Down Under Detective: Scobie Malone on Film

Back in the seventies, when I was a kid, there was a film that turned up on TV, quite a new film by the standards of the time, when it took an age from cinema release to TV screenings for anything other than Low budget movies, called Nobody Runs Forever (1968), that, for some reason stuck in my memory. (It was one of those films that, after a couple of screenings seemed to vanish.  Nowadays, it turns up on Talking Pictures TV every so often).  It concerned an Australian police detective who is sent to London to arrest the Australian High Commissioner on suspicion of murder and take him back to Australia for trial.  Of course, once in London, he gets mixed up in a complex plot to disrupt a peace conference the Commissioner is presiding over.  Rod Taylor was the detective and Christopher Plummer the High Commissioner, with various familiar British and Australian actors (not to mention Dahlia Lavi, popular femme fatale from many a Eurospy movie), filling out the cast.  It's hard to say exactly why this particular movie stuck in my young mind - perhaps it was the inclusion of such details as a gun concealed in a TV camera as part of an assassination plot at a Wimbledon tennis match.  What did seem apparent to me was that the protagonist, Detective Sergeant Scobie Malone, felt like a series character - there was a feeling that he had more of a back story than seen in the film, which involved lots of other high-profile investigations carried out in a maverick manner.  You felt sure that there should be a sequel chronicling at least one of these cases, probably set in Malone's native Australia, but none ever seemed to surface.

But, as it turns out, there was a sequel, of sorts, to Nobody Runs Forever, released eight years later. Scobie Malone (1976) sees Jack Thompson take over the title role from Rod Taylor as he investigates a murder with political connections in Sydney, (the body is found in Sydney Opera House).  As it turns out, the character was a series character, but in a long series of novels by John Cleary.  Interestingly, despite feeling as if it were part of an ongoing series, Nobody Runs Forever was actually based on the very first book in the series - 'The High Commissioner' - written as a one off.  Cleary wasn't to write a first sequel until the seventies, 'Helga's Web', which was adapted into Scobie Malone.  Cleary was unhappy with both adaptations, feeling that the first had pretty much eliminated the book's humour.  The second certainly retains the humour, but changes the title character to the extent that he is unrecognisable either from the first film, or, according to Cleary, the source novels.  Most significantly, he goes from being a happily married man to a single swinger living in an apartment complex for singles full of naked women.  He bonks so many of them that he can't remember their names - a running gag throughout the film.  His sexploits provide the excuse for a truly astounding amount of gratuitous nudity.  The central mystery itself - the death of a prostitute whose clients include a government minister, a film-maker and various criminal figures - has potential, but its exposition ultimately eliminates any proper opportunities for suspense or intrigue, as her story unfolds in flashback parallel to Malone's investigation.  Which means that the audience is effectively always at least one step ahead of Malone, more often than not party to information that he isn't aware of, making for a somewhat frustrating viewing experience, as it effectively sidelines the investigation in narrative terms.

The films main pleasures comes from watching Malone's interactions with various authority figures, ranging from his superiors to the government minister he suspects of murder.  Inevitably, most end in angry conflict, as Malone finds himself resenting the hypocrisy and privilege he encounters.  A sub-plot involves Malone's humourous attempts to train his rookie partner in the art of homicide investigation.  The film's narrative structure insures that it eventually limps to am underwhelming conclusion, with Malone trying to bring charges against his main suspect on the basis of incomplete information, with the audience already knowing the way that events actually played out and that his case is fatally flawed.  The plot structure is, I assume, lifted pretty much intact from the source novel, where its intent would have been to demonstrate how police investigations are always flawed as the investigators, inevitably, are never in full possession of all of the facts, having, instead, to rely upon deduction and educated guesswork.  While this might have worked on the page, in cinematic terms it makes for an unsatisfactory viewing experience, (the Canadian made Ed McBain 87th Precinct adaptation Blood Relatives (1978), suffers from the same problem of adapting the source novel's flashback based narrative structure in its entirety, resulting in a stodgy narrative robbed of any real suspense).  Scobie Malone would have benefitted from having found a more cinematic way of telling its story.  As it stands, in spite of the flashback structure effectively halting the main narrative at regular intervals, depriving it of any pace or rhythm, the film is still reasonably entertaining, with enjoyable performance from many of the cast, particularly Thompson and Shane Porteous as the two cops.  Malone's continued clashes with authority, culminating in his climactic epic rant against what he sees as a cover up and abuse of power, are easily the best parts of the film.

Despite high hopes on the part of its producers, Scobie Malone proved a disappointment at the box office, effectively scuppering the chances of any further adaptations.  The book series, by contrast, eventually clocked up some twenty entries.