Jack Be Nimble (1993)

Anne (Patricia Phillips) walks out on her big, fat, dumb husband and her kids, Dora and Jack, when they are infants.

Dora is adopted by Mr and Mrs Birch (Gilbert Goldie and Brenda Simmons), who are kind and well-to-do if a trifle boring. Jack is not so fortunate when he is plucked from his playpen by two of the most dreadful people in the world – Bernice (Elizabeth Hawthorne) and her husband Clarrie (Tony Barry).

They take Jack back to a farm where four little girls in red stand like ominous demons in the doorway. “Meet your sisters,” cackles Bernice, now Jack’s new adopted mum.

Clarrie forces tiny Jack to watch the hoisting and slaughter of a pig, blood pouring from its squealing throat. Some years later, Clarrie hoists Jack up on the pig rope and whips him bloody for no good reason at all. “Remember, Jack, you owe us,” says Bernice as Clarrie slams Jack around at the diner table for not doing well in metalwork.

Later, a teenage Jack (Alexis Arquette, brother of Rosanna and Patricia) brings to the dining table a box he’s made in metalwork. To general laughter, he opens it, revealing a device of cogs, gears, a Golden Syrup can, a candle, a little pinwheel, a generator, and four candelabra light bulbs. Bzz-bzz-bzz . . . flicker flicker . . . Clarrie and Bernice are hypnotised.

Jack takes Clarrie out onto the highway and has him lie down until a bus runs over him. He takes Bernice out into the woods and has her climb a big tree and crawl out onto a limb like a cat until she tumbles to her death.

Meanwhile, sister Dora (Sarah Smuts-Kennedy) has been having her own problems. An icy teacher reads Dora’s yearning letter to long-lost Jack aloud in class, and the class bully (a girl who could play fullback for the Green Bay Packers) sends Dora to the hospital.

When grown up Jack and Dora reunite, he’s a hitchhiker, and she’s in the car that picks him up.

Sex comes into play with Teddy (Bruno Lawrence), a rough-hewn man of the people who brings Dora into his beach house, life and bed, much to the hostility of emotionally disturbed brother Jack (who, by the way, has hunted down his natural father and bumped him off by forcing him to do 1,000 push-ups).

The four little adopted sisters from the farm blow back into the picture like furies, banshees, a witches’ coven – out to make Jack and Dora pay for what was done to poor old Clarrie and Bernice.

What happens to Jack shouldn’t happen to a pig. Fortunately, Dora has taken lessons from Sir Alec Guinness, so she has The Force.

Jack Be Nimble was the first feature film from young New Zealand writer/director Garth Maxwell.

Alexis Arquette later underwent sex reassignment surgery and completed the transition in 2006. In later life, Arquette suffered from ill health as a result of being HIV-positive. Alexis again began presenting as a man in 2013.

Arquette was ultimately placed in a medically induced coma and died on 11 September 2016, aged 47. The official cause of death was “cardiac arrest caused by myocarditis stemming from HIV”.

Jack
Alexis Arquette
Dora
Sarah Smuts-Kennedy
Teddy
Bruno Lawrence
Clarrie
Tony Barry
Bernice
Elizabeth Hawthorne
Mrs Birch
Brenda Simmons
Mr Birch
Gilbert Goldie
Anne
Patricia Phillips
Kevin
Paul Minifie
Little Jack
Sam Smith
Little Dora
Hannah Jessop
Jack aged 7
Nicholas Antwis
Dora aged 8
Olivia Jessop
Young Sean
Ricky Plester
Sean
Rohan Stace
Carlene
Bridget Donovan
Trish
Caroline Lowry
Tina
Paula Jones
Gordon
Chris Anchinvole
The Sisters
Kristen Seth
Amber Woolston
Tracey Brown
Wendy Adams
Nina López
Beth Morrison
Ella Brasella
Johanna Morrison
Amy Morrison
Victoria Spence

Director
Garth Maxwell

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