ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA: QUEEN OF THE DESERT

SYNOPSIS:
Felicia (Guy Pearce) and Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) - drag queens Adam and Tick - and Bernadette (Terence Stamp) - a transsexual - are invited to play a drag cabaret engagement at an Alice Springs resort. Each with their own problems, they grab the chance to cross Australia’s red heart and leave their troubles behind. But as their trip unfolds, it seems that getting there will be a new problem all together. Meeting a man in a frock (however fantastic that frock may be!) in the outback does not happen everyday. Travelling the outback in the lavender tour bus they have christened Priscilla, the ‘girls’ are in for an adventure that sees them continually colliding with a number of startled outback characters, and swerving from a string of bizarre and sometimes dangerous situations.

"Unpredictable, adventurous and entertaining, Priscilla is that wonderful thing in showbiz, a unique work entirely of its own creation, but informed by the culture from whence it has erupted like a billowing silk scarf out of a brazen blowhole in a desert oasis. Despite its surface sheen of flippancy and wisecracking 'tarts', Priscilla is a warm and human story - and as writer/director Steph Elliott confesses, not at all what he intended, but the characters took charge and tamed what was going to be an in-your face, low budget shocker, into something greater than the sum of its parts. Enormously assisted by his cast and crew (every one of them), Elliott has been midwife to a movie that is so unerringly 'right' in its portrayals and in its sense of time and place (places, plural, across the outback) that the film is an icon - both for Australian filmmaking, and for the wide variations on the Australian psyche.
ON DVD
This is a colour saturated film, and on DVD it's a blast for the eyes. Lizzy Gardiner's Academy Award winning costumes against the ochre and blue of central Australia are breathtakingly clear and CLOSE, on your screen at home. The cinematography (by one of Australia's finest) is both spectacular and intimate, as required, while the music - a legendary aspect of the film - takes on its full colours in this digital transfer. The extra material includes text biographies of the stars and the standard scene selection facility. It also contains the theatrical trailer. But the most important extra feature is the EPK that Bill Hunter narrates, a featurette originally made for a free 30 minute spot on Nine as a promotional device. And that will explain why it suddenly turns into an EPK for Muriel's Wedding, too. The double decker EPK was an Alan Finney initiative (when he was marketing boss at Roadshow), making the most of an opportunity. It includes a lively interview with producer Al Clark who points out that the key to the film is the casting against type of its stars. The EPK is also notable for a typically indiscreet interview with Stephan Elliott, and is best seen after you've seen the movie."
Andrew L. Urban