Tony Barry and John Bach in Rest For The Wicked. Photo / Supplied
The director of this ultra-low-budget comic thriller is not long back from eight years in London where he compiled a long list of art-department credits. Casting around for a feature film idea, he was struck by how underused our senior thespian talent is: his solution was to set a film
in a retirement village.
And he's rounded up all the usual suspects: a single shot I noted, which had John Bach, Tony Barry, Ken Blackburn, Ian Mune and Elizabeth McRae arrayed like birds on a wire, was typical.
This rather jolly film, written by advertising man Bob Moore, put me in mind of the kind of entertainments they put on in retirement villages, too. It has a teaspoon too much treacly whimsy but it is distinguished by a quirky and inventive visual sense and some smart editing, and is an entertaining if not original story idea.
Barry, looking disarmingly like retired detective Graham Bell, who hosts Police Ten 7 on the telly, plays retired detective Murray Baxter, going undercover to entrap his old nemesis Frank Henson (Bach), a plainly villainous rascal who is getting away with serial murder.
He finds himself in the Knightsbridge Gardens retirement village where he uncovers some seriously shady goings-on: bodies in the bath, illicit affairs and the rest-home doctor in cahoots with the cops to hush everything up.
