why am I being forced to live in a world where none of these things exist?

Let me back up for a moment. Up until mid-2020, when Criterion Channel added it as part of a series on Australian new wave filmmakers, I was like you: unaware of Starstruck’s existence. Gillian Amstrong was a director I associated with period coming-of-age dramas, like the acclaimed 1994 adaptation Little Women or her debut feature, 1979’s My Brilliant Career. I might never have realized that her second feature was an altogether contemporary pop-rock musical.

The film revolves around cousins Jackie (Jo Kennedy) and Angus (Ross O’Donovan) Mullens, teenagers who live with an odd assortment of extended family and lodgers at an old-fashioned pub/hotel at the base of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Jackie works behind the bar with her mum but dreams of making it big as a rock singer. Angus, who’s several years younger and (should) still be in school, passes himself off as her puckish manager, forever scheming up ways to get Jackie “discovered.” There’s the usual bits of melodrama, sparked by romance or professional jockeying (or both), and the pub must predictably be saved by a showstopping performance at a contest to find the next big band.

If it sounds a bit like a throwback to the “let’s put on a show” Hollywood musicals of yesteryear, that was by design. Screenwriter Stephen MacLean had envisioned it that way from the start, folding in details from his own life growing up in a family pub. Starstruck as a film marries those classic musical sensibilities with a look that is very much contemporary to the time when it was being filmed. I think it’s the somewhat odd blend of classic musical and Australian new wave that leaves Starstruck feeling pretty timeless.

The music doesn’t hurt, either. It’s mostly the work of New Zealand new wavers The Swingers, though it seems that the production pulled from plenty of sources. One of my favorite tunes, “I Want To Live In A House,” is credited to Bill Miller, and I have to wonder if that’s George Miller’s brother (and occasional producer). If anyone reading this knows him, please ask. The only track from the film to chart in Australia was “Body and Soul,” written by Tim Finn of New Zealand rock stalwarts Split Enz. Aside from being really catchy (as is most of the soundtrack), it serves as a perfect example of what I see as the undeniable charm of this film.

The number is set at the family pub, the Harbour View Hotel. The host of a popular music TV show in Sydney has sprung Jackie and Angus from jail after Angus’ latest publicity stunt (nude tightrope walking). A band that Jackie sang with at an open mic in an earlier sequence arrives at the same time after hearing about the incident on the radio. Angus, ever the promoter, immediately begins unloading their gear for an impromptu show in the pub, now packed with locals who saw Jackie’s stunt on TV. So the band, wedged between an exterior wall and the bar, begins to play, and Jackie dances on and around the bar as she sings.

It’s a fun song in and of itself, but for me a lot of the enchantment comes from the bar’s clientele serving as backup singers and dancers. Many of these folks are comedians or comic actors with small supporting roles, a line here or there. One of the the film’s great strengths is how well it conveys the personalities of the background actors through very little screentime. The bar’s regulars serve as a sort of extended family to Jackie and Angus and to see these folks singing and dancing along with Jackie feels very genuine. It’s that juxtaposition, between the unreality of a packed bar breaking out into a choreographed dance and the reality of the lack of professional-level polish that makes the scene feel like genuine fun.

MacLean, in a short interview included on the film’s 2005 DVD release (the most recent release I’m aware of), also points to this lack of polish as the charm of Kennedy and O’Donovan as Jackie and Angus (he also says it’s a drawback, but I don’t agree). Neither were established acting talents, nor had they sung or danced for film or theater and, according to Armstrong and producer David Elfick (on another of the DVD interviews), were picked more for their chemistry as a duo than anything else. O’Donovan was particularly green, but I really enjoyed his cartoonish, rubber-faced antics. Kennedy at least had sung in a few punk bands before landing the role, and it lends her a credible sense of stage presence throughout. And they really do work extremely well as a duo. Armstrong mistakenly refers to the characters as siblings in the interview (there are some hints that this might actually be the case, but as filmed they’re referred to as cousins), and watching the film that is exactly the feeling that’s conveyed. Not just that Kennedy and O’Donovan could convincingly play sister and brother, but that they almost could be siblings off-camera as well.

These days, Starstruck sticks out of Armstrong’s filmography a bit like a sore thumb. But back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s (as she explains in the aforementioned interview), Armstrong was a rising star in the Australian film scene. My Brilliant Career was an out-and-out success, both critically and financially, and helped to launch Sam Neill’s international film career. It won two BAFTAs and was nominated for a Golden Globe, an Academy Award, and the Palme d’Or, and Armstrong was being courted with the predictable array of period dramas to direct as her follow up. But she wasn’t interested in being pigeonholed as a period drama director, she wanted to show she had versatility. She heard about the Starstruck screenplay, she went after it, and she got it.

It’s clear from the interview, though, that Starstruck is a bit of a bittersweet memory for her. MacLean’s memories of the finished film, at least as of the 2004 interviews, seem to have turned fairly sour, and Armstrong and Elfick go out of their way to note his enthusiastic involvement in the filming process. The timing of the film’s release in the US seems to have been early by only a few months. Australian films, like other “foreign” features, were expected to be art-house dramas like My Brilliant Career. The US is famously the only market where George Miller’s 1981 masterpiece Max Max 2, aka The Road Warrior, performed poorly on its release. And, perhaps most crucially, American audiences just hadn't been exposed to much Australian music at the beginning of 1982.

Of course, that all changed, and changed quickly. In July, INXS released their single “The One Thing” in the US, which would go on to hit number 2 on US charts. Shortly thereafter, in October, Men at Work hit number 1 with “Who Can It Be Now?” Armstrong and Elfick, with no little chagrin, mention that both bands were considered as the musical backbone for Starstruck but ultimately passed over. That job went, as noted, to The Swingers, who broke up in 1982 and never had the kind of successes that their fellow Australia-based acts found in the US. And so, in more than one way, Starstruck was just shy of the MTV-fueled Australian rock boom in the US.

Forty years later and Armstrong’s filmography is filled with dramas. Her biggest success post-My Brilliant Career was another period film, Little Women. Starstruck remains largely unknown, with no Blu-ray version on the horizon and no re-release of its soundtrack ever hitting shelves. That’s what breaks my heart the most; the sound mix included on the DVD and streaming releases is pretty rough, especially when it comes to the music. A remaster would do wonders and, given the brilliance of the music and the performances, is richly deserved. The soundtrack has, in fact, only ever been released on vinyl and cassette so really I’d be happy with anything a bit more accessible (I did buy a copy of the LP immediately after seeing the film for the first time, but do not have a functioning record player). And, though a stage musical actually had surfaced in late 2019, it only seems to have run for a week as a student production at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Melbourne.

There’s so much more I’d love to talk about (a number of Rocky Horror Picture Show connections including production designer Brian Thompson, costume design by veteran talents Luciana Arrighi and Terry Ryan, the synchronized swimming number, the incredible supporting cast) but, more than anything else, I’m begging you to go watch this film. It’s available for free on Tubi; I’ll even link right to it! It’s just over 90 minutes of pure fun and so for me, for Gillian, and most of all for yourself, give it a go.