Director Bruce Beresford
Starring Barry Crocker, Barry Humphries, Donald Pleasence
Rated M
Score 6/6

Barry McKenzie’s Aunt Edna is kidnapped by Count Von Plasma, the vampire head of an isolated Eastern European dictatorship who mistakes her for the Queen of England and thinks that kidnapping her will draw tourists to his country. Barry and his mates set out to rescue her and bring her back to Australia.

I’ve reviewed The Adventures of Barry McKenzie so I suppose its only right that I review Barry McKenzie Holds his Own, which for those of you who might be wondering was released two years after The Adventures of Barry McKenzie in 1974. I was not that familiar with a lot of the people who were cast in this, though there was couple of surprising choices such as Clive James, John Le Mesurier, Donald Pleasence as Erich Count von Plasma. Pleasence made for an interesting von Plasma though i have to admit that i have not seen that much of his work, he had an excellent big bad evil guy speech that had a valid point. Gough Whitlam and his wife, Margaret Whitlam made cameo appearances as themselves. I loved Edna’s line about the Prime Minister towards the end of the movie and it should also be noted that Edna Everage (slight spoiler) did not become Dame Edna until Gough Whitlam conferred upon her the title of Dame at the end of the movie.

This is probably just as politically incorrect as The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, though there weren’t any scenes that made me cringe like the previous movie did. This certainly played up to some of the Australian clichés that suggested that Australian seemed like an entirely different species and I loved the running joke with the subtitles for the Australians. Of the song and dance numbers I think I liked The Ratbag song the best.
It was good to see that Barry McKenzie Holds his Own had more of a plot then the original movie and now that I think about I would describe The Adventures of Barry McKenzie as having a sort of a ‘Blues Brothers’ feel to it. Being that The Adventures of is comprised of lots of ‘mini stories’ that wouldn’t affect the overall narrative of the movie if you came in halfway through and still enjoy yourself.