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It\u2019s Australia\u2019s biggest ever film hit, a warm-hearted, feel-good story about a larrikin crocodile hunter who wins over a glamorous American journalist in the Northern Territory, then charms his way through New York. It features the most famous quote in the country\u2019s cinema history: \u201cThat\u2019s not a knife, that\u2019s a knife\u201d.<\/p>\n
And it showed Paul Hogan, then a hugely popular TV comic and spruiker for cigarettes, beer and Australian tourism, at his laid-back, funny best playing a mythical bushie \u2013 lean and tanned, wearing a hat ringed with crocodile teeth.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 40 years this month since Crocodile Dundee<\/a> had one of the buzziest and booziest premieres the country has ever seen at Sydney\u2019s Hoyts Entertainment Centre and then became not just a hit, not even just a \u2009phenomenon but a landmark in Australia\u2019s cultural history that boosted our international profile. It started a cinema run on April 24, 1986 that went to impossible heights.<\/p>\n Four years earlier, Men At Work began topping charts around the world with Down Under<\/a>. Racing yacht Australia II made history winning the \u2009America\u2019s Cup<\/a> in 1983. Hogan\u2019s \u201cCome say g\u2019day\u201d commercials started attracting tourists in 1984. Then Crocodile Dundee became a worldwide success in 1986 and early 1987, attracting many more visitors.<\/p>\n In the bubbling creativity of the Hawke-Keating era, INXS and Midnight Oil would soon also follow the overseas success of Peter Allen and Olivia Newton-John. Many of the directors who led the revival of Australian film in the 1970s, including Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, George Miller and Gillian Armstrong, were making Hollywood films. NIDA-trained Mel Gibson was becoming one of the world\u2019s biggest stars.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The four decades since then seem like a very long time. Hogan is 86 now and generations of moviegoers won\u2019t even have seen Crocodile Dundee. His last film was The Very Excellent Mr Dundee<\/a> (2020), which joked, not very successfully, about his quiet life in LA still being dominated by the character he went on to play in Crocodile Dundee II (1988) and Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles (2001).<\/p>\n But four decades also seems like a very short time, given how vivid memories of the original Crocodile Dundee still are. There was Mick Dundee storming into Walkabout Creek Hotel with a stuffed crocodile and winning a bet by kissing his mate Donk to make him spill a beer, to the bemusement of Newsday journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski), who had flown in to write about his survival from a croc attack.<\/p>\n There were scenes that became famous. Mick mysteriously taming a water buffalo. Indigenous man Neville (David Gulpilil) telling Sue she can\u2019t take his photo\u2009\u2026\u2009because the lens cap is on. And Mick, after saying \u201cG\u2019day\u201d to everyone on New York\u2019s streets, learning what a bidet is and warding off a mugger, walking over subway passengers to reach Sue when he learns \u201cshe loves me\u201d.<\/p>\n There was a formula to it: a fish-out-of-water, innocent-abroad comedy with adventure and romance that looked stunning, courtesy of cinematographer Russell Boyd\u2019s immense talent. Mick was Tarzan with a bushie\u2019s drawl, as naive and wise as Chauncey Gardiner in Being There (1979) and as memorable a rogue as Han Solo in Star Wars (1977). But he was a self-assured Australian original.<\/p>\n Related Article While there were some problematic moments, especially by today\u2019s standards \u2013 more on them later \u2013 the authenticity that Hogan had first shown performing comic skits for A\u2009 Current Affair while still working as\u2009 a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge made the film feel fresh. Like Hoges, Mick was smarter and more thoughtful than he let on.<\/p>\n There were, however, many reasons the whole thing could have been a disaster. Even after Hogan\u2019s decade of \u2009hit comedy shows on TV, it was a gamble whether he was a strong-enough actor to carry a film. The same was true for Kozlowski, an unknown Juilliard-trained actress who was so unsettled arriving in the Northern Territory and discovering Hogan did not want to rehearse their scenes that, according to director Peter Faiman in last year\u2019s documentary Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee, she had to be talked out of flying home.<\/p>\n While Faiman was a big name in comedy and live-event TV, he had never directed a film before. John Cornell was a star TV producer and marketer who had worked on Hogan\u2019s TV specials, playing dim-witted Strop, and launched World Series Cricket with Kerry Packer, but he had never made a film, either. Nor had the screenwriters, Hogan, Cornell and Ken Shadie.<\/p>\n Some of the original script assessments revealed in Love of an Icon were derisive. One said Hogan\u2019s comedy \u201cis peculiarly Australian and it therefore won\u2019t travel well\u201d; another called it \u201csecond-rate\u201d.<\/p>\n That did not help when it came to raising what was then a high budget of $8.8 million (equivalent to about $29 million now) for an Australian film. Packer, one of the country\u2019s most astute businessmen, dropped out of investing a reputed $2 million after being advised the film would be a dud. Delvene Delaney revealed in Love of an Icon that she and Cornell, her husband, had to mortgage their house and scramble for investors to make up the shortfall.