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The Little Convict is a film of genre Drama directed by Yoram Gross released in USA on 13 april 2012 with Rolf Harris
The Little Convict (1979)
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Add to a movie listThe Little Convict is a 1979 Australian film directed by Yoram Gross based on an original story by Gross.
The movie was a commercial disappointment. "It was screening in the mornings only, which is bloody nonsense," said Gross. "We realised that we'd always be struggling for screens because those big companies were committed to American movies. We were playing against 'The Muppets', so why would they invest any money to promote our films? That's when we began to move more and more into television."
An old artist (Rolf Harris) sets up some paintings at Luna Park, Sydney, planning to sell them, but has trouble attracting any people until he performs "Jake the Peg". Most of the crowd move on again when the performance finishes, being uninterested in his paintings, so he starts telling his granddaughter about their origins.
We then travel back in time to a British convict ship, the "Northern Star", as it sails towards a tiny colony on Sydney Cove with sixty-four convicts on board. Six of these convicts are a young boy named Toby Nelson, his older sister Polly, "Big George" Tomkins, a blacksmith, Jake "Dipper" Davey, a professional pickpocket who had only been nabbed when he became old and slow, William Watts, a "village idiot" who was on board for stealing a pig from a farmer - he had been caught when he tried to sell the same pig to the same farmer on the same day, an action that led to him being nicknamed "Silly Billy" after his trial - and Jack Doolan, a highwayman who had used some money he had robbed to buy bread and cheese, which he was passing around to a group of hungry people when the constabulary found him. Jack had given Toby the reins of his horse and Polly some of the bread and cheese, which led to them being charged as two of "the Doolan gang".
After a journey of eight months, the Northern Star sails through the headlands into the harbour on whose shores the colony is built. The convicts are greeted by the Lieutenant Governor, Colonel Lindsay Lightfoot, left in charge of the colony while the Governor is inspecting Norfolk Island. He reads out the rules of the colony and warns the convicts of the consequences of disobedience of orders. Toby and Polly see each other for the first time since the ship left England - women convicts had been kept in a separate area - but their reunion is cut short by a tall officer, Sergeant "Bully" Langden.
Bully tells Colonel Lightfoot's aide, Captain Pertwee, that the military need five men to work on the Government farm, and he selects Big George, Jack, Dipper, Silly Billy and Toby for the task. Polly is taken away from the docks by Colonel Lightfoot's wife Augusta to assist her cook and laundrymaid. Toby falls to the ground before the convicts can be given the order to march. When Bully kicks away a cup of water that a woman tries to give Toby, Big George confronts Bully, who has to be rescued by several other soldiers. He decides to fix the troublemaking by marching the convicts straight to the blacksmith's shop, where they are each fitted with heavy chains around their ankles.
Early next morning, the five convicts are aroused by Bully's deputy, Corporal "Weazel" Wesley, who issues them with a small ration of bread and some work tools before marching them out to begin their first day's work. Toby starts to struggle when the day gets hotter, but Dipper is the first to fall, gasping with pain and holding his bad leg trying not to collapse. The other convicts carry him to the shade, give him some water and fan him with his hat. He starts to recover when Weazel finds them. Jack cheerfully invites Weazel to join their "picnic", but Weazel aims his rifle at Jack's heart. A shot is fired, but Bully, who had fired the shot at a group of kangaroos in the scrub, calls on Weazel to help him. They soon find another slower target in the form of a koala and shoot it dead. Toby tries to rescue the baby koala who is on his dead mother's back, but he is caught by Bully, who throws the baby koala back into the bush.
That night, Toby is too unhappy to either eat dinner or talk to anyone. As his friends lay down in their rough bunks, Dipper brings out a small round object, and as he opens it up, it begins to play some music. The object is a gentleman's watch with a music box in it, the only possession Dipper can truly call his own - it was given to him by his father, and long ago had been worn by Dipper's great-grandfather. The music sends Dipper's friends to sleep, allowing him to creep out of the hut and distract the guards by throwing some pebbles. As they chase after what they suppose is an intruder, Dipper sneaks back to the work site, finds the baby koala back near his mother's body, tucks him in an inside pocket that the baby thinks is his mother's pouch, and returns to the hut, distracting the guards again with some wild animal noises. In the hut, he takes out the baby koala and puts it in the crook of Toby's elbow. Toby wakes up and sees the koala and his face turns to joy, but no one, least of all Dipper, will admit to knowing how it got there.
Four weeks on, Polly has become Augusta's only servant girl, and spends time shopping at the store so she can hear the news of the convicts. She finds out that Bully was reprimanded by the Lieutenant Governor for leaving the prisoners while he was shooting at the kangaroos. After Polly hears that Toby is allowed to keep his pet koala and Bully is ordered to remove Toby's leg-irons, Augusta sees Polly smile for the first time.
