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BONUS: Burning Paradise Ep. 2 "Fortress" · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Curly Tlapoyawa, and I love movies.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a good chunk of my childhood being snuck into the drive-in by my parents, where I took in double and triple features of cinematic greatness.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when movies became available on home video in the 1980s, well, all bets were off.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's no exaggeration to say that my life was largely shaped by movies.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: In 2004, I opened Burning Paradise Video, where I offered a carefully curated selection of independent, foreign, underground, and cult films to the public.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Burning Paradise, my love letter to a bygone era.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 2, Fortress.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Back during my time spent as a poor Mexican child in Liberal Kansas, my family got our cable TV the old-fashioned way.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: We stole it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, technically, one person on our block paid for it, and the rest of us hooked our houses up to that person's service.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I could still remember the tangled knot of black cables spiderwebbing their way out of my neighbor's front porch to every other house on our block, bequeathing upon us all the gift of HBO and some new fangled station called MTV.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Trash cinema classics such as Magic, Funhouse, and Basket Case attacked my young brain like a swarm of pissed-off killer bees and firmly embedded themselves into the essence of my childhood.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: These flicks played a large part in the development of my cinematic tastes and continued to shape how I look at film today.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, I got to see a lot of nudity.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Tons of it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: But one movie in particular lodged itself into my brain like a hazy nightmare.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: A movie that I could only recall in bits and pieces, and whose title escaped me for the longest time until I rediscovered it one day at Burning Paradise Video while unpacking a box of old VHS tapes I had purchased on eBay.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: That movie?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: The incredible Australian survivalist horror film known as Fortress.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you remember the 80s, they were huge for Australia, with films like The Road Warrior and Crocodile Dundee introducing us all to the land down under.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But before Australia unleashed the cinematic fury of Yahoo Sirius and Mark Jacko Jackson upon us, the only contact I had with anything even remotely Australian was Fortress.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Captain Kangaroo.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And believe me, Fortress made me want to stay as far away from the Outback as humanly possible.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Later, Yahoo Sirius and Jacko would have this effect on me as well.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Laboratory test proof in most devices energizer lasts longer than any other battery.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you haven't seen the fantastic 2009 documentary, Not Quite Hollywood, The Wild Untold Story of Osploitation by Director Mark Hartley, I highly recommend that you do yourself a favor and give it a watch.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: You will not regret it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Fortress opens up in a small single-room schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere in the Outback, where teacher Sally Jones, played by the lovely Rachel Ward of The Thornbirds and Sharky's Machine, is going through the daily motions with her mixed-age class of students.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's business as usual in the school when all of a sudden, a gang of gun-toting lunatics wearing crazy-looking Halloween masks, shows up and takes everyone hostage.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Led by the violently psychotic Father Christmas, played perfectly by Peter Hare, these men plan on holding the group for ransom.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: After scaring the living shit out of the kids, the masked thugs take the group deep into the outback and shove them into a cave, sealing off the entrance with a boulder before heading off to demand their money.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sally and her students prove to be pretty damned resourceful as they craft torches for themselves and manage to find an escape route through the back of the cave.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: After a great sequence where each child has to swim through an underwater passage, the group makes its way to a small farmhouse, seeking refuge, only to find that the masked gunmen have already arrived.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sally and the kids are once again rounded up and whisked away to a cave and stuck inside it.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: With escape no longer an option, the group decides to get all Lord of the Flies on our asses and prepares to make a final stand when the gunmen return.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was all running took the old couple killed.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: So this covered in a scary pot.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what I'm ending with.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: I said that you would run.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Huh?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Center is all right! We've got to fight them! We are enough of them four to one! Realize me now! I don't know yet.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: But we're going to do it.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Don't suppose you boys have any bright ideas.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: No, we're gonna find some sticks.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: They must be tough and long.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to need lots of lovely sharp spears.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: What for me?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh all that wins!
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the key of the car, so we'll get the dirty rasp.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get the dirty rasp.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get the dirty raps.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: The film feels like it runs a little long, even though it's slightly over 90 minutes, but the pacing and dark tone delivers some intense scenes.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Surprisingly, all of the kids turn in solid performances as they each transform from doe-eyed, innocent victims into survival-minded, mini badasses hellbent on revenge.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: The film strikes a tone similar to Battle Royale in this respect.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And besides, with villains named Dabby Duck, Pussycat, Mac the Mouse, and Father Christmas, what's not to like?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So warm up the jiffy pop and keep your damn babies away from them dingos, because the Outback is begging for a visit.