Crocodile Dundee (1986) | The 80s Aussie Comedy Phenomenon | VHSSB

Released in 1986, Crocodile Dundee was directed by Peter Faiman and co-written by Paul Hogan, Ken Shadie, and John Cornell, with Hogan also starring as the now-iconic Mick Dundee. Made on a modest budget of around A$8.8 million, the film was designed to be a broad, crowd-pleasing Australian comedy that could travel internationally — which is exactly what it did, with all the subtlety of a bloke walking into a New York hotel with a knife the size of a paving slab.

Filming took place across Australia and the United States, including Queensland, Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, and New York City. Linda Kozlowski was cast opposite Hogan as American journalist Sue Charlton, while the supporting cast included John Meillon, David Gulpilil, Mark Blum, and Michael Lombard. The film became a worldwide box-office phenomenon, earning more than US$328 million globally and turning Mick Dundee into one of the most recognisable screen characters of the VHS era.

TRAILER GUY PLOT SYNOPSIS

Deep in the Australian Outback, where the wildlife wants to kill you and the locals treat mortal danger as light admin, one man has become a legend. His name is Mick Dundee — hunter, survivor, charmer, and possibly the only man alive who looks at a crocodile and thinks, “G'Day”

When a New York journalist travels across the world to meet him, she finds more than just a story. She finds a man who doesn’t quite fit into polite society, mostly because polite society has fewer snakes, fewer campfires, and significantly less casual knife work.

But when Mick Dundee swaps the Outback for Manhattan, the jungle changes. The predators wear suits, the streets are full of noise, and our hero must face his greatest challenge yet: modern civilisation. Strewth, New York doesn’t know what’s coming.

FUN FACTS

• Crocodile Dundee was inspired in part by the real-life exploits of Australian bushman Rod Ansell, whose survival story helped feed the mythic quality of Mick Dundee.

• Paul Hogan was already a major TV personality in Australia before the film, thanks to The Paul Hogan Show, but this movie made him an international star.

• The screenplay received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, which is not bad for a film best remembered by many people for one very specific knife comparison.

• Paul Hogan won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for his performance as Mick Dundee.

• The film was released in Australia in April 1986 and in the United States in September 1986, where it became a major hit.

• There are different cuts of the film: the international version was slightly shorter and adjusted some Australian slang for overseas audiences.

• The famous “Walkabout Creek Hotel” scenes were filmed at the Walkabout Creek Hotel in McKinlay, Queensland, which became a tourist destination after the movie’s success.

• The film was a huge success on UK television, drawing a massive Christmas Day audience when it aired on BBC One in 1989.

• A restored 4K version, Crocodile Dundee: The Encore Cut, premiered in 2025 with several edits and updates for modern release.

MUSIC

Checkout the parody music from the show on Spotify here.

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