At tea that night, Polly hears from Captain Pertwee that one of the convicts has been injured and, according to the surgeon, may not live. Terrified, she runs up the streets of Sydney Town towards the convicts' hut, but finds out that it is not Toby who is dying, but Dipper. The convicts had been felling trees, and Dipper had suffered another one of his leg cramps, but was ordered to continue working by Bully. Unable to move, Dipper couldn't get out of the way of a large and heavy trunk when it crashed to the ground so quickly that the other convicts weren't able to help him. With his last bit of strength, Dipper presses something into Toby's hand and tells him that he wants him to have it. When the other convicts have moved away, Toby shows the object, the music box watch, to Polly.
In the days that follow Dipper's burial, Jack's behaviour changes - he stops making cheeky remarks to Bully as they work, he no longer calls Corporal Wesley "Weazel" to his face, and is allowed to hold the reins of Bully's mare as he quietens and calms it each morning. Toby often sees Jack looking towards the distant Blue Mountains, and one night hears Jack and George whispering to each other, and knows that Jack is planning to escape, not wanting to suffer the same fate as Dipper. All seems normal at the worksite the next morning, until George starts breaking all of the tools in pieces, drawing the attention of the soldiers and allowing Jack to untether the friendly horse and quietly turn it towards the mountains.
Later that day, George is made to pay for assisting in Jack's escape - he is given fifty lashes while tied to a large wooden triangle in the public square and thrown into a punishment cell on Bully's orders, where he will spend every night for the next six months while he works at the blacksmith's shop during the day. Weeks later, Toby mouths the word "tonight" to George as he and Billy pass the cell on their way to work. That night, Polly, whom the Lightfoots have given permission to visit George in the punishment cell, and Toby smuggle some food from the Governor's kitchen and see George in the cell. George longs for Jack to help him escape the cell, and Toby comes up with a plan to search for Jack in the bush, taking the bundle of food intended for George, and his own pet koala. A noise causes Bully and Weazel to wake in the guardhouse and see Toby's shadow between the wire fence and scrub. Toby runs for his life and doesn't stop until he cannot hear the shouts of the pursuing guards behind him.
As he continues to search for Jack in the night, keeping a tall mountain peak in front of him to stop him going around in circles, he gets a feeling that someone is following him, but he hears little, and doesn't see anything when he stops to look. He is sure that if it is one of the guards, they would make much more noise. He eventually flops onto the ground exhausted and sleeps until the early dawn when he is woken by a kookaburra and some cockatoos. He eats some of the provisions and then resumes his search.
That evening, with his throat sore from calling Jack's name and all of the food Polly had provided gone, he is close to exhaustion when he finds a clearing with the remains of a dug-out fire. He feels the fire's ashes to see how warm they are when the sound of a snapping twig causes him to turn around. He sees a young Aborigine with a spear in his hand and a dingo at his side, but although Toby is terrified at first, he soon realises that the other boy is actually a friend. They get to know each other, with their arms and some sand providing them with ways to overcome their natural language barrier. Toby eventually finds out that his new friend is named Wahroonga, and he had been following Toby through the bush to make sure that no harm came to him or his koala. Wahroonga introduces Toby to his animal friends, a dingo and a cockatoo, shows him how to find water and food and invites him to stay the night in a gunya, an Aboriginal sleeping shelter on the edge of the clearing.
Next morning, after Toby explains that he is trying to find Jack, a man riding on a horse, Wahroonga leads him to and along a dry river bed until they find a horse's hoof prints. They spend the next few hours following the river bed looking for more prints and other small clues to Jack's possible escape route. At one point, Wahroonga motions to Toby to stand still as he hears a horse neighing, and they hide behind a bush as two bushrangers pass them. Just as Toby and Wahroonga are ready to leave their hiding place, they hear a third horse approach them. They try to bury themselves in the sandy creek bed, but Toby hears the horse slow and stop, then footsteps approach them and a foot taps Toby on the shoulder. He is scared when he first turns around, until he realises that it's Jack Doolan.
After introducing Jack to Wahroonga, Toby tells him stories of his adventures in the bush, but when Jack thinks Toby has run away too, he tells him about what has happened to Big George and why he ran away. Jack follows the path the bushrangers took earlier, and above their camp, he gets Toby and Wahroonga to roll a large boulder down the hill into the camp. It smashes into one of the huts, giving Jack a chance to unleash both of the horses and send one into the bush while he gallops back to the boys on the other. Moments later, Jack is back on his horse with Toby, Wahroonga and the koala on the other, with the dingo following them and the cockatoo overhead as they make their way back towards Sydney Town.
