A Cry In The Dark (Evil Angels)

Any thoughts on this movie from 1988, starring Meryl Streep as Lindy Chamberlain, wrongly convicted of slaughtering her baby daughter Azaria in the Australian outback in the early 80s?

Any recollections?

I remember Spielberg saying it was the best film of the year. I think it was prescient for capturing tabloid culture. Streep and Sam Neill are excellent in it.

I remember “The dingo ate my baby.”

Meryl should have won the Oscar, as competitive as that year was.

She won Best Actress at Cannes, New York Film Critics and Australia's Best Actress award too.

What's the point of making a baby wear that cap, it's not for warmth and it looks itchy as fuck. Maybe that baby had a death wish and wanted to be eaten by the dingo.

The "dingo ate my baby" line not withstanding, Sam Neill as the husband that supports her, but eventually cracks and loses faith in her by the end of the movie was a stand out. Not the showy performance of M, but very affective

Loved everything about that movie! It's my Steel Magnolias!

It was remarkable prescient

M wasn't showy in this ...I felt she gave a truly great performance. She should have won the oscar.

You'll never convince me I didn't do it.

Possibly Meryl's best performance.

Is this the film Meryl got her dirty pillows out in the shower scene?

One of the most beautiful actresses in film history, not afraid to deglam

Sam Neill is so hot. Young in this film.

Another of Meryl's many "accent roles".

R18 do you expect her to do those roles in her NJ accent? She's a fucking actress

No--I'm just suggesting she seems to seek out roles that require that she do an accent.

Meryl stole that hairstyle from Natasha!

She didn't seek out roles, do you maybe think the filmmakers thought, we need a well-known actress who can pull off an accent?

I worked for a talent agency in LA back in the late 80s. Evil Angels had finished production and was readying for release by the end of the year. The studio didn't care for the title and was trying to come up with something that was "more commercial". It went thru a few different titles and kind of became a contest in my office. The biggest blockbuster that year had been Three Men and a Baby, so i came up with the title "Three Dingoes and a Baby". It stuck and everybody in my office referred to that title even long after the movie became A Cry in the Dark.

Her best performance along with Silkwood in that she disappears into an everyday character. IIRC a lot of "deplorables" who hate her on display outside the courthouse. Trashy even by Aussie standards.

If you watch closely, you'll notice there are few close ups. I think that actually helps ground her performance and keeps it from being as showy as it otherwise might have been. I think in some of the more emotional exchanges in the courtroom the camera isn't even on her. Could be false memory but that was my impression.

Sam Neill was a handsome hunk. This is one of the few M performances I like. I can't stand most of her work.

I watched this movie about 10 years ago. It's really fascinating because it was ahead of it's time. The movie is really about "Instant fame" and the effect it has on you and those around you. Also, the "court of public opinion". In our current era of social media and "cancel culture" it would be interesting to watch again.

Was the baby really eaten by the dingo? Did they ever found the bones?

I am not usually a Streep fan, but I agree that this was a terrific performance from her. It didn’t feel so self-aware and cutesy like Streep performances usually do. And Sam Neill was also terrific.

There is something unique about this movie. It’s almost like a movie-sized soap opera or a bigger budget TV movie of the week. I really enjoyed it though.

R24 interesting about the lack of closeups. Maybe that’s the je ne sais quoi I liked about this movie: it treats Meryl Streep just the same as it would have treated some C-list actress.

Streep is very convincing. I think Judy Davis or Wendy Hughes could have done well too, but they weren't international box office attractions...

R28, the body was never found. Just a singlet and bloody jumpsuit.

In 2012, a third inquest concluded that . . .

The dingo are her baby.

That was after a string of other dingo attacks on small children was publicized.

There was a 1983 Australian TV movie called Who Killed Baby Azaria? that offered several scenarios for what happened that night.

R28 yes, they found the baby jacket years later and it had dingo bites in it.

R31 this actually had a very limited release for some reason and made very little money. It wasn't even released in most of the world.

That horrible bowl haircut ...... Of course she did it!

Shut up Patsy Ramsey at R38

The actual line, in real life, was "The dingo's got my baby."

Maybe the producers thought Americans wouldn't understand what "got" meant. At that time we were just emerging from the era when Australian films were subtitled for the US.

