Bridge to Nowhere

Bridge to Nowhere, targeted at 16 to 22 year-olds, aims to be a kind of New Zealand teenage Deliverance.

Bridge to Nowhere, New Zealand, 1986

Mirage Films
Director: Ian Mune
Producer: Larry Parr
Associate Producer: William Grieve
Production Manager: Chloe Smith
Screenplay: Bill Baer, Ian Mune
Director of Photography: Kevin Hayward
Editor: Finola Dwyer
Music: Stephen Mccurdy

With: Matthew Hunter (Carl), Margaret Umbers (Tanya), Shelly Luxford (Julie), Stephen Judd (Gray), Philip Gordon (Leon), Bruno Lawrence (Mac), Alison Routledge (Lise)

35mm, M, 86 minutes

Premiered in Raetihi, November 13 1986

A group of friends trek up into the back-country bush to visit the half-overgrown ‘Bridge to Nowhere’. But tensions mount in the group as the leader Leon goes off his head. Leon spies on Lise, the bathing girlfriend of a local farmer Mark. But he is caught by Mark and is killed as they fight. Mark starts hunting the others on horseback, at first only to drive them away. But as their blunderings get them lost in the bush, he starts to kill them.

“New Zealander Ian Mune initially began as an actor – you can see him supporting Sam Neill in the Dystopian sf film Sleeping Dogs (1977). Mune branched out as a director with Came a Hot Friday (1985) and has since kept a steady hand in amid New Zealand’s film industry with dramas like The Grasscutter (1990), The End of the Golden Weather (1991), The Whole of the Moon (1996) and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (1999). Bridge to Nowhere was Ian Mune’s second film. It was quickly made following the local success that Mune had had with Came a Hot Friday. It’s an efficient and not-too-badly made variation on the wilderness survival horror story... The cliches of the genre are conducted with a minimum of fuss, and one or two twists added – like taking some sympathy for the backwoods psycho of the piece and making the antagonist and the leader of the group about as crazy as one another. If the film has any underlying motif it is that sexual frustration makes guys go crazy – Philip Gordon goes off the deep end because he can’t screw Margaret Umbers; Bruno Lawrence’s backwoods farmer seems quite normal until catching Gordon peeping on the flaky Alison Routledge bathing naked drives him overboard in a fit of jealousy. The cast are far more professional than one expects of the material ... By now Bruno Lawrence had patented the crazed Man Alone role so much that he could do it in his sleep.” —http://www.moria.co.nz/horror/bridge2nowhere.htm

“Bridge to Nowhere, targeted at 16 to 22 year-olds, aims to be a kind of New Zealand teenage Deliverance. Unfortunately, after a promising beginning it quickly deteriorates into a mindless scream and run affair in which sound and fury substitute for motivation and logical action… Narrative aside, the cinematography makes good use of the magnificent location on and around a public works concrete bridge in an uninhabited ravine in mountain country north-west of Raetithi. (The bridge was built in the 1930s to service roading needs for World War I servicemen given land to clear for farms and the land has all now reverted back to bush. The bridge literally goes nowhere, with the only access to it by helicopter or by a tramping path from the Wanganui River.)” – Helen Martin, NZ Film 1912-1996

Bridge to Nowhere screened on 19 November 2008 as part of a season titled 'troubled teens'.