By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: British/Canadian director Peter Carter, who helmed The Rowdyman, Klondike Fever, Rituals and High-Ballin’.
All of President Donald J. Trump’s bluster about annexing Canada and his whisperings of sweet nothings about how good his northern neighbour would look as The USA’s 51st state got us thinking about this friendly country with which Australia seems to have much in common. We’re both moderate in nature, sensible in outlook, influenced by both the US and the UK, and culturally diverse. Oh, and our film industries are in a constant state of threat from offshore cinematic output, mainly from the US. We also both have a lot of underrated film directors. Though Canada has a handful of duly recognised filmmakers – Denis Villeneuve, David Cronenberg, Norman Jewison, Guy Maddin, Sarah Polley, Denys Arcand, Atom Egoyan, Xavier Dolan, Jean-Marc Valee and others – most of its directors are cruelly, unreasonably under-celebrated. The late Peter Carter, however, is truly under-celebrated even by this paradigm, and most of his films remain largely and criminally forgotten today.
Born on December 8th 1933 in Hertfordshire, England, Peter Carter moved to Canada in 1954 when his father, Donald Carter (who had played a major role with The Rank Organisation in the UK), became head of production of Crawley Films Limited at a time when the Canadian film and TV industry was in a nascent state. At the age of twenty, Peter Carter joined his father’s company and worked on a variety of documentary projects before becoming an assistant director on the TV series The RCMP (1959-1960), The Forest Rangers (1963-1965), Seaway (1965-1966) and The Square Root (1969). Carter developed a reputation for working hard and fast, and for getting it done under the toughest of conditions. “First on the floor, the last to leave, he set the tone and the pace,” said his colleague, Maxine Samuels. “His energy, enthusiasm and dedication to work affected everyone and made him the consummate professional.”
Carter graduated to the director’s chair on the TV series Wojeck (1968), Telescope (1968), Corwin (1969) and McQueen (1969-1970) before making his big screen debut in 1972 with The Rowdyman. Written by leading man Gordon Pinsent (a giant of the Canadian film industry), this raucous comedy-drama focuses on Will Cole, a boozy, womanising, iconoclastic troublemaker who likes to challenge authority at every turn in his small Newfoundland hometown. An inveterate Peter Pan, Will’s friends push and prompt him to grow up and live with more responsibility, but the hopeless rebel resists them at every turn, to the detriment of all and sundry. Largely unknown outside of Canada, The Rowdyman was much loved in its home country and marked a very auspicious debut for Peter Carter. “I thank him for The Rowdyman,” Gordon Pinsent has said of Carter. “He moved it like a flat-car and we moved with it. The memory of that six-week burst of sunshine comes in handy in less productive and aimless times.”
After five years of episodic television, Carter returned to the big screen in 1977 with the chilling horror-thriller Rituals, a Northern riff on films like Deliverance and Southern Comfort that also saw the director continue his visual and narrative bond – developed in his initial TV work – with the harsh but beautiful Canadian landscape. Led by American actor Hal Holbrook (in top form, as usual), the film tracks five deeply flawed men of the medical profession who go on a hiking trip in the remote Canadian wilderness, and first find themselves stalked and menaced, and ultimately violently terrorised, by a backwoods lunatic. Though Rituals is far from original, Carter focuses on character and mood, and grinds something truly unsettling from his very limited budget. The dysfunction in the group of doctors amps up the tension levels, while Carter’s cinematic trick-bag gets put to very effective use as the men are put through the emotional and physical wringer. A constant presence on video store shelves in the 1980s and 1990s, Rituals is now largely forgotten despite it sitting safely towards the top of the pile when it comes to movies about urbanites at the mercy of crazed rural types.
Carter changed lanes for his next film, though he once again got to show off his affinity for the Canadian landscape, this time its snow-covered, mud-slushed roads and highways in his 1978 trucking actioner High-Ballin’. Released by exploitation masters American International Pictures, but made with considerably more thought and intelligence than much of their product, the film stars the very likeable duo of country singer and famed good ol’ boy Jerry Reed (fresh from another road classic in Smokey And The Bandit) and cult hero Peter Fonda (at the height of his souped-up exploitation flick glory courtesy of belters like Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Fighting Mad and Race With The Devil) as truck drivers drinking, brawling and driving their way out of trouble when crooks try to send them out of business. High-Ballin’ is great fun, and as he did with Rituals, Carter leavens the action with rich characterisation to craft something truly memorable.
Back on location and in the wilderness once again, Peter Carter next took the reins on 1979’s Klondike Fever, a rollicking adventure tale based on famed author Jack London’s epic journey from San Francisco to the Klondike gold fields in 1898. Jeff East takes on the lead role, while a host of major Hollywood players (Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, Lorne Greene) bring the star power in this enjoyably “old school” flick, which makes the most of its striking Canadian locations. Carter would mine similar outdoors territory for the superior 1980 telemovie The Courage Of Kavik, The Wolf Dog before shifting gears with the 1979 horror TV movie The Intruder Within and the 1979 WW2 adventure TV mini-series A Man Called Intrepid, which starred Michael York, Barbara Hershey and David Niven, and was edited down for a theatrical feature film release the year after.
Peter Carter directed just one more film (the slightly out-of-character 1982 action-comedy Highpoint, starring Richard Harris, Christopher Plummer and Beverly D’Angelo) before his very sad passing from cancer in 1982 at the age of just 48. “He had a simple, uncomplicated courage that allowed him to deal with adversity straight on, and right away,” says screenwriter Ian Sutherland, who penned Rituals and Highpoint. “He got things done, and always did what he said he would do because inside there was a tenacity and a real joy at being able to do things and make things happen. That is the trademark of any good director. But also what was wonderful was the way he transmitted this passion for doing things, surrounding those who worked with him in his cloak of confidence that made the impossible seem possible.”
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
