Omen of Evil

Peter Sharp (Dead Man’s Float) directs this above average drama-thriller — a spin-off film of the popular 1980s New Zealand police show Mortimer's Patch, starring Terence Cooper as Detective Sergeant Doug Mortimer assisted by officers Dave Gilchrist (Sean Duffy) and Bob Storey (Don Selwyn), set in the fictional coastal town of ‘Cobham’. Initially a struggle between strict religious morality versus the free spirit, the film takes a 90° turn at the halfway mark with a startling axe murder and subsequent hunt to find the killer. First assistant director Lee Tamahori went on to helm the superb Once Were Warriors.

Tiring of the constant oppression from her widowed father Fred (a ghastly grey Patrick McGoohan), naïve Katie Wells (Emma Piper) leaves the family home to join a new-age free love commune located nearby. After Frank’s failed attempt to liberate his daughter, moustachioed commune leader Stan Gubbins (Frank Whitten) stamps his ownership over Katie, forcing himself upon her in the commune’s outdoor sauna; a shocked and violated Katie takes off and leaves the compound.

Finding work at a sheep farm in the local rural community, she soon discovers that she’s pregnant, and returns back home to her father — who’s let himself and the house fall into disarray. After cleaning up the house, she later decides to return to the commune confronting Stan with the news of her pregnancy as a result of his assault. But this revelation is short-lived: Stan is violently axed to death in front of her by an unknown assailant, and after Stan’s body is uncovered, Katie is nowhere to be found. The Police investigation begins in earnest.