Snapshot ★★

SO, your stalker spies on you from the driver’s seat of his ice cream truck?

No kidding, that’s part of the plot in the 1979 Australian thriller Snapshot.

This is a weird film all round with odd characters, uneven acting, a bland script and mostly pedestrian direction.

The leads are played by Sigrid Thornton, who would go on to become a promising film star before settling into a solid television career, and Chantal Contouri, who would go on to, well, not much else.

Thornton plays hairdresser Angela who lives with her stern mother and has just broken off a relationship with Mr Whippy, I mean Daryl, who isn’t taking it well.

As well as being stalked by Mr Whippy, I mean Daryl, and constantly harangued by her mother, Angela also seems to be the resident whipping girl for the boss at the Melbourne salon.

Chantal Contouri plays a classy salon customer – we know she’s classy because she talks all posh and wears a fur coat – who takes Angela under her wing, convincing her to apply for a modelling job.

She introduces Angela to whiz-kid photographer Linsey (Hugh Keayes-Byrne) who takes arty photos of dead mice between modelling shoots.

Angela is constantly referred to as being ‘naïve’ but on the first shoot she gets her top off; so maybe not so naïve after all.

In seemingly no time at all, Angela is being touted as the next big thing in fashion and offered an overseas assignment while both Madeline and her husband (I think he’s her husband?) are both trying to seduce her.

Oh, yeah, and Daryl is still in hot (or is that ice cold) pursuit.

On the plus side, let me think for a minute. It’s watchable, in an odd, ‘what the hell is happening’ kind of way; and there is a good fire stunt sequence during which Thornton gets to scream a lot, which she is quite good at.

Watched on Prime.