State of Siege

99.9 XX: Beautiful Prey

Coda

Curtains

Death at Love House

Kolchak: Demon and the Mummy

Utahime makai o yuku

Domnisoara Christina

The Mystery of the Ghastly Face

Enigma para Demônios

Extraña Regresión

Helgerån

Secret of One Summer

Jigsaw

Kagero-za

The Taisho Trilogy

陽炎座

Yūsaku Matsuda

Michiyo Yasuda

Eriko Kusuta

Yoshio Harada

Mariko Kaga

Katsuo Nakamura

Ryutaro Otomo

Eimei Esumi

B-saku Satoh

Emiko Azuma

Hideko Okiyama

Akaji Maro

Isao Tamagawa

Asao Sano

Hiroko Itō

Hyōe Enoki

Toby Kadoguchi

Seijun Suzuki

Genjiro Arato

Akira Suzuki

Kazue Nagatsuka

Izumi Kyōka

Yōzō Tanaka

Noriyoshi Ikeya

Kaname Kawachi

Mitsuo Onishi

Fumio Hashimoto

Ayako Uchida

based on novel or book

playwright

ghost

taisho period

日本語

Kagero-za (1981) Original Trailer

La morte scende leggera

La ragazza dei lillà

The Legend of Boggy Creek

Original Sins

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Rachel Roberts

Vivean Gray

Helen Morse

Kirsty Child

Tony Llewellyn-Jones

Jacki Weaver

Anne-Louise Lambert

Karen Robson

Jane Vallis

Christine Schuler

Margaret Nelson

Ingrid Mason

Jenny Lovell

Janet Murray

Wynn Roberts

Peter Collingwood

Olga Dickie

Dominic Guard

John Jarratt

Frank Gunnell

Vivienne Graves

Angela Bencini

Melinda Cardwell

Annabel Powrie

Amanda White

Lindy O'Connell

Verity Smith

Deborah Mullins

Sue Jamieson

Bernadette Bencini

Barbara Lloyd

Kay Taylor

Garry McDonald

Martin Vaughan

John Fegan

Peter Weir

Russell Boyd

Jim McElroy

Hal McElroy

Bruce Smeaton

Max Lemon

Mark Egerton

Gilda Baracchi

Ian Jamieson

David Kynoch

Kim Dalton

A. John Graves

Joan Lindsay

Patricia Lovell

David Copping

Gheorghe Zamfir

Don Connolly

Joe Spinelli

Geordie Dryden

Mont Fieguth

Margaret Cardin

Wendy Stites

Phil Smythe

Steve Knapman

Neil Angwin

Geoffrey Simpson

Mandy Smith

Graham "Grace" Walker

Greg Bell

Joan McIntosh

Sidney L. Stebel

David Foreman

Sherry Bell

Judith Dorsman

John Seale

Phil Warner

Bill Howe

Tony Tegg

Pom Oliver

Trevor Toune

David Williamson

Christopher Webster

Andre Fleuren

Elizabeth Mitchie

José Luis Pérez

Cliff Green

australia

orphanage

girls' boarding school

based on true story

coming of age

hanging rock

atmospheric

valentine's day

mysterious

1900s

mysterious disappearance

_**Several females suddenly go missing in southeast Australia in 1900**_

When the students & staff of a girl’s school outside Melbourne take an outing to Hanging Rock on Valentine’s Day in 1900, three girls and a teacher mysteriously go missing. What happened to them?  

Directed by Peter Weir and based on the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975) is an artsy psychological mystery that seems timeless. The style is akin to movies like “Days of Heaven” (1978), “The Secret Garden” (1993) and “The Virgin Suicides” (1999). If you like those movies you’ll appreciate this one. While not as compelling as Weir’s future “Dead Poets Society” (1989), there are some obvious parallels. Both movies deal with prep schools that represent the curious constraints of civilization; you play the game to survive and the only way to escape is through some kind of exile.

The first act is artistic, but rather dull with an increasing sense of foreboding. Things pick up during the haunting outing at Hanging Rock. Once the females go missing the movie becomes compelling because the viewer WANTS to know what happened. The fun of the movie is to speculate on the clues and come to a probable conclusion, as well as look for symbolic meaning.

I should add that I own the “The Secret of Hanging Rock,” published in 1987, which contains Lindsay’s supposedly missing 18th chapter. I strongly believe this was a scam by the publisher to sell more books after the author’s death due to the increasing interest in the story via the movie’s international success. There is zero factual evidence of this apocryphal 'last chapter' containing the 'explanation' to the original book. Lindsay had repeatedly stated that she did NOT write any solution and purposefully left the story a mystery, fiercely advocating the open-endedness of her tale. It doesn’t help that this curiously brief ‘last chapter’ doesn’t fit the style & content of the original novel; it’s awkwardly blunt with its peculiar ‘explanation.’ Still, it is ONE of the possible answers and certainly adds to the interesting mystery.

The film runs 1 hour, 47 minutes, with another version running about 8 minutes longer. It was shot at Hanging Rock in the state of Victoria, about a 50-minute drive northwest of Melbourne in southeast Australia; the Appleyard College sequences were shot at Martindale Hall near Mintaro in South Australia, about a 7-hour drive northwest of Hanging Rock. Other scenes were shot in the studio at Adelaide, which is about an hour drive south of Martindale Hall.

GRADE: B

English

Français

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Original Trailer [FHD]

UK 4K Restoration Trailer

4K Restoration Trailer

Mark Kermode reviews Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) | BFI Player

Trailer

Long Trailer

Peter Weir on Picnic at Hanging Rock

Resort Massacre

Parapsycho - Spektrum der Angst

Sucedió en el internado

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Lifeforce Experiment

Donald Sutherland

Mimi Kuzyk

Vlasta Vrana

Corin Nemec

Hayley Reynolds

Miguel Fernandes

Michael Rudder

Michael J. Reynolds

Bronwen Mantel

Peter Colvey

Richard Zeman

Ann Page

Henderson Walcott

Philip Pretten

Michael Caloz

Stephano Ficca

Piers Haggard

Ann Brodie

Daphne du Maurier

Brock Jolliffe

Kent Walwin

Mike Hodges

Osvaldo Montes

Stéphane Lefebvre

Gerard Macdonald

Yves Langlois

Paul-André Guérin

John Meighen

André Chamberland

Nicolas Clermont

Peter Benison

experiment

afterlife

The Snake People

Vahset Kasirgasi

Genre: Mystery