Every day, come rain or shine or internet tubes breaking, Film School Rejects showcases a trailer from the past. Quick. What would you do if the school room full of students you were teaching was kidnapped by a guy in a duck mask and another guy in a Santa Claus mask? I don’t know either, but I’m pretty sure there’s a Henny Youngman joke in there somewhere. This Australia gem from 1985 has got everything your heart desires – violence, children, violence against children, accents. Plus, the trailer asks the important existential questions. Check out the trailer for yourself:

There are five words in the English language that when strung together instantly build a mysterious attraction when they’re attached to a work of art, or literature. They’re not inherently important or powerful words, but their presence alongside a particular work gets used repeatedly as a means to increase whatever importance or effect that piece would receive by a given audience on its own. They’re a proverbial shortcut to accentuating a natural reaction. Those words are; based, on, a, true, story.

In the case of Peter Weir’s adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s novel “Picnic at Hanging Rock” the film opens with a brief written prologue about how three girls from a private boarding school disappeared while on a trip to a geological site, known as Hanging Rock, on Valentine’s Day in the year 1900. From there the film lets you decide on your own whether you want to believe you’re watching a story based on a real mysterious tragedy from 1900, or complete fiction. What sets Picnic at Hanging Rock apart from most films that are allegedly non-fictitious is that its effect on the viewer is not affected by whether they feel the events are true or false.

The Criterion Collection rebooted two of their early releases these past two weeks, re-releasing Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout on DVD and Blu-ray…and bringing us another amazing restoration of Fritz Lang’s M on Blu-ray. One of these films, I had never seen before. The other film, I have seen…but I have never seen it look or sound so good.