Typhoon Treasure

Typhoon Treasure is a 1938 Australian adventure film directed by Noel Monkman and starring Campbell Copelin, Gwen Munro, and Joe Valli. It is set in New Guinea although shot on the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland coast. It was Monkman's first dramatic feature film after several years making documentaries.

Alan Richards is the sole survivor of a pearling lugger which has been shipwrecked on Pakema Reef during a typhoon. He sets out to recover some pearls which went missing in the wreck, crossing through the jungle and fighting headhunters.

• Campbell Copelin as Alan Richards
• Gwen Munro as Jean Roberts
• Joe Valli as Scotty McLeod
• Douglas Herald as Buck Thompson
• Kenneth Brampton as Alfred Webb
• Norman French as patrol officer
• Utan Walters as Utan
• Marshall Crosby
• Moncrieff Macallum
• Ossie Wenban
• Douglas Channell
• Benjamin Brown

In the mid-1930s, Noel Monkman was working with F. W. Thring making documentaries. Thring offered to back Monkman in making a dramatic feature, and provided him with a writer, John P. McLeod.

In June 1935 Monkman announced he and Alan Mill had bought the film rights to a novel, A Recipe in Rubber by Robert Stock.^[1] It would be filmed as The Gloved Hand.^[2]

By August 1935 Monkma announced he would make Typhoon Treasure rather than A Recipe in Rubber. Joe Valli signed on to play a lead role that month.^[3]

Thring planned to make the movie after visiting Hollywood in 1936^[4] but died that year.

Cinesound Productions offered to buy the script but Monkman elected to make it himself. He formed a syndicate with Bruce Cummings and Commonwealth Laboratories, who provided the crew.^[5][6]

Filming commenced June 1937. The film was shot mostly on location in North Queensland, on the Great Barrier Reef, the Yorke Peninsula and locations around Cairns including Russell River, Lake Barrine, Mulgrave River Michaelmas Reef and Green Island. Joe Valli started filming in June but Gwen Munro did not arrive until October.^[7][8]

Torres Strait Islander Utan had a key role. ^[9]

After the location work was completed, some studio scenes were filmed at Commonwealth Film Laboratories' studio at the Sydney Showground.^[10]

Music was collated from popular classics including Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

While filming underwater scenes on Green Island in October, one of the divers, James Bell, died of myocarditis. Bruce Cummings, who was in charge of underwater photography, went down in a diving cylinder, followed a few minutes later by Bell, who was his assistant. A few minutes later Cummings noticed something was wrong with Bell. When they brought him to the surface he was dead.^[11][12] An inquest was later held which found no negligence.^[13][14]

Reviews generally found the story formulaic but enjoyed the direction and settings.^[15]

Ken G. Hall later said "I knew Noel Monkman quite well and I was impressed by him. Especially his microphotography and his underwater photography. I wasn’t impressed by his first feature, Typhoon Treasure."^[16]

It was sold to America^[17] and a shortened version of the film screened in England in 1943. In the 1950s rights to the film were bought by George Malcolm who cut it down to 40 minutes and reissued it as The Perils of Pakema Reef.^[10]

• Typhoon Treasure at IMDb
• Typhoon Treasure at National Film and Sound Archive
• Typhoon Treasure at Oz Movies