I didn't know what to make of this film. I like small films set in just one small setting. This one takes place in a kitschy seventies Aussie flat and features a homemaker working on her thesis who is terrorized by the building's plumber.

You read that right, the heroine is terrorized by The Plumber From Hell! You had The Affair From Hell in Fatal Attraction, The Cop From Hell in Unlawful Entry, and years before those two you had the dude who unstops your toilet from Hades terrorizing ya.

I guess this is supposed to be a black suspense comedy. It is pretty racy for a movie first shown on TV and not in theaters. But those libertine folks from Oz are a randy bunch, I guess. The film has some tense, creepy moments, a couple laughs, and a pretty good Dylanesque folk song performed by the psycho plumber. I'm Me Babe! That's the name of the song. Gotta admit I liked it. A great one man Dylan knock off combining voice, acoustic guitar and harmonica. Cool stuff. Dylan shoulda covered I'm Me Babe, I kid you not. Somebody get Bob a copy of this flick pronto! In the sixties it coulda been a potential hit single.

But there are HUGE gaps in logic. There comes a point where you ask yourself why the heroine doesn't just run the hell outta the apartment or hey, how about this? CALL THE POLICE! The main character is supposed to be an idiot I guess since it defies all logic that a woman in this situation would not call the Pigs when things start to get hairy.

You can see director Peter Weir was still learning his craft with this film.

He makes some rather amateurish mistakes, but it's good to see even the old pros took time to master their craft. Hell, look how rough Stanley Kubrick's first two features were. Plus I wanted to see a cameo by Terry Camilleri, star of Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris.

The ending where the heroine double crosses the plumber and has him sent to jail is very tepid and leaves you scratching your head and saying, huh? That's it?! That's the ending? The flick shoulda gone on for fifteen more minutes. The heroine and her husband were supposed to go on a trip to Switzerland near the end, they discuss it.

The better ending would have had the plumber getting out of jail and then showing up out of the blue in Switzerland. Like he followed them all the way to the Swiss Alps and gotten a job as the plumber in their Swiss Chalet apartment complex or something, the toilet would overflow, they'd call the complex custodian and THERE HE WOULD BE AT THE DOOR! The Plumber From Hell Returns! That woulda been the much cooler ending!