The final inquest established, IIRC, that a dingo or similar large canine did take the baby. It found there was likely human interference with the clothes before they were found - but that could have come from anyone who later found them and/or the remains and took fright at the idea of becoming involved in such an unpredictable case. The inquest also established that key expert forensic evidence against Lindy at the trial that jailed her was just plain incorrect and that really there wasn't anything to suggest she murdered the child. Lindy is still alive and has given relatively recent interviews about the whole thing and how she has managed to put it in perspective and get on with her life. Her remaining children, now grown up, all seem to be very attached to her.

PS Meryl Streep's accent in that movie was very much not one of her triumphs. Lindy's accent is a difficult combination of Aus and NZ, but Streep achieved neither that nor either of them individually. The queen of the Australasian accent is Kate Winslet. She could pass for Australian anywhere.

Seinfeld episode where Elaine is attending a boring party and answers a woman's question with Australian accent "the dingoes ate my baby."

R40 she sounded just like Lindy you shit

Australians always say her dialect is terrible in this.

Her "best" performance when she stated she knew nothing about Harvey Weinstein, never heard any rumors about him, YET warned her fledgling actress daughter to stay away from him. I lost all respect for her ...she deserves as Oscar for being an expert LIAR.

I don't think Australians should disparage anyone's accent.

I'm an Aussie and she fooled me

[quote] Seinfeld episode where Elaine is attending a boring party and answers a woman's question with Australian accent "the dingoes ate my baby."

[buzzer]

The woman was wondering aloud where her “baby” (her boyfriend) had gone. Elaine looks at her and says “Maybe the dingo ate your baby.”

I remember her calling it a “babby.” Good movie, though. I just watched Heartburn and Sophie’s Choice again. She really was great.

Still is R48

It's the movies that got crappier

Don Gummer really latched onto a goldmine when he wed La Streep. His sculptures are dreadful.

I love Heartburn ... haven't seen it in years!

Australia also has that strange case of 3 children missing from the same family...but I don't think the dingoes are being implicated here.

One of her very best. I used to study her in this film as a teen, and run around pestering family and friends with monologues and bits of dialogue from this.

Wait! Wait! A dingo ate my baby! A dingo ate my baby!

Could you imagine if a dingo ran off with your baby and no one believed you!

One her truly best performances. Her last great one.

Australia must be a infanticidal maniac's fantasy. You don't even have to lie about black men hijacking your car and killing your babies. All you have to do is take them camping out where the dingos can get them.

Did she see the dingo take her baby? I cant remember if the baby was in the tent alone asleep.

R51 I don’t know why it got bad reviews!

A few critics felt this was her best performance because you can see she was struggling with the accent. It freed her performance up in other vital areas and didn't make it as stagey as she normally is.

Australian threads are always such fun!

They flush out the crass, I’ll-educated Americans who know nothing about the place.

Every single time.

Yes I agree the accent is a mix of Oz and New Zealand. Like in the famous scene, where she cries, "You're talking about my baby daughter. Not some object." The way she says object is more NZ-ish.

I'm not sure why people - stupid people - are going on about how "prescient" this film was. Erm, it actually happened! Duh. Were the events themselves then, uh, prescient...?

I suppose it was the canary in the coal mine because it could be said the media frenzy surrounding this case that nearly cost an innocent woman her life, was whipped up by the Murdoch media in Australia. That's the thread. He just moved on to bigger platforms.

Correction:

[quote]We're talking about my baby daughter... Not. Some. ObjecT."

:swoon:

Australians have that same vicious , dumb, and reactionary element that many Americans do. Probably from the same culture (scotch irish , scottish, irish) too. There was really nothing unbelievable about her story. Only a bunch of morons would think it was impossible. Then again, Australia we as the same place where a child aids patient was driven out of town in the 80s and had to settle with their family in New Zealand (where they were apparently welcomed).

R63 I don't think you can claim that the Murdoch media "whipped" the people into what R65 describes as being 'vicious, dumb, and reactionary'.

