I remember seen this horrific film in New York at a screening for the press. After about 30 minutes I was in pain, I had contortions all over my body, the garbage that was shown on the screen was making me puke, people around me were also in disgust. Now, this coming from the director of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, was really surprising. What's with the police shooting at birds? Is that supposed to be funny? What about all the trashing of Australian culture? Was the director on a bad trip? Oh man, I feel sorry for actors like Rod Taylor ending up in this awful mess, very embarrassing... Do yourself a favor, do not even think of watching this "movie" without first getting very drunk or stoned. Otherwise drink a lot of Pepto Bismol.

I tell you folks, that was THE FUNNIEST line of irreverent dialogue I've ever heard! Seriously, I can somewhat understand why Aussies who have reviewed this very smart, funny and VERY whacky film are besides themselves over the stereotypes and how some of their brethren are depicted here. Now, yet another group of people understands and feels what minorities everywhere feel when the same type of satire is done to them, but to an extreme! But, hey! Loosen up a bit-just let that "Breezer" rip! It's all good! I exchange emails with several Aussie folks Down There regularly, and they seem to talk and act very much as I do. So I can watch this film knowing that what I see is "over the top" in it's characterization, and NOT indicative of all Australians. Every ethnic group has it's "lower elements" for sure. But, I'm sorry, this was some hilarious stuff! All these characters were two sandwiches shy of a picnic! I've always been a Rod Taylor fan, and he steals this flick wholeheartedly. That guy is still one of the finest actors still working, and I know he's up there in age now. These folks live in a world far removed from reality. The remarks ("beef curtains", etc) are fresh (most of us here in the US have NEVER heard these expressions) and the whole town gathering nightly for 'Rogers & Hammerstein' movies (and a LOT of beer guzzeling) as the high point of another dreary day reminded me of the Wizard Of Oz's munchkins singing. Yup, sure enough, the plot had some holes for sure, but otherwise, the performances were great, from Johnathan Saaech on down. I flat out loved this film. It was quite a pleasant surprise and yes, I agree it has cult status written ALL over it! See it for a monster laugh! I'll be willing to bet it caused quite an uproar when released!

Set in the Australian outback you might have thought this movie would have had more in common to the directors previous movie Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The (1994). At the London Film Festical screening director Stephan Elliot started off before the screening that this definitely wasn't the case, and telling us it was about the more obnoxious of his country folk. This shows a side of Australia that is being rather swept under the carpet. Although raucous and rude in the first half of the movie the mood turns darker towards the end. And don't forget to wait till after the credits end for an amusing extra. There are some very funny scenes including Barry Humphries as a blind petrol pump attendant - which so outraged the US lead that he had to spend time recovering in his trailer - it was done fortunately in one take with Humphries ad libbing the scene. And an excellent performance by Rod Taylor as the leader of the community. Shot in the height of the summer, due to Stephan Elliot becoming ill just before the original start date, the crew needed 36,000 gallons of water per day to survive and in one scene they had to fit the dogs in the scene with shoes to allow them to run across the set.

"Welcome to Woop Woop" takes Australian cliches to the extreme. When con-artist Teddy escapes to the Australian outback, he finds himself drugged, unconsciously married and trapped in "Woop Woop" an outback town inhabited by zany hooligans. I enjoyed it. Initially, I didn't want to rent it after reading several negative reviews, but I'm glad I finally did proving that critics are often wrong. There's one scene which I won't spoil that hit the film's high-point, and let's just say I will never look at the Sound of Music again, or at least Mother Abbess. The soundtrack was fantastic (especially the "Climb Every Mountain" remix) and the cast were great. Johnathon Schaech and Dee Smart gave nice performances, but the show stealers were arguably Rod Taylor and Susie Porter. Both reigned with charisma and succeeded in entertaining and disgusting audiences with their amazingly repulsive father/daughter performance . Paul Mercurio also makes a humorous cameo reiterating one of the stricter rules of "Woop Woop" ~ "Nobody leaves". Although some scenes caused me to wince, such as the Woop Woop abbatoir scenes and a funny, yet disturbing incestual relationship, I suggest you check it out. Welcome to Woop Woop is a brilliant satire of Australian culture. 7.5/10

