AllMovie

Flawed by very uneven acting and technical problems, this black comedy about a near-rape and its consequences takes a cue from Hamlet in its resolution of unwanted villains. The story is set in 1966 in a remote town on the coast of New Zealand, a place where the unusual never happens. Yet when Sam Jamieson (Peter McCauley) catches a truck driver trying to rape Sam's pregnant Maori wife (Jillian O'Brien), he kills the trucker in the ensuing fist-fight and tells the police the death was an accident -- and they believe it. The trucker's brother later comes at Sam in revenge and is also killed. Once again, the police accept the brother's death as an accident. But another couple in the town know what happened and opt for blackmailing Sam, rather than going to the police with their story -- by all accounts, the police are not likely to believe them anyway. Sam and his wife have no choice but to suffer the blackmailers bleeding them dry -- until a jaunty Brit aristocrat (Bruce Spence) arrives on the scene and figures out a way to set things right.