The 2008 nonfiction retrospective Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! brought belated attention to Fair Game, director Mario Andreacchio's debut. The documentary appreciated the nervy, grindhouse-type fare cranked out alongside the maturing Australian movie industry of an earlier century, lively B-pictures a long way from the Picnic at Hanging Rock or Breaker Morant playing international art houses. So be advised, Fair Game (obtainable on B-level labels in the old VHS days of video) makes an effective but retro-80s schlocky revenge actioner, served hot on the grill.
Jessica (Cassandra Delaney) is a beautiful, tough Outback girl, running a one-woman veterinary clinic by a nature preserve, and she's also a promising wildlife artist (shades of Where the Crawdads Sing). But Jessica gets regularly bullied by two jerks hired by farmers as animal exterminators, who motor around the dust-filled landscape, firing rifles from a heavily accessorized, fog-light-fitted pickup track that is virtually a malevolent villain all on its own - yes there is a small resemblance to Spielberg's early road-rage classic Duel (1971), but with the additional sexual threat.
With local (male) law enforcement apathetic, the heroine is terrorized, humiliated, and stripped (whether she is actually raped is ambiguous). In a minor twist, the boss of the marauders (Peter Ford) is no Mad Max mutant but rather a Rod Taylor/Hugh Jackman clean-cut and handsome bloke, but viewers soon know exactly whose side he's on. In the cathartic finale, Jessica and her survival skills finally turn the tables on the despicable trio.
A closing ABBA-style pop anthem is so glorious, so wrong, so...Aussie. There is no doubt that Fair Game works as a sheer, gut-punch thrill machine against toxic masculinity (though director Andreacchio has supposedly regretted the sadism), and Delaney's sexy-but-empowered lead turn is a character "Crocodile" Dundee would be proud to call a neighbor. But this is low-common-denominator stuff, said to have been an influence on Quentin Tarantino (take that as a recommendation or not).
While it wears its low budget well, the proliferation of lookalike bloodbaths down the years (this Fair Game is not to be confused with the ill-starred Cindy Crawford action-suspenser Fair Game, from 1995) makes the flick a strong but iffy optional choice for mainstream entertainment and classic film library shelves, though a "cult" audience may find its re-release endearing, and buyers may be thankful its violence and nudity stop short of hardcore.