One of the wonderful aspects of cinema is that all the various originality of a culture can be presented, in any combination, with their indigenous visual and aural realities. The arid outback, the aussie dialect, and the Down Under idea of Wacky combine in this oh-so-funny film to bring you to tears from laughing so hard. You'll find yourself rewinding to see a great slapstick scene again, or to hear exactly what someone said. A quick take will clarify a confusing one several scenes earlier causing renewed laughter yet again. When the credits began rolling I began laughing again at remembered shots still teasing my memory. And laughter isn't all this film has to offer - bits of poignance, ire, and mystery are added to the recipe to round out its flavor. The story could only have been told in Australia by Australians to acheive so great result. So, Laugh me dead, Mate, if this wasn't a gem of a film!

I can understand how non-Australians might not get "Welcome to Woop Woop". As an Aussie, I don't get it either. Australian cinema has produced some off-the-wall comedies over the years, but this one is in a league of its own. Teddy (Johnathon Schaech), an American rare bird smuggler on the run ends up in the Australian outback. He meets Angie (Susie Porter), a sexually veracious girl who drugs him and takes him to her community in the ex-asbestos mining town of Woop Woop run by her father Daddy-O (Rod Taylor). Teddy wakes up to find he is married to Angie. He gets caught up in the weird lifestyle of the isolated community whose only source of entertainment and connection to culture is old videos of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals - a little like "Galaxy Quest" where the alien Thermians only understand human behaviour through the signals they have received of old television shows. Along with the most strident of Australian accents, the changes of mood in the film are bewildering - singing, dancing and fornicating one minute and shooting dogs the next. This slice of Australiana makes the characters in "Wake in Fright" seem like Oxford dons. I only saw "Woop Woop" recently (2015) when it appeared on "World Movies" about the same time as a documentary called "Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!" Apparently Quentin Tarantino championed the documentary and I must admit it was more entertaining than most of the films it featured, including "Welcome to Woop Woop" The cast gave it everything they had, and seemed to be in on the joke. Rod Taylor has one great scene where he does an electric tap dance to "Shall We Dance" on the bar with leads on his shoes connected to a battery. But as far as I'm concerned these were the only sparks generated in the film. Stephen Elliott had made "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" the year before. "Priscilla" was outrageous with souvenirs of ABBA, ping-pong balls etc. - but it was funny. "Welcome to Woop Woop" is outrageous and tedious. Would I recommend the film? Well that all depends on what you like. Some people relish a good bad movie. By bad, I don't mean poor editing or shoddy sound, far from it, "Woop Woop" is polished as far as production values are concerned - I mean bad in concept. It has a certain cult following, but that's one cult I managed to escape.

This movie is the very epitome of "so bad, it's good." All the other reviews explain it far better than I could, but one thing that hasn't been said is that YOU SIMPLY HAVE TO SEE THIS MOVIE. -even if only to ghasp in wonderment at how impossibly dumb and vile it is. Except, actually, it has it's moments, surreal as they may be, and at some point it actually becomes hard to turn it off. Even sober. If you've ever seen "Greaser's Palace," then you have some idea of what I mean, although G.P actually had a serious message (no, REALLY!) and this movie definitely does not, the style is very similar. I debated whether to give this one a one star or ten, no kidding. (I decided on one star.) See it if you get a chance, and yes, alcohol is recommended. -Also a box full of foam object to throw at the screen. You'll have a roaring good time.

....Because it takes everything modern Australians despise about this country's past (most specifically its rural past), expands upon it in a manner almost perfectly designed to make us feel humiliated by it, and then packages it neatly in widescreen. Well, maybe not. The fact is, WtWW is an oddball film, with a range of rather unpleasant characters in an equally unpleasant setting. Peter Weir's "The Cars That Ate Paris" took the same scenario and managed to turn it into a watchable, if not entirely likable film (best remembered for the spiky VW beetle). But director Stephan Elliot isn't known for his directorial subtlety, and as such, WtWW treats the subject with all the vulgar caricature we've come to expect. He'd wanted to capture the last vestiges of "Old Australia" he'd encountered when he'd filmed "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" in various outback towns. \ But the majority of Australians are urbanites, many of whom seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to live down their past. As such, when this film was released in Australia, it reopened all those wounds of low cultural self-esteem and died the death of 1,000 bad reviews. Quite apart from being an intrinsically bad film, that is. ;) Elliot, in a TV special about the making of "Eye of the Beholder", said he felt he'd been well-sufficiently punished for it.... Over time, WtWW seems to have found itself a following, mostly amongst non-Australian viewers.... But considering it is an hour and a half of my life that I desperately want to take back, I'm certainly not amongst them. A pity really, for, as unpleasant as Daddy-O was, Rod Taylor's performance really is something to see....

