Burn the Butterflies (1976)
Director – Oscar Whitbread
Writer – Cliff Green
Starring – Ray Barrett, Frederick Parslow, Gerard Maguire, George Mallaby, Alan Hopgood, Monica Maughan, Rowena Wallace, John Wood

Review by Noel Bailey

Who’d be Prime Minister?
Competent rather than compelling drama.
Ray Barrett plays the unfortunate Australian Prime Minister, whose opposition numbers seek to capitalise on his party’s nuclear policies after the meltdown of a Scottish atomic reactor. His Government are forced into partial back-down after the predictable questions of “what if” comes into play.

Made just seven years before the real-time Chernobyl reactor disaster, it was a period when uncontrolled nuclear fission was a major public concern, especially in Sydney where the Lucas Heights reactor has long been a public “enemy.”

Cliff Green handed in an excellent script and performances are uniformly good. If you can find this on video, give it a go!