form y separately published work icon The 'Alvin Purple' Films series - publisher   film/TV  
Issue Details: First known date: 1973... 1973 The 'Alvin Purple' Films
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

A series of films centring on Alvin Purple and, later, his son Melvin, who share the trait of being irresistible to women.

Alvin Purple and Alvin Rides Again were made back-to-back and by the same creative team: Melvin, Son of Alvin was made significantly later with a different writer and director.

Includes

1
form y separately published work icon Alvin Purple Alan Hopgood , Melbourne : Hexagon Productions , 1973 Z1508674 1973 single work film/TV humour (taught in 1 units)

Alvin is an average man, except that women find him irresistible. The only woman that Alvin really wants is his platonic friend Tina, but he appears to feel no sexual desire for her. He follows her to a convent, where he gets a job as gardener.

A 'sexist sex comedy', made during the peak of the feminist debate in Australia, Alvin Purple reverses the feminist polemic of men oppressing women by having its protagonist pursued by a constant stream of predatory women. He is victimised even more when he refuses sex. Paul Byrnes (Australian Screen) notes that 'the film was [also] reacting against entrenched puritanical attitudes in Australian society. To some it was prurient farce; to others, it was exposing the repression that produced such prurience.'

Tom O'Regan notes in 'Cinema Oz: The Ocker Films' (1989) that Alvin's 'ordinariness seems irresistible to women. The comedy is based on incongruity. Sex is rendered as slapstick. Jokes are at the expense of bastions of hypocrisy - psychiatry, the press and the law. The would-be recessive hero is the object of male sexual fantasy - sex without responsibility - a fantasy with which women could also apparently identify.'

[Source: Paul Byrnes, Tom O'Regan, and Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper]

Melbourne : Hexagon Productions , 1973
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form y separately published work icon Alvin Rides Again Alvin Rides Again, and Again! And Again! And Again! (US title) Alan Hopgood , Tim Burstall , Alan Finney , Australia : Hexagon Productions , 1974 7579065 1974 single work film/TV

'With their prize money from helping a team of women cricketers win a match, Alvin and Spike end up in a casino and become entangled in the world of international crime. Alvin then has to cope with gangsters and the continuing attraction he seems to have for women.'

Source: Screen Australia.

Australia : Hexagon Productions , 1974
3
form y separately published work icon Melvin, Son of Alvin Morris Gleitzman , Cremorne : McElroy and McElroy , 1984 Z1409069 1984 single work film/TV

Melvin Purple is a shy young man and, just like his father Alvin, irresistible to women.

Cremorne : McElroy and McElroy , 1984

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 10 Jul 2014 15:51:05
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