They were responding to—

1. the Chamberlains' strange religion (Seventh Day Adventist). 2. the missing child's strange name (they speculated it meant 'sacrifice win the desert'). 3. Lindy Chamberlain's unemotional responses (the recent authorised 40 year anniversary doco says those unemotional responses were due to the fact that she was responding to the police asking the same questions 20 times over).

That 'vicious, dumb, and reactionary' that R65 describes is the crux of the story rather than the condescending performance by the imported Hollywood diva.

The documentaries on Youtube are much more informative about poor Lindy Chamberlain than this confected movie with its condescending imported Hollywood diva.

[quote] its condescending imported Hollywood diva.

That’s harsh.

I love it!

this was the year there was a three way tie for Best Actress at the Golden Globes.

Meryl wasn't one of the three. She and Christine Lahti had to sit there in the audience dejected.

I remember there was a small brouhaha about Streep being cast, as an American in an Australian story. But then Fred had a hardon for her after they did Plenty together. The only Oz actress I can think that had international success at the time is Judy Davis and I can't see Judy in the part. But I could be underestimating her because I much prefer Judy to Meryl as an actress.

Why was it called Evil Angels in some places? That seems like an odd title for it.

that is the name of the source book.

^ The source book alluded to the Christian belief in redemption, the promise of deliverance from sin and bondage, but gives it a secular application, in the attempt to see justice done, and especially to obtain Lindy Chamberlain’s release from prison.

Yes before the book came out the general opinion was that Lindy had killed her daughter.

The movie was an adaptation of the book by John Bryson, which was originally published as "Evil Angels":

"This title reprises a theme sounded in the opening, for Bryson begins his story not with the family reaching Uluru, or even setting out for Central Australia, but in Pennsylvania in 1844, on a night when Seventh-Day Adventists had predicted the Second Coming of Christ would occur. The failure of that expectation brought forth what one of their leaders called 'the exulting, sneering triumph of evil angels'. That episode, known to Adventists as 'the Great Disappointment', sets a tone of melancholy for the Australian story of injustice that follows. Biblical quotations are sprinkled throughout the book, spoken by the members of the church, or used as images by Bryson. Faith tested by adverse circumstances in the first case; faith juxtaposed with skepticism in the second."

I wonder if the casting was to take advantage of the Australian government's 10BA system. In the 1980s, private financing increased as a result of tax incentives for Australian-made film and television productions. Division 10BA (1981) of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 allowed investors a 150% tax concession on their investment at risk. There were a slew of international actors imported for Australian films, granted most of them were second-rate or has-beens.

[quote] I don't understand why that 10BA system was discontinued.

Come see us at the Bronze tomorrow night!

Beautiful, haunting score by Bruce Smeaton (who also scored Plenty, the other Fred Schepisi directed film starring M and Sam Neill).

[quote] Why was it called Evil Angels in some places? That seems like an odd title for it.

A lot of the prejudice against Lindy Chamberlain stemmed from the fact that people were suspicious of her religion, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and it was thought she had sacrificed baby Azaria as part of an evil cult ritual.

Also, the site of the disappearance, Uluru (then called Ayers Rock), is noted to be sacred to the local Anangu (aboriginal) people.

I wonder what the Seventh-Day Adventist religion has in common with the Anangu religion.

Meryl Streep as Lindy Chamberlain in Evil Angels and Kylie Minogue as Petra von Kant in Bio-Dome are two of the greatest representations of Australians in cinema.

I bought the 2004 miniseries starring Miranda Otto years ago out of curiosity but never got around to watching it.

It was weird that Shitley, Siggy and Jodie all tied for the Globe and Meryl's superior performance ignored. Meryl did win Cannes, NYCFC and Australia's Best Actress award.

Shitley musta been sore, becoming the first GG Drama winner not to get an Oscar nom.

I think Dangerous Liaisons had a very late release, hence why no Glenn.

Lindy' s hair...a mushroom cut to beat all mushroom cuts. Not flattering to groom yourself like a vegetable

Googling pictures of Lindy show how much of her wardrobe made it into the film. I remember M sporting this unflattering number.

She now favors bright bold prints.

^ The young Lindy Chamberlain was a petite woman (whose face reminded me of Judy Garland's).

But that imported Hollywood diva was a big boned woman with a problematic nose and jaw. The diva had to wear that large mushroom hair-do (R86) to minimise her big nose and jaw.

