The Boys - Australian Screen Classics

The film evoked vivid memories of the 1986 rape and murder of a young Sydney woman named Anita Cobby

Although Woods' film was fictional, The Boys remains inextricably connected to its real-life counterpart in the minds of many viewers

But that connection is only part of the story behind the making of The Boys

In this thoughtful and thought-provoking essay, Andrew Frost contextualises the major thematic concerns of the film into the broader context of social anxieties about violence, crime and morality

Frost chronicles his own personal journey with the film and its makers from art school to the underground Super 8 filmmaking scene of Sydney in the mid-1980s, from the early short films of director Woods to the multiple award-winning The Boys

Frost discovers new aspects of The Boys even today and wonders if its stinging moral message has been heard among the clamour of everyday suburban life