'Yankee Zephyr’ shoot ends

Press, 9 April 1981, Page 16

'Yankee Zephyr’ shoot ends

(Bv

ALAN BRADY)

at

The “Race to the Yankee Zephyr” is over. Filming has ended on Australasia's biggest budget movie to date and an October release is planned with a gala premiere in Christchurch. The director-producer. David Hemmings, and other key members of the "Yankee Zephyr” crew flew out of Queenstown at the week-end at the end of a shoot which began last October. Location production on the S6M comedy-adventure finished right on schedule and Hemmings was enthusiastic about the way it had gone. The entire film was shot in the mountains and valleys around Queenstown and he said great use had been made of the spectacular locations. “How could you miss when everywhere you look it’s a set-up,” he said. “If you put two actors anywhere within

30 kilometres of Queenstown you’ve got a shot that will look very good in the wide screen format.” He described “Race to the Yankee Zephyr” as a “bonbon” — a light, fairytale, comedy-adventure which audiences could enjoy on a purely entertainment and escapist level without worrying whether the baddies were bad enough or the goodies were good enough.

After the rash of horror movies of the past five years, he believed audiences were ready for a film like “Yankee Zephyr” with its spectacular locations and action and likeable characters. The film stars two fastrising young Americans, Ken Wahl and Lesley Ann Warren, with the movie veterans, Donald Pleasence and George Peppard, in a story about a race to recover a SSOM treasure from a United States wartime plane wrecked in one of New Zealand’s southern lakes.

It is produced jointly by Hemmings. Australia’s Antony I. Ginnane and New Zealand’s John Barnett, and financed by the Anglo American film group Hemdale, New Zealand merchant bankers Fay Richwhite with Endeavour Films and Pact Productions of Australia.. “Race to the Yankee Zephyr” was .David Hemmings’s first film as a director in New Zealand (he played Detective Inspector Hutton in the Endeavour Films production “Beyond Reasonable Doubt”) and the association is likely to continue. Before leaving Queenstown, he said the Australianbased F.G.H. partnership (Michael Fayman, Tony Ginnane, David Hemmings) is planning more pictures in New Zealand. Whether it is one or two a year would depend on the economic advantages or disadvantages at the time. “ ‘Yankee Zephyr’ was a major production by any standards and we’ll certainly be taking advantage of the

experience we gained and the relationship we’ve devel- J oped with the New Zealand i industry while making it,” he. said. That relationship has al- J ready seen many of the New '' Zealand crew members from ' “Yankee Zephyr” join Australians working on the next • F.G.H. production at Cairns, 1 in Queensland. Filming on i “Turkey Shoot,” a futuristic story with a concentration : camp ' setting, begins this .« month. . ; For Queenstown, the de- ■< parture of the Zephyr Films 1 company marks the end of a ; colourful interlude but not i the end of the film industry. :

A Hollywood company, George Englund Productions, is at present shooting a super-wide screen “Imax” feature, “My Strange Uncle,” in and around the town and there is talk, of more films to come. - “Yankee Zephyr,” however, will be remembered as the first taste of “big time” movie making in a town which has hosted dozens of film crews over the years. In addition to the many jobs created for locals, a crew of up to 100 at times lived and worked in the town and their film making activities became part of the local scene.