The surprise hit award-winning Aussie comedy MALCOLM gets the Sunburnt Screens treatment from Umbrella Entertainment.

Ever since the death of his mother the year before, sheltered young Malcolm (Colin Friels, A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA) has lived alone, working on the Melbourne tramlines by day and building mechanical inventions by night. When he goes on a joyride through the city on his very own self-designed tram, he gets fired. Instead of looking for another job, Malcolm depletes his savings buying parts for his inventions. The concerned milk bar manageress Mrs. T (Beverley Phillips, THE DREAMERS) helps him put out an ad for a boarder, but she fails to clarify that he needs to consider the answers to the interview questions she has given him to ad; as such, he winds up with ex-con Frank (John Hargreaves, LONG WEEKEND) sleeping in his mother's room with his barmaid girlfriend Judith (Lindy Davies, BACHELOR GIRL).

Frank falls back on bad habits, robbing warehouses with fellow ne'er-do-well Willy (Chris Haywood, BREAKER MORANT) and is suspicious about how much Malcolm knows about his activities. More open-minded Judith learns about Malcolm's social difficulties from the locals – including neighbor girl Jenny (Judith Stratford) whose own social skills are hampered by taking care of her invalid mother (the director's mother Katerina Tassopoulos) – and Frank grows jealous of the seeming closeness between the two. Malcolm, on the other hand, is more fascinated with Frank's criminal lifestyle and applies his mechanical and electronic skills towards a foolproof bank robbery. In spite of Frank's claims that it is just a game for Malcolm and that they are not going to get caught, Judith becomes an accomplice ostensibly to keep the other two from landing behind bars.

Coming from Down Under after the Ozploitation era of exploitation films of the late seventies and early eighties when the Australian film industry was moving back towards prestige pictures, the quirky comedy MALCOLM was more akin to the previous year's THE COCA-COLA KID from Hungarian expat Dusan Makavejev than the broader CROCODILE DUNDEE; indeed, the film anticipates some of the films to come out of Australia in the nineties like Jocelyn Moorhouse's PROOF or Mark Joffe's COSI when the world was embracing "independent" pictures and world cinema. Usually cast in more rugged lead roles – Friels shots at international stardom included his villainous turn in DARKMAN and the lead in the American/South African comedy A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA – Friels skillfully underplays Malcolm's quirks in concert with Hargreave's twitchiness and Davies' earthy turn so that it is evident just how much the three characters do indeed complete each other emotionally as the lines blur between analogous familial relationships (with just a hint of sexual ambiguity in Judith's affection towards Malcolm). Charles Tingwell (DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS) has a small role as Malcolm's former boss. Character actor David Letch (DEATH WARMED UP) also has a bit part as a hooligan who incurs Frank's violent temper by making a pass at Judith. Still photographer David Parker made his debut as screenwriter or cinematographer on this film an would continue to photograph and co-write subsequent films of debuting director Nadia Tass – their third film THE BIG STEAL is also coming out soon on Blu-ray from Umbrella – along with some of her for-hire work including Disney and AMERICAN GIRL TV movies lensed in Australia and Canada.

Released theatrically and on home video by Vestron, MALCOLM has been hard to see outside of a 2001 special edition DVD from Umbrella. Umbrella's Sunburnt Screens Blu-ray features a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer, and it is in keeping with some of the other
National Film & Sound Archive of Australia digital restorations. Grain is retained and detail is quite good throughout, bringing out some of the subtler expressive touches of the performers along with textures of hair and clothing, colors are generally sedate but occasionally pop in some of the choices of décor and the distant skyline, while blacks only occasionally crush in the recesses of dark interiors and background shadows in the night exteriors. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clean, boasting clear dialogue, some comic effects, and the underrated musical contributions of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Optional English HoH subtitles are also included.

Ported over from the DVD is an audio commentary by producer/director Nadia Tass and writer/producer David Parker who appear to have been recorded separately and possibly one or both reading from scripted remarks. The track is a bit stolid but informative including Tass' and Parker's inspiration for Malcolm in her brother John Tassopoulos – Tass' use of certain outdated and even politically-incorrect terms for what may be Asperger's are not so much offensive as indicative of the limitations of individuals and their families to cope and understand before autism went "mainstream" – wanting Friels to create the character himself rather than patterning himself after her brother, and the physicality he brought to the part. They also discuss the pseudo-familial aspect of the characters, criminality as an expression of freedom for Malcolm whose world starts slowly expanding from the opening with his first transgressive act, as well as discussion of the production, the construction of Malcolm's gadgets, and the reception of the film.

New to the Blu-ray is "A Quieter Time" (10:30) in which writer/producer Parker recalls meeting Friels on THE COOLANGATTA GOLD, and that the actor himself encouraged Parker to get into filmmaking by writing his own script, having Friels in mind for Frank only to discover that both Friels and Tass thought differently, and how the film did not find acceptance in Australia from distributors until after it was picked up by Vestron for American distribution, with Hoyts reconsidering their previous rejection of the film, and its subsequent eight Australian Film Institute nominations and wins. Also new to this release is "Where Was It Filmed?" (15:16) featuring the same bloke from the locations piece on Umbrella's disc of PATRICK revisiting the heavily-changed Melbourne landscape.