The ending (SPOILER)
My DVD is scratched or otherwise unplayable beyond the 1:22:00 mark. Can anyone please email me what happens after he sets the sea cow on fire? Please forward to 4ad AT usa.com - Thanks!
shareNo way! Exactly the same thing happened to me tonight when I rented it. Why can't Blockbuster package their DVDs properly instead of putting them in folded over paper envelopes? What a totally suck ass way to package DVDs.
shareI had heard there was an alternate ending to the Region 2 DVD, is that true?
share
oh? i´ve only seen it in cinema (germany) many years ago and i felt the end was unjustice for the unguilty dog; though i liked the film very much.
was/is the end different in australia or somewhere else?
wave
m.
ALL LIFE IS EQUAL
Well here in Britain on the Region 2 DVD there is no exsplanation about the dog and the deceased couple further along the beach, which I felt needed closure. My Parents saw it when it was released in the 70's and they both thought in the end one of them died and one of them lived, as they were quite shocked by the ending of the DVD.
So I still don't know if there was an alternate ending, as the DVD is devoid of special features.
if i understand you right, the film on dvd stops before it´s at it´s end? what sense should that have?
please ask your parents again: as far as i remember BOTH died - one by a weapon, and the second by a truck after being in panic because of a snake* (the accident itself is not shown, the cut is right before as far as i remember).
and that 2nd person puts the dog into car and closes that before he goes away - and the dog is barking, maybe that´s the very last scene.
* (lol) actual they die (and give the dog to die of thirst or heat stroke)because of their own angers + fears -- there´s nothing really dangerous around them.
wave
m.
ALL LIFE IS EQUAL
No you've misinterpreted I'm afraid. That is the ending on the DVD, the 2 people dying, what I'm saying is my Parents believe the one they saw at the cinema had the male dying and the female surviving, but I honestly don't know if they are perhaps thinking of a different film.
share"That is the ending on the DVD"
exactly like i "told" it?
then the dvd is the same as in german cinemas, when it came out here in the early (?) 80ies.
(headscratch) because the female dies first, i think your parents saw another film)
friendly wave
m.
ALL LIFE IS EQUAL
I watched it on video about fourteen years ago when I was 10 and it has stuck in my head due to the ending and the overall creepiness of the entire film.
SPOILER:
As far as I can recall, the morning after John accidently shoots his wife with the crossbow he discovers the crashed jeep (minus 1 wife) and attempts to drive out of the woods. After finding he is going around in circles he makes a desperate escape through some marsh and the jeep becomes stuck. He leaves the vehicle with the dog still inside and decides to run in one direction in the hope he will stumble across the road. He does and relieved waves down an approaching Mac truck. As the truck driver approaches a chicken "flies" into the front seat causing the driver to lose control, veer off the road, and hit John killing him instantly. Driver stops, jumps out of the cab and runs to the dead body lying on the road. End credits.
I have heard of no version where one much-less both survive and doubt there is one.
oh - you have a good memory, i think.
i must say that i´m not really sure about the very end, maybe it was like you wrote? i can´t remember seeing the dead male (headcrash) - only the surely coming crash; i remember a picture with wood (? forest?), maybe the jeep in a great distance, and the dog barking (that´s the most confounding scene for me, because the dog is 100% innocent (in opposite to the couple)) and i remember, that at the end, on the way to the street, the male is frightened by a snake and maybe therefore panic + unwary with the truck.
i hope i can see it again.
friendly wave
m.
ALL LIFE IS EQUAL
There's definitely a headcrash – it shows John screaming, covering his face and then the grill of the truck plows into his head. The woods at the end is the backdrop for the end credits. There is also a crossbow arrow in the shot.
shareGreetings, I just watched the film last night and the end is just as you described it. What a tremendously atmospheric film it is, it surely deserves more credit than it appears to get, highly original in my opinion, I was actually quite scared when John was left by himself at night around the fire, very creepy, kind regards The Pavementor.
shareCrossbow?! Chicken?! WTF is wrong with you? Why can't any of you dopes just properly explain what happened?! Jesus Christ
After Peter accidentally shoots Marcia with the SPEARGUN he notices that the dugong carcass has made it all the way to the camp, despite the fact it is very obviously dead. Fear overtaking him, Peter sets the dugong alight and flees into the bush with Cricket. He eventually finds the car and after some engine troubles he gets it started. He drives and drives, but discovers he has gone in a circle when he arrives back at the camp. With renewed determination he keeps driving but becomes bogged when he attempts to take a shortcut through a marshy area. He ditches the car (locking poor Cricket inside) and continues on foot. After a brief encounter with a snake he reaches the highway and attempts to stop a truck. However a SULPHUR CRESTED COCKATOO flies seemingly deliberately in through the truck window distracting the driver causing him to veer off the road and hit Peter, killing him. The driver investigates, but realising he has just commited manslaughter he gets back in the truck and drives off, amidst the "baby dugong's" haunting cry.
