Pure Shit

Pure Shit (1975)

Humour... in a black vein

Four young heroin addicts scour the streets of Melbourne in search of some good-quality narcotics – or as they call it, 'pure shit’. In the space of 48 hours, a friend dies of an overdose, they are ripped off by criminals and arrested and assaulted by police. They bungle a break-in, get chased by hooligans and one is sent to a methadone clinic. The search for drugs veers between farce and tragedy, but it never stops.

Date of release
1975-08-15
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Drama
Director
Bert Deling

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 2

Pure Shit is a 1975 Australian drama film directed by Bert Deling.

Production

The film's budget was partly provided by the Film, Radio and Television Board of the Australia Council and partly by the Buoyancy Foundation, an organisation to help drug takers. Bert Deling says he was particularly influenced by Jean Renoir and Howard Hawks.

Lead actor Garry Waddell says he helped with the script:

It was really good having Bert there because he helped me a lot. If you weren't sure of anything you could always get reassurance from him or the cameraman, Tom Cowan. It wasn't a hard movie to work on because it was so enjoyable. The relationships between people on the film were always good.

Writer Helen Garner has a small role as a speed-addled woman named Jo. Garner starred in the film shortly before she published Monkey Grip (1977), which is set in a similar milieu of communal drug use.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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