| The Everlasting Secret Family | |
| Director: | Michael Thornhill |
| Producer: | Michael Thornhill executive: Antony I. Ginnane |
| Based On: | stories by Frank Moorhouse |
| Starring: | Arthur Dignam Mark Lee Heather Mitchell Dennis Miller John Meillon Paul Goddard Anna Volska |
| Music: | Tony Bremner[1] |
| Cinematography: | Julian Penney |
| Editing: | Pam Barnetta |
| Studio: | FGH Hemdale Film Corporation International Film Management |
| Runtime: | 94 mins |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $2.5 million[2] |
| Gross: | $280,000 (Australia) |
The Everlasting Secret Family is a 1988 Australian film directed by Michael Thornhill about a secret society of gay men. It is based on Frank Moorhouse's so-named collection of four short stories published in 1980.
The movie was financed by Antony I. Ginnane's IFM company.[3]
IFM pre-sold the movie to Hemdale Film Corporation for $1.5 million but Hemdale was later unable to meet its pre-sale obligations.[2] [4]
A fictional group of middle-aged homosexual men, including a senator, exercise quasi-masonic influence and power over teenage schoolboys from the fictional Saint Michael's Private School for Boys.[5] The film follows one of these boys (called only 'Youth'), as he rises through the ranks of the secret society.[6]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times in 1989 thought that the film was divided "into two halves, the first engrossing and the second ridiculous... The action becomes farfetched, the actors hopelessly unconvincing, and everyone ages so badly—thanks to too much eyebrow pencil and talcum powder—that the film winds up looking like a high-school play".[7]
RS reviewing for Time Out stated that "All the gay characters are 'elderly pervert' stereotypes, cruel, calculating and vampirish. Yet, for a film that takes so rigidly homophobic a stance, an awful lot of time is spent dwelling on youthful tanned muscles and taut buttocks".[8]