by Dov Kornits
Sharing a namesake with one of cinema’s most iconic characters, Australian filmmaker Frank Booth was the perfect choice when it came to directing Assault on Sacred Mountain, an independently produced thriller about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
“I met the producer, Dan [Wang], when I was working in Asia. We worked on a few things together, and we seemed to get on. He offered me a few scripts over the years, but nothing I’ve been really interested in or really appealed to me. But when he offered me this script, it had a number of things going for it.”
At the top of the list was that this was a topic that hadn’t been tackled by other filmmakers, and for good reason. “Mainly because it’s a taboo topic because they realise that it’s not going to sell in China. And anywhere where China’s involved in distribution or festivals or even giving money to festivals, it means you’re not going to get shown in those festivals.”
Booth goes on to mention the well-worn story about the 2012 Red Dawn remake, which saw the original Chinese aggressors changed to North Korean in post. Another reason that Booth agreed to direct the film was that the producer was happy for him to make adjustments to the script, particularly the ending, which went from idealistic to realistic.
Assault on Sacred Mountain follows a tour group as they embark on an exploration of the nature reserve of the title. Made up of foreigners, including Australians, all hell breaks loose when they discover three camouflaged Chinese soldiers seemingly invading the territory, potentially looking to blow up Taiwan’s world-leading microchip industry.
“The Chinese are much smarter than just to roll in with tanks,” says Booth about the premise. “Taiwan controls about 75% of the chip industry worldwide. If that goes down, it means no phones, cars, TVs. It’ll just stop worldwide. If they lost their ability to produce these chips, which China are desperate to find out how to make, the very smart high-tech chips, they don’t have that technology. They are desperate to, and there’s continuing cyber attacks on these places and people trying to steal things and to get this technology back to China. America funds a lot of this chip production in Taiwan, although they’re mainly Taiwan enterprises. They cost so much to build, and they want to keep it a secret from the Chinese government at how to make them. So that was the starting point for the film. We thought if the chip industry goes down, that would be a starting point to weakening Taiwan. And it would definitely get America involved too.”
Made on a tiny budget, Booth embraced the Roger Corman ethos of efficiency when it came to making the film, even giving a nod to the legendary King of the Bs in the credits, after he passed away during the making of the film. The nature of the film also fits with the Corman school of filmmaking – big idea on a small canvas.
“We went with a lot of the principles that Roger Corman used making films. “Pre-planning was vital. We shot in 17 days,” he says of the Yarra Ranges shoot, which stood in for Taiwan. “I said to the cast that when we walk on set, you have to know your lines cold because we can’t be mucking around with 50 takes to get the lines. Also, because it was in a rainforest, there are lots of locations within the one location. Sometimes there were three locations on the same spot, we just spun the camera around 180 degrees and shot a different scene.
“The major downfall of shooting in the rainforest, though, was that you don’t think about the leeches,” he laughs today with empathy for his cast.
Speaking of the cast, many had to face a harsh reality before taking on the film, in case they or their families find themselves in the crosshairs of the Chinese.
“Every single time we hired somebody, the producer would speak to them and explain the realities of them being in a film like this, because it virtually means if it gets any traction, there will be some blowback from China and their face is going to be all over it. A third of the people that we nearly hired dropped out. We eventually ended up with the people we wanted who were perfect for the roles, who all understood that and weren’t bothered by it.”
The thing that made us first notice this production was a mysterious package that arrived in the mail, an intriguing small comic book with the heading: “Trigger Warning: Only Brave Entertainment Editors Should Proceed…” The content was a mini version of the story that plays out in Assault on Sacred Mountain. It was an old school marketing stunt that Roger Corman would have been proud of.
Assault on Sacred Mountain recently played at the little known Milton Keynes International Film Festival in the UK where it picked up the Best Indie Feature Film Award. The film is also making its Australian premiere at the dubious Melbourne Underground Film Festival. With so much visual content being produced, that is the plight of the modern indie film these days.
It does not take away from the chutzpah of the film’s producer (a Chinese Australian who dislikes the Chinese regime) or Frank Booth, who says that “it’s a very serious film about a very serious topic. And we’ve treated it as a bit of an action adventure, which is palatable to audiences.”