On the edge of the convict settlement, Jack tells Toby that they will need to distract the guards to allow them to get near George's cell, and they will need some tools to break down the cell door. Toby remembers seeing tools in the storehouse next to the cell. As the guards are being served tea and stew, Jack gives a signal and Wahroonga gives a soft whistle to the cockatoo, which flies toward the line of soldiers and causes them to scatter in all directions. Another signal from Jack, and Wahroonga whispers a command to the dingo, which snaps and snarls at the soldiers' horses, causing them to rear and plunge, break their tethers and bolt toward the bush. The soldiers set off in pursuit and leave the settlement unguarded. Wahroonga keeps watch as Jack and Toby head for the store house. They find no tools there, only barrels of rum and oil. Jack gets Toby to open the oil barrels while he takes the rum and pours some into the soldiers' tea mugs and the rest into the boiler of tea. He makes it back to the store house just as the soldiers return with their horses.
The soldiers drink the tea and line up for several cupfuls from the cook, who eventually tastes the brew for himself, all getting drunk on the rum Jack had put into it. As they boisterously continue drinking the tea, Jack sends Toby to collect Silly Billy while he heads for the guardhouse to get the keys to Big George's cell. With all three convicts back in the store house, Jack begins to pour some of the oil on the ground while Toby and Billy take the key and unlock the punishment cell. Silly Billy yells at George in case he is asleep, but Bully hears the noise and tries to rouse the soldiers. Jack hurls the last barrel of oil to the ground and hops over it before it spreads everywhere. The convicts think they will be trapped by the soldiers, but one by one the soldiers slide on the oil and fall to the ground. Despite his drunken state, Bully stays focused on Jack and while kneeling, he aims a rifle at him. At that moment, a boomerang thrown by Wahroonga hits Bully on the back of his neck, sending his gunshot through a window of the Governor's house (causing a frightened Polly to drop the oil lamp she is carrying) before he falls unconscious to the ground.
At the first shouts of the commotion made by the drunken soldiers, Colonel Lightfoot, convinced by his wife Augusta that the Aborigines were attacking the settlement, had dashed out of the house with a sword in his hand leaving her on her own. She hears light footsteps and sees a flickering gleam of lights, and when the door opens, she faints out of fear before she can find out what happened. Polly is also trembling with fright - the lights come from the flame of the dropped lamp which ignited on the now-spreading oil. The fire engulfs the house so fast that Polly and Augusta are trapped inside.
As the four convicts begin their escape, Wahroonga sees the flames coming out of the house and signals to them. Big George recognises it as the Governor's house, and leads a mad dash toward the building. There is smoke and flame coming out of every window as they arrive, and they can hear Polly's and Augusta's cries from within. George finds a large water barrel with a bucket beside it, throws some water over himself and Jack and gets Toby to throw more water on them as they smash the door off its hinges. Inside, George follows the sound of Polly's cries and sees her and Augusta at the bottom of a staircase, with a fallen beam blocking their escape.
George bends over and puts his shoulders underneath the large beam, straining his body to slowly ease it up enough for Augusta and Polly to leave. Hearing a squad of soldiers led by the Lieutenant Governor himself, Toby contemplates escaping, but throws more buckets of water on Billy, Jack and himself before they rush in to guide Polly and Augusta out of the house. With all five of them outside, George heaves the beam off his shoulders and rushes to join them as the house begins to collapse behind him. Polly and Augusta fall into the arms of their respective brother and husband. A couple of hours later, the four convicts explain to Colonel Lightfoot all of the things they did, why they did them and who had helped them. Toby tries to introduce Wahroonga in the middle of his story, only to discover that he has disappeared into the shadows of the bush along with his dingo and cockatoo, which gives a farewell shriek on its way towards the mountains.
The artist wraps up his story by telling us that Bully is found guilty of being drunk on duty and locked away in the same punishment cell into which he had thrown Big George, until his temper improved, while the Lieutenant Governor grants the brave convicts who saved his wife full pardons and grants of land on which they could start their own farms - a happy ending for Billy, George, Jack and Polly. He starts to tell us about Toby, but then looks at his watch and realises that he has to end the story because it's getting late. He tells us that the watch plays a little tune when he opens it up, and he has had it for several years, ever since it was given to him by a dear old man named Dipper. He then points his granddaughter to the nearby merry-go-round, where the people that she sees on it bear likenesses to the characters from his paintings and the animation.