Even out in the far reaches of country Australia only morons and half-wits talk anything like the characters in this film. These kinds of parochial insulting "parodies" of Australian life are what killed the Australian film industry. We are not a bunch of "bushies" or "surf low lives" we are, for the most part, well educated, intelligent urbane people who live on a giant dry island. Our culture is made up of British, Scottish and Irish immigrants mixed unhappily with the indigenous population and topped up with people from everywhere on earth. To try and "capture" the essence of Australians with these degrading, ill conceived attempts to pump the lowest common denominator (The Castle, Kenny, Razzle Dazzle etc) just shows how skewered the Arts are in Australia to w*nkers - it's truly f***king terrible.

I for once could not believe that Australia or ANY film company for that matter would finance this garbage that not only bruises Australia's reputation and appearance, but makes a mockery of everything labeled "Australian", especially to the poor soul who makes the most unfortunate mistake of watching this trash. First of all, let's look at the non-existent plot. We have Johnathon Schaech portraying a drug runner who flees New York City from several thugs who would give anything to 'bust him up' a little. He makes a hasty escape to the Australian outback (of all places!) where he picks up a hitch-hiker wonderfully portrayed by Susie Porter who spends most of her screen time running around like a pig so that we can see her bare bum, her breasts in full exposure and having sex with Schaech's character every second she can, all for no reason at all. She now wants to introduce Schaech to her 'loving' father and his clan of loonies who reside in some coregated-iron tin town in the middle of nowhere (hence the title of "WOOP WOOP") where they spend their spare time watching Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals such as "SOUTH PACIFIC" and "THE SOUND OF MUSIC" in between acting like a bunch of rednecks who may have breathed in too many toxic fumes from an 'off-screen' nuclear dump. Yes, all the residents here either have 'nuclear-burned' skin, missing teeth or incredibly ugly features that suggest imbreeding among the 'clan' or exposure to hazardous materials like toxic waste. Rod Taylor plays 'Big Daddy O', an overbearing, over-protective father of Susie Porter's character who refuses to let Schaech leave their nice little town because it seems that someone is now expecting a baby. In fact, he wants Schaech to do the right thing and marry Porter and raise their child in this delightful little neighborhood. The only problem here is that Schaech wants nothing to do with any of this and he spends the rest of his time in the movie attempting to escape the lunatics and crazies that populate this dump. Oh yeah, this is also supposed to be a 'comedy', so prepare yourself for unintentional laughter, such as the mutant kangaroo featured in the finale of the film that destroys a jeep driven by Rod Taylor in what could be one of the worst scenes to feature 'special effects' in all of cinematic history. Through all of this, I was quite embarrassed... not only as an Australian, but because I was the one who rented this junk and tried to present it to some friends who were from the U.S. and appeared quite lost throughout the excruciating 97 minutes that this horrific misrepresentation of Australiana ran for. I have no idea what the film company thought when they read the script for this film. This isn't even worthy of being premiered on late-night cable at 2am in the morning. I was astounded and flabbergasted at how awful this movie was and I have absolutely nothing positive to say about "WELCOME TO WOOP WOOP". I actually felt a little embarrassed for Johnathon Schaech who found himself in the middle of this mess and probably wanted 'out' before filming was completed. And to follow this film up with 1998's cinematic dud, "HUSH", this is definitely something he could afford to leave off his resume. If you want to see a film that portrays the once handsome Rod Taylor as a beer-guzzling, pot-bellied, red-faced, gin-soaked Aussie ocker, then "WELCOME TO WOOP WOOP" is definitely the movie to see him in. If you want to see a film that offers something meaningful to both your intelligence and your wallet, then steer clear of this rot. And trust me folks - this movie definitely does NOT represent ALL of Australia. 0/10