Chicken...ffs.
it did look a bit like a chicken lol
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Eric C 4 Prez
Just a minor mistake in your description: Peter finds the car, in the state her woman left it, blocked by a spider web, and pours in it the remaining fuel from the can. He leaves the empty can on the ground, and that is the spot where he arrives back and realizes he's been going around in circles when he notices the fuel can he left there.
shareOk well I finally got a copy of this movie for Christmas (2006)!! Yay. But the ending was not as I remembered it when I watched it late one night on the TV in England in 1980-something. I thought I must've just remembered it wrong because it was so long ago. Then I got on this board and read something about an alternate ending.
For some reason I could have sworn their dog, Cricket, died a gruesome death also before the last character dies. Then again, I thought I remembered their dog being an alsatian/German Shepherd. I'm kinda glad the dog didn't die, and due to the overall theme for the movie it makes sense that the dog would survive. Has anybody seen a version of this movie where Cricket dies too?
I was so jazzed about finally getting this movie so my other half and my son could watch it and see what I'd been going on about. I think they were bemused and bored. Same thing happened when I finally got them to watch "Don't Look Now". Sigh. They just don't understand :-)
[deleted]
^
The ending as described above is the same as on my German dvd of the film and is identical to the version that I videoed off BBC tv circa 1988.
The film-makers commentary (by the executive producer & director of photography)for this DVD makes no mention of any 'alternative' endings of the film,save for an edit made of the end (too graphic) road accident and that was done prior to the film being released.
The DVD does include an alternate beginning and ending to the film but that appears to be only the credits typeset.
the very end of the film is a shot of the arrow that accidentally goes off by itself in front of the wife
When I watched the ending I think it cuts while the driver checks on the husband, I dont remember him running off back to the truck and leaving the body.
I also think the driver is the guy from the beginning that looks at the wife at the gas station. The camera stays on him for a few seconds too long which I thought was strange, but again I'm not sure if that was the same man.
The ironic thing about the truck that kills John, is that it is carrying cattle to an abbatoir, continuing the theme of man versus nature versus man...
shareLet's not forget the fact that earlier in the movie, when John hits and kills a
kangaroo, he examines the grill and finds a bloody chunk still on it.
So it's not only the continuing theme of man versus nature -- but that we are nothing but animals ourselves. His face gets smashed into the grill of the truck just the same as the kangaroo that he killed.
My take on it, is that we have no respect or care for anything we destroy. The truck driver looks at Peter's body, then goes away, more precisely gets away from the crime he comitted, even if it wasn't intentional, and was triggered by nature. Peter does the same with the kangaroo: he doesn't even stop, he just realizes he probably done a bad thing, but doesn't really care after all. He doesn't even tell his girl about it, he's trying to pretend to himself he is not guilty. And by that I think guilt is a theme that is interestingly exploited by this film: although you suprisingly don't see Peter too caring about the girl's death, the film does suggest that he was awake all night and prabably noticed the body very early in the morning, after which he probably looked into himself, feeling the way we didn't see him feeling on screen.
On the other hand the girl kills the young eagle with no care, just as Peter kills (more than once) the dugong with no care. At the end, the truck driver feels the same way about Peter as the couple about the animals: he gets what he deserved.
Interesting also is that neither the girl or Peter is killed by the animals, they are killed by humans. The animals IMO just attacked them, just warned them, but they didn't take this warning seriously. The animals ware not killers, an they let the humans do the work.
Also, theremight be some kind of allegory going in the film, more precisely I think nature as presented in this film can be somewhat compared to the couple's troubled relationship IMO. I don't feel like analysing this, but somewhat felt this throughout the film.
Who stops in the middle of the night on a busy highway in the middle of the Outback to investigate "roadkill" of animals
Nobody, thats who.
Oh, and he DOES tell his wife about hitting the kangaroo later in the movie, but she just shrugs it off.
I agree with you. He doesn't drive off, at least not in the version I just watched. The last we see him, he is walking back towards the truck.
And judging from the credits I guess he was one of the three guys we saw in the bar (the others being the old fisherman and the bartender).
How do you go through life with a sig saying
ALL LIFE IS EQUAL
and also saying
unjustice for the unguilty dog
Your very choice of words forces us to understand that you actually do believe that some life (guilty life) is less equal than other (unguilty) life.
I do wish people would pay more attention to what they claim to believe, because many of them don't remotely believe what they say they believe.
"It is wrong to be judgemental." So how does anyone make this judgement?
"There is no such thing as truth." Is this statement true?
Just three examples here; with a little logical thinking, you'll be able to come up with more.
"Oooo, lookee, a Sneerfest I can jump in on!!!" share
hi,-
i´m not 100% sure wether i understand you right (english is a foreign language to me), but i think that i got the essence.
so - the unjustice for the unguilty dog partly applies (? correspons? refers?) to the 2nd filmtitle: "the nature strikes back"; at least that had been the 2nd title for the original version; in germany, but i think, in other countries, too.
but i always thought that that 2nd title didn´t fit: indeed "the nature" did no harm to anybody! (not even that small squirrel-like beastie which bites: in defense!).
those humans did every harm themselves, caused by their estrangement and fear. and they harmed not only themselves, but, too, the dog, which did nothing, didn´t even get any chance for any decision.
nothing with (? about?) more or less worth. but maybe comparable to a speed junkie cardriver with a small child or an animal beside him/her in car, speeding to a deadly accident.
i hope that i could make my view a bit clearer?
ALL LIFE IS EQUAL