Cirrus@Austlit

When ex-con Eddie takes a job working on his older brother's isolated farm, all seems well--but not for long. Dead birds fall from the sky, pets attack their owners, and seemingly stable people go suddenly insane. What is happening at Raven's Gate?

According to science-fiction review site io9,

'Despite the relative thinness of its premise, Encounter At Raven's Gate is not all that bad a movie. The performances are solid, the characters more richly textured than you might expect and the cinematography has the lonely, big sky feel of art house Australian films like Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave and John Hillcoat's The Proposition. [...] If this seems like an awfully long way to go for an alien invasion/demon possession movie...it is. Like M. Night Shyamalan's similarly structured (and one might even go so far as to say totally rip-off) film Signs, Encounter At Raven's Gate is at its best when it's not pursuing the alien invasion story. The tension between the characters is so organic that when the inevitable magnetic anomalies, smoke machines and disco lights kick in, they rob the film of its distinctive flavor.'

Source: io9 (http://io9.com/5854464/the-australian-alien-invasion-flick-encounter-at-ravens-gate-is-like-signs-but-with-football-hooligans). (Sighted: 15/6/2012)

A doctor treats an Indigenous Australian patient who admits to having defied a tribal taboo and visited a sacred cave. After the encounter, the doctor begins to experience strange dreams, and finds herself drawn into a 200-year-old mystery.

In the Tasmanian highlands, Ruby Rose lives with her husband Henry (a trapper) and their adopted son, Gem. Superstitious and anxious, Ruby paints the walls of her house white to keep away the darkness, but still wakes in terror each night. To learn the secret that keeps her terrified and trapped, she must venture down to the valley, to her father's house and her grandmother.

One of only four films directed by Arch Nicholson before his early death from motor neurone disease, Dark Age follows the attempts by wildlife ranger Steve Harris, his girlfriend Cathy Pope, and trackers Oonadabund and Adjaral to capture a seven-metre salt-water crocodile (already responsible for two deaths) and relocate it to a breeding sanctuary. Their attempts are thwarted by hunter John Besser, determined on revenge after surviving an attack by the crocodile. In the course of the hunt, one of the trackers realises that he has a psychic connection to the crocodile.

According to Gary Couzens's online review for The Digital Fix,

'Dark Age is not a kill-the-monster story but a save-the-monster one. In fact, the real monster is a human - as played by Max Phipps, scary enough and just the right side of overplaying the part. The seven-metre croc may kill people (including a young child in a scene many will find upsetting) but it at least is obeying its nature. We do get moderately gory attack scenes (adroitly directed by Nicholson), a not always convincing but well disguised mechanical giant crocodile and a sex scene, but it's as if Nicholson and Borg are "smugglers" (in the Scorsese filmmaking sense), slipping in eco themes into what could have been a more straightforward exploitation horror movie. In addition, the two principal Aboriginals [sic] in the cast are treated with considerable dignity and sensitivity and, thanks to David Gulpilil's input, the Aboriginal rituals seen here are accurate. Also, the female lead has more to do than be decorative and to help demonstrate the hero's heterosexuality - maybe due to a female scriptwriter? - and the relationship between Steve and Cathy does ring true.'

Made as part of a two-picture deal with RKO Pictures (the other half of which was The Lighthorsemen), Dark Age was never released in Australia, thanks to negotiations with an Australian distributor falling through shortly after completion.

Source: The Digital Fix (http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/75041/dark-age.html). (Sighted: 7/6/2012)

With the human race nearing extinction and the Earth now controlled by a new race of beast-like creatures, the few surviving humans isolate themselves in the City, an enormous construction with the ability to travel in both time and space. As humanity's situation becomes critical, the City travels back to the twentieth century in a desperate attempt to save humanity once and for all.

'After losing her job and being stranded when her car breaks down, Lilli rents a trailer by the sea. There she meets a lonely young girl who lives with her grand-mother. It transpires that the girl is Lilli's own daughter.'

Source: BFI (http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/232569). (Sighted: 6/3/2014)

'Danny, a 16-year-old street kid from Brooklyn arrives in South Australia to meet up with his father, Nat, whom he hasn't seen for ten years. Nat, an ex-Vietnam pilot, now faces financial ruin and has agreed to fly a consignment of marijuana down from the north. It is a bad time for Danny to arrive on the scene. The father and son relationship is not going to be a smooth one.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 16/4/2014)

Two armed robbers kidnap a small-town school teacher after she witness their murder of a policeman during a robbery.