Young Henry Thomas trades aliens for Aboriginal magic in the Australian kids adventure cult favorite FROG DREAMING, on Blu-ray from Umbrella Entertainment.

After his parents were killed in an accident, fourteen year old American Cody Walpole (Thomas) remained in Australia with his father's best friend Gaza (Tony Barry, WEEKEND OF SHADOWS) as his guardian. In the small town in which Gaza works as a mechanic, Cody has earned a reputation among the local kids and adults alike for applying his precocious engineering know-how to dangerous stunts like building a rig to race his bicycle on a train tracks. He has also attracted the interest of Wendy (NEIGHBOURS' Rachel Friend) and her ten year old sister Jane (Tasmin West, JENNY KISSED ME) who are spending the holidays there with their parents (SILVER CITY's Dennis Miller and DOCTOR WHO's Katy Manning). While picnicking in the wilderness Devil's Knob National Park – long abandoned by the local Aboriginals as a place of "frog dreamings" or sacred sites – Cody, Wendy, and Jane discover a pond in a rock quarry and the desiccated corpse of fisherman Neville (Peter Cummins, SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY). News of the discovery makes Cody unpopular with Wendy's parents – who threaten Gaza's custody of Cody to force him to rein the boy in – but he also learns from the locals of the aboriginal legend of a fire breathing creature inhabiting the pond known as Donkigen. He seeks out aboriginal hermit Charlie Pride (Dempsey Knight) who reveals that looking Donkigen in the eye and surviving was once a tribal rite of passage. Building his own improvised scuba helmet, Cody dives into the murky depths of the pond to discover what lurks within it, and he many not come back out.

Ozploitation favorite Brian Trenchard-Smith's follow-up to his own prior turn at the youth-oriented BMX BANDITS – which featured an early role for Nicole Kidman (DEAD CALM) – FROG DREAMING is an enjoyable film from the early eighties period when child-oriented fare could possess scares and quasi-racy jokes (ten year old Jane is seen smoking and reading the ancient Arabic sex manual "The Perfumed Garden"). Given the age of the main characters, it is fitting that the "romantic" aspect takes a back seat to the adventure and the loving relationship between Cody and Gaza (who really does not know how to handle Cody without quashing his spirit). The climax is nicely bittersweet as Cody solves away the mystery but realizing that there may be no such thing as magic; that is, until the coda sequence. Most of the Ozploitation crew regulars are on hand with a script by Everett de Roche (PATRICK), production design by Jon Dowding (MAD MAX), scoring by Bryan May (ROAD GAMES), and costume designer Aphrodite Kondos (TURKEY SHOOT) with cinematographer John McClean (THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS) assisted by future DP David Eggby (RIDDICK) among others.

Released to theaters by Miramax in the states as THE QUEST – and in the United Kingdom as a GOONES knockoff as THE GO-KIDS – the film found a cult audience on Charter Entertainment's VHS edition. An Anchor Bay VHS reissue had fans hoping for a DVD which never came despite Anchor Bay's DVD edition of another Miramax kids film MIO IN THE LAND OF FARAWAY. Umbrella Entertainment put out a DVD edition a few years ago, but it was derived from a fullscreen tape master. They have made up for it with their new 4K-mastered 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray which restores a sense of breadth and texture to what was always a picturesque film while the night scenes also gain resolution and detail without revealing some of the production's sleights of hand as discussed in the commentary track. The Dolby Stereo track is given a clean-sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 encode which richly renders the score and dialogue. Optional English HoH subtitles are also provided which have a couple errors that should have been corrected (like referring to Wendy for the first time as "Bindy").

Extras start off with an audio commentary by director Trenchard-Smith, editor Brian Kavanagh (LONG WEEKEND), costume designer Kondos, moderated by NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD's Mark Hartley. They reveal that the film had been initiated by Barbi Taylor (THIRST) and screenwriter de Roche who had worked with Thomas on Richard Franklin's CLOAK & DAGGER, and that Trenchard-Smith had been brought in to replace original director Russell Hagg (RAW DEAL) when the rushes did not impress the investors, and that Kavanagh and Roche directed additional units to make up for the time lost from the first week of shooting. They also discuss the film's release and how rights issues kept the film from being released on DVD and Blu-ray for some time. No Ozploitaiton disc is complete without some extended interviews from Hartley's NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (32:08) with de Roche, Thomas, and Trenchard Smith. De Roche discusses the script's autobiographical aspects, conceiving it originally as a television project at Crawford's Television, and some more information about Hagg's replacement with the more diplomatic Trenchard-Smith. He also recalls that the real pond was shallow and that there was only one spot into which Thomas could dive, and that he shot the underwater unit in a swimming pool with JAWS' Ron Taylor. Thomas recalls being attracted to the project by the chance to go to Australia, originally wanting to play Cody as an Australian, Hagg seeing the film as more of a family film than an adventure, his mother/manager's reaction to his head injury during the railroad track stunt, the underwater scenes, and his young co-stars. Trenchard-Smith covers a lot of the same backstory from the commentary track, including his introduction to Taylor and de Roche.