The Victorian era weatherboard terrace at Berry Street, Richmond, otherwise known as the ' Dogs in Space house'. Footage of Sputnik 2 is intercut with the narrative, focused largely on Laika (the first dog in space), and can also be seen on television in the background of several scenes. In the end, the group's dysfunctional and hedonistic lifestyle claims a victim when Anna dies from a heroin overdose. There is also a minor incident in which the characters burn some rubbish in a plan to claim it as a piece of Skylab for a local radio station. In between, there are trips to Ballarat (at the time, the closest town to Melbourne with a 24-hour convenience store) and humorous encounters with an aggressive neighbour ( Joe Camilleri) and one character's fast-talking, chainsaw-wielding uncle ( Chris Haywood), who simply turns up one afternoon with his family (the baby in this scene is Lowenstein's niece Robyn). The film's minimal plot traces the day-to-day existence of the characters, particularly the relationship between Sam and Anna, and is largely made up of a sequence of party scenes involving live music and drug use. Sam (Michael Hutchence) and Tim (Nique Needles) are the key members of a band called Dogs in Space, and share a house with a variety of social misfits, including Sam's girlfriend Anna (Saskia Post), a university student called Luchio (Tony Helou) and a transient and apparently nameless teenager known only as The Girl (Deanna Bond). It was directed by Richard Lowenstein and starred Michael Hutchence as Sam, the drug-addled frontman of the fictitious band from which the film takes its name.ĭogs in Space centres on a group of young music fans sharing a house in the inner Melbourne suburb of Richmond. Dogs in Space is a 1986 Australian film set in Melbourne's 'Little Band' post-punk music scene in 1978.

Space punks characters