Bad Boy Bubby (1993) on Netflix
Bubby has lived his whole life in one squalid room, kept there by his mother Florence, who says the air outside is poisonous. His father Harold returns, and the abuse worsens.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.3/1016,288 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bubby is a mentally challenged man of about thirty-five. He has never left the squalid house in an industrial area of Adelaide where he lives with his mother, Florence. A religious fanatic, she tells him the air outside is toxic and that Jesus would strike him down if he left. She also has an incestuous relationship with him. Their only other company is a pet cat. One night, Bubby's father Harold returns. He abandoned Florence years earlier to become a preacher and did not know he had a son. Harold mocks Bubby, beats him, and encourages Florence to beat him as well.
Cast
- Claire Benitoas Mam
- Nikki Priceas Screaming Woman
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film used 31 individual directors of photography: once Bubby leaves the apartment a different one shoots every location until the last third of the film, giving an individual visual slant on everything he sees for the first time, and none was allowed to refer to the work of the others.
- De Heer describes the film as one large experiment, especially in how the dialogue was recorded: binaural microphones were sewn into the wig worn by leading actor Nicholas Hope, one above each ear, giving the soundtrack a claustrophobic sound close to what the character would actually be hearing.
- When the film was released in Italy, animal rights groups tried to boycott Australian products, alleging that Bubby's pet cat was wrapped in plastic and suffocated on film; Rolf de Heer said none of that was true and that a veterinarian and animal cruelty inspector were on set.
- After hearing a rumor about the reintroduction of the death penalty to Australia, de Heer was angered and rewrote the ending so that Bubby would be executed; that ending was scrapped when the rumor proved false.
- For most of the 1980s de Heer collected ideas for the film and wrote them on index cards, pausing in 1987 and resuming in 1989; in 1989 or 1990 he saw the short film Confessor Caressor starring Nicholas Hope and tracked him down.
- On the Blue Underground DVD, director Rolf de Heer claims that Bubby was the second highest-grossing film in Norway in 1995.
- Filming took place in Port Adelaide between 30 November 1992 and 16 January 1993, and the people with cerebral palsy Bubby meets in the film are not actors, but actual disabled people.
