Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Rachel Ward, Vernon Wells, Sean Garlick, Elaine Cusick, Laurie Moran, Marc Aden Gray, Bradley Meehan,
Rebecca Rigg, Beth Buchanan, Asher Keddie, Anna Crawford, Richard Terrill, Peter Hehir | Written by Everett De Roche
UK Certification 15 | UK RRP £15.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 84 minutes | Directed by Arch Nicholson
Last House on the Left meets Straw Dogs meets The Goonies meets Who Can Kill a Child? in Fortress, a low-budget Australian kidnapping thriller from 1986 where the words “fucked up” act as a perfect summary.
Four masked men armed with sawn-off shotguns and unclear motives storm a rural schoolhouse and capture both the teacher (Ward) and her small class. After leading them deeper into the quiet countryside, the abductors seal their victims inside a cave and head off with the intention of returning later on. Without a hint of daylight, Miss Jones must take control of her class like she has never done so before in order to evade danger and set them free.
Having never heard of the film prior to viewing, a quick trawl of IMDb revealed that it's a bit of a forgotten gem that only saw the light of day as an HBO TV movie in the States outside of a theatrical release in its native country. Far more interesting than discovering that it has slipped under the radar over time, however, was reading the user reviews. Almost all of them detailed the same thing: nearly 40 people had professed their admiration for the movie, stating that they just couldn't get enough of it when they were children, describing it as a sort of kids adventure movie. And I would agree. Up until about the halfway mark.
What begins as a film that really does feel like it's in the vein of The Goonies does a complete 180 and suddenly becomes this gruesome, warped beast. We're talking gory gunshot wounds and a decapitation as it unexpectedly lives up to its 15 certificate in the space of about five seconds. A crazy dynamic is unearthed where you have this school teacher talking to her students in such an innocent, almost patronising way while they stare death in the face. And that's the thing, the kids act so innocent throughout, often not even showing any fear in their nightmarish situation, and yet they become increasingly barbaric and twisted as their ordeal continues. The terror truly changes them.
The '80s cheese is inescapable, as are a few dodgy lines of dialogue, but Fortress is ultimately a solid watch, if also incredibly... deranged. With first and second halves that are like night and day to each other as the fluffy, sugar-coated adventure flick with an adult edge morphs without warning into a blood-spattered frenzy, you soon realise that it really isn't for kids. While they wouldn't understand the bizarre sexual tension between Miss Jones and one of her eldest pupils, the latter violence is in-your-face enough yet astonishingly creepy-as-fuck to amount to a disturbing watch for all audiences. And the final shot of the movie is just indisputably unsettling.
It's like two completely separate movies have been spliced together. I've never seen anything quite like it. You could call Fortress Dr. Frankenstein's Movie.
EXTRAS ? Two trailers and a stills gallery.