Critical people say that Lindy Chamberlain was a naive, simple-minded, uneducated member of a Christian sect. But that imported Hollywood diva turned her into a risible caricature.

Did Meryl fuck Sam Neill during the making of this film? She had a reputation for sleeping with all her co-stars.

Judy Davis has a tendency to accentuate her characters' neurotic sides, so she would need to rein that in to play Lindy.

[quote] Judy Davis

Yes, it would be painful for her to restrain her usual scenery-chewing habits but her small stature makes her a better match than that statuesque, large-featured, imported Hollywood diva.

Davis doesn't chew scenery all the time, though she certainly does in the Ryan Murphy crap she's been in lately. But that material invites and even needs that kind of acting to mask the threadbare, overhyped material.

I thought she was marvelous and pitch perfect in films like A PASSAGE TO INDIA, HUSBANDS AND WIVES, IMPROMPTU, HIGH TIDE, THE REF, and the little seen SWIMMING UPSTREAM.

R93 that may be the first time anyone referred to M as statuesque

Judy has done accents. After all she is Australian and has worked a lot in America, and has also done English and a German one in Kangaroo. But I still can't imagine her doing Lindy's voice. She just seems too urban. Perhaps Meryl could do it because she is more like a blank canvas who takes on the exteriors of a character.

Deborah Furness had a cameo as a reporter.

Looking over the cast it must have tickled Meryl that there is a featured extra named Charles Dance.

R17 Sam Neill is very active on Twitter. He's a lot of fun, and has a wonderful sense of humor.

So apparently the dingo really DID take the baby. It took how many years to figure that out?

Sam Neill recently narrated a docuseries about the Chamberlain case.

The recent authorised 40 year anniversary doco (which isn't on Youtube, unfortunately) says much blame should be given to this man (below).

He was anxious to blame Lindy and not discourage potential tourists to this relatively-unattractive, and unpleasant hot, arid part of the nation.

R36 I remember that movie, it was exploitative and pretty sordid, and presented the "what if she did it" version of Lindy as a scheming witch. It was also a ratings bonanza. I think that movie did more to harm her reputation than anything that happened in the courthouse. People were calling for the death penalty the morning after that movie aired.

The Sam Neill produced (and narrated) documentary is currently on YouTube.

The actress was a little too good in the 1983 TV movie. The husband was played by the presenter of the children's show Playschool, John Hamblin, who looked almost exactly like the real husband.

I cannot remember who the actress was, but it was heartbreaking when they portrayed Lindy as the victim, but they then showed Lindy killing Azaria with surgical scissors in the other scenario, cleaning up the mess, damaging the baby jumper to look like it was a dingo attack. All in the space of five minutes, and then returning to the campsite as if nothing happened and acting out the whole dingo scenario. I don't think the movie even bothered to come up with a plausible explanation of why she did it, other than she was some kind of devil worshipper.

I know many people are minboggingly stupid, but having read the prosecution's theory, I can't understand how it wasn't laughed out of court.

The prosecution didn't want to kill the Tourist Industry.

The embodiment of weird church lady dressing. I believe she sewed her own clothes, which was in the movie. Even for early 1980s the hair and clothes were appallingly bad.

I think another thing that worked against the Chamberlains's story was that dingoes had never killed a human baby before.

which is why I guess they thought it was ok to leave the baby by herself though I seem to recall the brother was there too.

[quote]Even for early 1980s the hair and clothes were appallingly bad.

You can still buy clothing every bit as hideous as that in Australia. Supre anyone?

only on Datalounge r90.

The biography of her "Her, Again" details the lengths she went to to fend off Jack Nicholdon'd advances.

(banned from her hotel floor in Heartburn, furious when he tricked her into a "date" at Chasten's by saying the whole cast was coming and then showing up alone.

Meryl and Lindy at around the 54:00 minute mark.

Fuck, Sam Neill was hot.

[quote] Meryl and Lindy at around the 54:00 minute mark

Meryl's so big and and Lindy's so small.

I thought this authorised doco was good and thorough.

But it didn't want to dwell on their religion. Nor did it give any insight on why the once-pretty Michael divorced before he died so soon.

M should have won for this

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