Details

Release year: 1985

Storyline

After being kidnapped for ransom by four criminals, a schoolteacher and her students flee into a cave and build fortifications in anticipation of a decisive battle with their captors.

Top credits

Directors

Arch Nicholson

Writers

Cast

Sean Garlick — Sid
Rachel Ward — Sally Jones
Elaine Cusick — Mrs. O'Brien
Laurie Moran — Mr. O'Brien

See all 24 credits →

Did you know

• The film is loosely based on the 1972 Faraday School kidnapping of a teacher and her class by Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland. Eastwood later escaped from prison and repeated the crime with another teacher and his class in 1977. The Faraday kidnapping was in turn a real-life copycat crime based on a scene in the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry (1971) where the Scorpio Killer holds a bus driver and several schoolchildren hostage.

• The production was made as a tele-movie made for American audiences for the HBO pay television network and as as theatrical feature film for the Australian market. The picture debuted first in the USA in 1985 with it being released into Australian cinemas in 1986.

• Cast member Vernon Wells would later go on to star in another movie called ''Fortress'. This was the 1992 science fiction action feature film "Fortress" which was also an Australian production. Crew members, producer Michael Lake, costumer Phil Eagles and stunt co-ordinator Chris Anderson, also worked on both productions.