Actors
Rolf Harris
(The Storyteller / Grandfather)
Gary Files
(Gov. Lindsay Lightfoot (voice))
Anne Haddy
(Lady Augusta Lightfoot (voice))
Shane Porteous
(Jack Doolan (voice))
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Suggestions of similar film to The Little Convict
There are 8 films with the same actors, 17 films with the same director, 72278 with the same cinematographic genres (including 93 with exactly the same 3 genres than The Little Convict), to have finally 70 suggestions of similar films.If you liked The Little Convict, you will probably like those similar films :
Around the World with Dot (1981)
, 1h20Directed by Yoram Gross
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Sarah (1992)
, 1h10Directed by Yoram Gross
Genres Drama, War, Historical, Animation
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The story is about a little girl during the beginning of the Second World War. When the German soldiers invade, she and her family are forced to hide in the woods. When her grandmother gets sick, her father goes into town for medicine and disappears. Sarah goes out to pick berries and when she returns, the rest of her family is gone. Sarah is forced to survive alone in the woods with only the animals for company. One day she sees some resistance fighters attempt to destroy a bridge the Nazis use to transport weapons. When their attempt fails, she decides to destroy the bridge herself, hoping that her actions may end the war. Over time she is successful, but afterwards sadly realizes that what she has done will not end the war and walks away into the forest.
The Camel Boy (1984)
, 1h12Directed by Yoram Gross
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Joseph the Dreamer (1962)
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Dot and the Kangaroo (1977)
, 1h26Directed by Yoram Gross
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When 5-year-old Dot finds herself lost in the Australian bush, a red kangaroo who has lost her joey (baby kangaroo) promises to help her find her way home. In the process, the kangaroo introduces Dot to a number of other animals, teaching Dot a greater appreciation for nature.
Dot in Space (1994)
, 1h3Directed by Yoram Gross
Genres Science fiction, Animation
Actors Robyn Moore, Keith Scott
Rating57%
Dot decides to rescue Whyka, the Russian space dog, who is circling the earth trapped in a broken down satellite. After making her way into the space lab's complex, Dot trades with the space monkey Buster, then pilots an American rocket and sets a course to rescue Whyka. After the successful rescue, they both end up stranded on an alien planet, where a dictator named Papa Drop rules over people who are perfectly round in shape (called the Roundies) and ostracises people who do not have this perfection. Dot makes her escape and helps 'The Party' (In fact Papa's defective son Rolly) to turn the Roundies army against Papa and enable everyone no matter their shape, to a peaceful coexistence once more. With this business finished, Dot and Whyka get back in their rocket and return to Earth.
Blinky Bill (1992)
, 1h30Directed by Yoram Gross
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Themes Seafaring films, Transport films, Children's films
Actors Robyn Moore, Keith Scott
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The local woodlanders are carrying with their everyday life as normal until the next morning, when two men Harry and Joe start to take down the entire forest with their tractor. The animals evacuate as many trees fall down, and more trees are cut down including Mrs Koala's home, and a tree knocks Blinky Bill unconscious.
The Magic Riddle (1991)
, 1h33Directed by Yoram Gross
Genres Animation
Themes Films about children, Musical films, Children's films
Actors Keith Scott, Robyn Moore
Rating58%
Cindy, short for Cinderella, lives with her widowed stepmother and two stepsisters, Bertha and Ertha. Cindy is forced to do all of the housework and is effectively a servant. The widow hates Cindy because when her late Grandfather died, he hid his will which the widow knows passes all the family inheritance to Cindy. The widow purposely keeps Cindy busy so that she won't find the will, giving the widow time to find it first. The widow is also planning to marry her favorite daughter, Bertha, to a handsome young man named Phillipe, though he is smitten with Cindy.
Dot Goes to Hollywood (1988)
, 1h13Directed by Yoram Gross
Genres Animation
Themes Musical films, Children's films
Actors Robyn Moore, Keith Scott, Ross Higgins
Rating55%
Yoram Gross's eighth Dot movie opens in Australia with Dot and a koala named Gumley dancing and singing in the streets. There is evidence of an epidemic, revealed to be an eye disease, which is spreading fast among the koalas, causing blindness and death. Gumley has contracted the disease and he and Dot are trying to raise money to pay for an operation, but they are unsuccessful. A kangaroo suggests that Dot goes to Hollywood where she will be able to raise the money in no time.
Dot and the Whale (1986)
, 1h14Directed by Yoram Gross
Genres Fantasy, Animation
Themes Musical films, Children's films
Actors Keith Scott, Robyn Moore
Rating68%
The film starts off with a scene from the novel Moby Dick, with a whaler on a stormy sea in the 19th century, chasing "the white whale". It turns out that the scene comes from the imagination of Dot, while she is sitting with the book. She goes out to play with Nelson the dolphin in his pool, and he teaches her how to stay underwater for long periods of time and to communicate underwater, as well as the history and evolution of sea creatures.