Frog Dreaming
"As much as I admire individualism and independence, it is difficult for me to sympathize with courage carried to such an extreme for no compelling reason. Although others have recommended this film for children, I can’t agree. It is the stuff of which nightmares are made– And Cody’s reckless behavior, despite his admirable traits, makes him something of an anti-hero."
"The Quest," released in Australia in 1986 as "Frog Dreaming," was a film I obsessed over as a young boy. A 14 year old kid played by Henry Thomas is sent to Australia to live with his uncle after his mother and father are killed in an accident, and stumbles upon an abandoned rock quarry with a muddy pond at the bottom. The surrounding area is littered with scrap metal, vintage machine parts, and derelict hulks. The place, he learns, is haunted by a monster the aboriginals call "Dahnk-a-gin" which lives in the pond, and he spends the entire movie trying to get to the bottom of it’s nature and origin.
The movie posesses multiple characteristics that are typical facinations of mine, and may have had a part in implementing some of them, as it became my favorite movie quite early on. The movie opens with an old man fishing in the pond; his line becomes tight and starts being drawn out into the murky water as the suspense for some yet unseen horror begins to mount. The center of the pond begins to bubble profusely, and the old man panics and races back to shore, only to turn and face the creature that appears to be rising from the water. The audience is given a glimpse of something black and slimy appearing amidst the bubbles, and then sinking again. The old man dies of fright, and his bones are discovered by the boy later.
The movie ties folk lore and left-behind industrial era machinery together, with all of the beautiful and creepy MO’s of the pre-CGI days of the 1980s. Eventually the boy puts on a -very- old (and very questionable) diving suit and wanders into the depths of the pond to seek out the monster. His friends on shore hold a hose connected to his suit, allowing him to breathe, and the audience is taken under water with the boy to explore all of the ancient by-gone relecs of a once active rock quarry. Eventually the mysterious bubbles consume the boy, the line is snapped, and he doesn’t resurface.
Presumed dead, locals drain the pond for the boys body… but by doing so, uncover the monster that the aboriginals (and audience) had feared so much. When the pond is drained several meters, the monster rises up to where the surface once was. While character’s backs are turned, we see the ominous shadow of the great beast rising quietly along the wet quarry wall, dripping and covered with weeds. The innitial fright of the onlookers soon turns to amazement as we learn that the monster is a mere steam engine left behind prior to the quarry’s flooding and somehow still running. The bucket of the digger would reach up above the water, collect air, and draw it back down. The name given to the beast, "Dahnk-a-gin," we then learn is merely "Donkey Engine," the 1950s make and model of that particular steam shovel. The boy, safe inside of the bucket’s air pocket with his foot simply stuck, is then rescued.
"There are films that you can’t remember the day after you watch them, but sometimes there is a film which is different; one which gives you something more than any other and which becomes a part of your own life. The day I saw this movie my soul went to the bottom of that muddy pond, and it never came back. May I remain there forever…in a dream time."