James Bogle, “Kadaicha” (1988)
From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, thanks to increased Federal government investment in the Australian film industry, there was truly a Golden Age of Australian Film at both the high-brow art-house level and the low-brow, low-budget level of genre exploitation films. While many of the latter category of films have now been forgotten, a few have acquired cult glory and some have even been elevated to national icon status. One Ozploitation film not likely ever to attain such an elevation is the silly teen horror flick “Kadaicha”. The film does have an interesting theme which saves it from complete wastepaper basket oblivion.
Set in Sydney, the film revolves around a group of high school students (all of whom look at least 10 years older than they should be as secondary school students) who discover that they have similar nightmarish dreams in which each and every one of them goes into a cave behind a stormwater drain on the local beach and sees a skeleton of a long-dead Aboriginal shaman come alive and dance around the fire. The shaman turns to face the youngster and hands him or her a stone and the kid wakes up screaming in fright. A mysterious stone, looking exactly like the stone in the dream, is usually found on the pillow beside the teen. Later in the day, the teenager dies a violent and bloody death.
Two teenage girls and a library worker at the school die after having the same dream. The girls’ friend Gayle (Zoe Carides) and her boyfriend do what research they can on this phenomenon and discover that all victims live in the same street as she does. Further digging for information reveals that the street and the residential development around it lie on top of a sacred Aboriginal burial ground. It was here that, during the colonial period, a group of teenage Aboriginal youngsters was massacred by white people. Now a mystery force that can only be understood by local Aboriginal people who remember their religion is taking its revenge on white teenagers living in the street. Gayle confronts her father (a property developer) for going ahead with building the residential development when it had been opposed by Aboriginal and other protesters and for walling up the cave with the skeleton of a kadaicha man (the shamat who appears in the kids’ dreams). Needless to say, one night Gayle has the same dream that her friends had and wakes up in terror to find a kadaicha stone on her pillow. She realises she has very little time left as she and her boyfriend try to find the Aboriginal elder living in the neighbourhood who knows the old stories and beliefs, and who may be able to help save her life.
At the least the film has a message about the consequences of greed and self-interest, and how innocent lives can be lost as a result. Lack of respect for Aboriginal lore and sacred territory, the history of past conflicts between white colonialists and Aboriginal people, and the generation gap between parents and their teenage children buoy up a forgettable film that lacks suspense and substitutes cheap laughs in the place of growing horror. The scene in which the library worker is killed by a funnel web spider leaping into his eye is more hilarious than frightening. If the acting overall is unconvincing, the direction by Bogle and the cinematography look very amateurish. The result is a rather flat film that does very little to explore and investigate Aboriginal culture and beliefs about the dead or the place of the kadaicha man and his stones in their Dreaming, and what value indigenous stories might still have for Western society and culture in Australia.
The music is creepy in parts, with didgeridoo-playing a significant element within the music, though it could have been better used during moments of high tension when the monsters preying on the teenagers would have struck. Some plot strands (such as a young teenage boy aspiring to become a rock musician) remain undeveloped. The plot overall barely sustains a full-length film of some 75 minutes plus.