Fortress

Fortress (1985)

For one teacher and nine children, the lesson of the day is kill or be killed.

After being kidnapped by four masked men, a teacher and her students rebel by plotting against the criminals.

Date of release
1985-11-24
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (102)
Runtime
1h 28m
Genres
Drama, Horror, Thriller
Director
Arch Nicholson

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$139K
  • Based on: Fortress

Fortress is a 1985 Australian thriller film directed by Arch Nicholson and written by Everett De Roche, and starring Rachel Ward, based on Gabrielle Lord's 1980 novel of the same name.

Production

The novel Fortress by Gabrielle Lord was inspired by the 1972 Faraday School kidnapping of an isolated rural single teacher school and was influenced by William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies. At one stage it was thought the novel would be filmed by Rupert Murdoch and Robert Stigwood's Associated R&R Films as a follow-up to Gallipoli (1981). However, this never happened.

Everett De Roche wrote the script and originally Bruce Beresford was announced as director. He dropped out and then Arch Nicholson was hired. Crawford and HBO wanted Bess Armstrong to play the lead. Actors Equity objected, so Sigrid Thornton was accepted as a compromise. However, two months prior to shooting Thornton became pregnant and HBO and Crawford insisted on Armstrong.

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

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