Umbrella Entertainment whips out its trouser snake with THE ADVENTURES OF BARRY McKENZIE, out on Blu-ray to "get your sister in a frenzy."

When his father passes away, Aussie yobbo Barry McKenzie (Barry Crocker, MURIEL'S WEDDING) inherits two-thousand dollars on the stipulation that he travels to England to further "the cultural and intellectual traditions of the McKenzie dynasty." The worries of his mother (Margo Lloyd , THE CHAIN REACTION) are assuaged when his auntie Edna Everage (writer Barry Humphries, SHOCK TREATMENT) decides to go with him to reconnect with the Gorts (BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW's Avice Landone and VENUS IN FURS' Dennis Price) and to look for a friend's daughter Gaylene (Mary Ann Severne) who visited England and went native. While Auntie Edna is looking forward to discovering culture and history, Barry expects to find pommy bastards and he does at every turn. The ones that don't nickel-and-dime him - from an extortionate customs officer (Wilfred Grove) and cab driver (Bernard Spear, YENTL) to a slum hotelier (Q's Spike Milligan) - want to exploit him: from the director (Jonathan Hardy, MAD MAX) of a cigarette commercial and the scheming members of a folk band (singer Julie Covington, ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS' Christopher Malcolm, and Humphries in a second role) to a gangster-like record producer (John Joyce) and Lesley's TV producer ex (Peter Cook, YELLOWBEARD). The Sheilas want a piece of him too - among them commercial actress Caroline Thighs (Maria O'Brien, WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH) and the Gort's simple-minded daughter Sarah (UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS' Jenny Tomasin) whose parents see dollar signs in the Australian heir - but, for all of his bragging to fellow compatriot Curly (Paul Bertram, STRICTLY BALLROOM), Barry is still a virgin and his libido is destined to remain frustrated in a series of misadventures that culminates in a blaze that can only be put out by a den of one-eyed trouser snakes and plenty of Foster's!

Before he took up DRIVING MISS DAISY, even before he was one of the MONEY MOVERS, Bruce Beresford was another jobbing Australian director who moved up from short subjects and television with a piece of Ozploitation in THE ADVENTURES OF BARRY McKENZIE, a feature-length adaptation of the comic strip by artist Barry Humphries that skewered both the vulgar Aussie stereotypes and the veiled racism and hypocrisy of the "old country." Crocker gives charisma to a loutish character, Dame Edna is bearable in small doses, and the episodic nature of the story makes things go quickly for a near two-hour film. Predating both the golden ages of Ozploitation and British sexploitation, the film is rather tame when it comes to sex and nudity, being far more vulgar in terms of sexual innuendo and of its time in terms of both Australian and British bigotry (this particular presentation of the film is preceded by a bogus certification card for NPA "No Poofters Allowed"). The film features a score by The Beatles' first drummer Pete Best who would later score CROCODILE DUNDEE's trip to the Big Apple.

Originally given the Australian R classification for adult films upon theatrical release, the rating was appealed and changed to an M when the film was reissued in 1974 to coincide with the release of the sequel BARRY McKENZIE HOLDS HIS OWN. Unreleased in the United States, THE ADVENTURES OF BARRY McKENZIE was most accessible in the DVD age on a fullscreen British import that was somewhat bettered by Umbrella's anamorphic DVD edition from an acceptable but sometimes rough looking older master (released first in a double-disc set with the sequel and then more recently as a single-disc "Ozploitation Classics" edition). Umbrella's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray (the DVD was 1.66:1) is an improvement but either not a brand new transfer or one in which the techs tried to make the production look better than it could. Bright scenes look okay but the textures of clothing, hair, and faces are not always seen at their best, while the night scenes and dark interiors are more problematic. Dark areas of the frame are flat and there is virtually no delineation between Barry's black and his black hat while the buttons and pinstripes of his suit vanish in the darker scenes, in which he too seems to flatten into the shadows. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix fares better, and English HoH subtitles have been included to help with the accents.

Ported over from the DVD edition is an optional introduction by Dame Edna (4:55) that preceded a Showtime Australia airing along with the film's theatrical trailer (2:22), but they have gone all out in stacking the disc with new supplements. First up is the 2007 feature-length documentary "The Adventures of Bazza in Chunderland" (127:43) including the input of Humphries, Beresford, Crocker, Severne, Bertram, producer Phillip Adams (THE GETTING OF WISDOM), cinematographer Don McAlpine (MOULIN ROUGE), and production manager Richard Brennan (LONG WEEKEND) directed by Mark Hartley of the definitive Ozploitation documentary NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD. The piece traces the origins of Humphries Barry McKenzie creation in a British magazine, the basis of his look in rural Australians dressed in their Sunday best when they visited the city, and opinions from all sides as to whether Humphries was a cultural snob or an observant humorist with a love for all things Australiana. They then discuss the challenge of turning the strip into a script, transposing a lot of the material and coming up with a story – throwing in Dame Edna to give Humphries a role – and the difficulties with the government film bodies and fundraising (at a time when feature filmmaking was dead in Australia) and concerns about the Australian image abroad. Casting discussions include Humphries' discovery of Crocker – a singer who alienated his "blue rinse set" audience with the role – the rumor that Paul Hogan was initially considered for Curly (Bertram was told that if he did not accept the role for the low pay then Beresford would take the part himself), the revelation that Cook's partner Dudley Moore was intended to play the television commercial director role eventually essayed by Jonathan Hardy (MAD MAX), Severne's concerns about how to play a lesbian and affect an Australian accent, the drunken behavior of Price and Cook, Milligan's depression, and the awkwardness of casting an "ugly girl" (soon after Tomasin would become a popular regular on the television series UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS). They also cover the chilly shooting conditions in England – with McAlpine being shocked how little light there was even in the middle of the day – the difficulties of finding a distributor, censorship woes, and the well-received release as well as the cultural and critical backlash by the country's intelligentsia.

Also included is the 1974 TV special "Barry McKenzie: Ogre or Ocher" (53:17) in which the interviewer poses several questions skewed towards the charges of racism, vulgarity, and the film's depiction of Australia countered by Humphries, Crocker, and people at the premiere screening of BARRY McKENZIE HOLDS HIS OWN. In "A Conversation with Barry Humphries" (20:27) from 2002, Humphries covers a lot of the same information heard in the feature-length documentary above, noting that it was Peter Cook's magazine that he cerated the character for based on another character from a comedy phonograph recording he did that Cook had heard. He discusses the origins of the character and points to Barry McKenzie's innocence in contrast to his vulgarity and bigotry (and in contrast to that of the British characters in the film).