<\/p>\n It has also never been easy for a TV comic to break into film. The Working Dog team did it with The Castle (1997) \u2013 staying off-screen \u2013 but there have been a lot of dud films made by Australian comedians. So what went so right? And what was it about Australia in the 1980s that produced a worldwide smash?<\/p>\n Cornell, the producer, was bullish about Crocodile Dundee as filming was winding up on set in Kakadu National Park, with the New York shoot to come, in late 1985. \u201cIt\u2019s gunna be good, mate,\u201d he told me after watching a take. It could even be \u201ca gusher\u201d, he insisted. \u201cYou might hit an oil well.\u201d<\/p>\n The key creative team had been smart enough to surround themselves with a top-line film crew, including Boyd, production designer Graham \u201cGrace\u201d Walker and costume designer Norma Moriceau, who brought the combined experience of working on such significant films as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Gallipoli (1981), Mad Max 2 (1981) and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985).<\/p>\n Also in Kakadu that day to discuss writing a song for Mick Dundee\u2019s arrival in New York were Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farris from INXS. That reflected Cornell\u2019s view that the US was \u201c70 per cent of our market\u201d.<\/p>\n When it opened in Australian cinemas, not even Cornell could have predicted what happened. I remember being staggered to learn that it had taken $2 million (equivalent to almost $7 million now) in its first week, breaking Rocky IV\u2019s record of $1.8 million. Then, instead of dropping in the second week, it did even better with $2.4 million. Then better again with $2.6 \u2009million in its third and fourth week.<\/p>\n After being held back from a home video release for a year, Crocodile Dundee reached $47.7 million in cinemas, almost tripling the previous Australian film box-office record of $17.2 million set by another movie about a mythic bushie, The Man from Snowy River (1982). To put that into perspective, it took the equivalent of $159 million now, more than the combined box office to date of last year\u2019s three biggest hits: Avatar: Fire and Ash, A Minecraft Movie and Zootopia 2.<\/p>\n According to box office data firm Numero, it sold 9 million tickets in a country with a population then of 16.1 million. As our magazine reported, it was watched by \u201ceveryone\u2019s friends who don\u2019t like Australian films, everyone\u2019s acquaintances who only like \u2018serious\u2019 movies and everyone\u2019s mum who never goes to the pictures\u201d.<\/p>\n I remember the warmth, joy and, yes, surprising national pride that people felt about Crocodile Dundee. It wasn\u2019t just a funny movie that was Australian. It was about a recognisable Australian who went from a remote swamp to winning over America\u2019s biggest city and getting the girl ahead of her pretentious, self-absorbed, materialistic American boyfriend.<\/p>\n Overseas, Crocodile Dundee went gangbusters again. While the then 20th Century Fox boss Barry Diller told me in 1987 that five Hollywood studios, including his, passed on the film, Paramount wanted to distribute it. Executives cut seven minutes from the Northern Territory scenes, swapped the likes of \u201csticky beak\u201d and \u201cbillabong\u201d for easier-to-understand terms and put quote marks around \u2018Crocodile\u2019 in the title to make it seem less like \u201ca swamp movie\u201d.<\/p>\n Crocodile Dundee opened on top of the box office and, taking an unthinkable $US175 million, was beaten \u2009only by Top Gun as the year\u2019s biggest hit in the US. In Love of an Icon, stockbroker Denis Johnson, who helped raise the Packer shortfall, said it took $328 million around the world \u2013 equivalent to $1.1 billion now. That was before windfalls from home video and television sales.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did think we were making a funny Aussie movie that would probably work in the US and maybe the UK to a certain extent,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really think it would turn out like it did\u2009\u2026\u2009It was big in Scandinavia, South America, places you never even thought you\u2019d get to play.\u201d<\/p>\n When it was nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars, Hogan co-hosted the ceremony. For his acting, he was nominated for a British Academy Film Award and won a Golden Globe.<\/p>\n Not everyone was sold on it, though. In a newspaper article headed \u201cSorry Hoges, but this time you\u2019ve blown it\u201d, the then Australian Film Commission chair Phillip Adams, who produced The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) and Don\u2019s Party (1976), described him as \u201cthe most popular manifestation of the neo-nationalism that swept through Australia in the Whitlam-Gorton era (now being orchestrated into a frenzy for the Bicentennial).\u201d<\/p>\n While believing it would be a financial success, Adams described Crocodile Dundee as a listlessly paced failure with a performance by Hogan so Harsh then. Sounds even harsher now. But it\u2019s true that Hogan was both a product of the new national pride emerging in the 1970s and \u201980s \u2013 after decades of deference to the UK and US \u2013 and a boost to it.<\/p>\n \u201cHe seems to represent the newly proud Australian,\u201d critic Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times. \u201cThe man who doesn\u2019t apologise for not being born English, who relishes his own, very pronounced accent and vocabulary, and who celebrates scepticism and the old frontier values\u2009\u2026\u2009He admires Americans but thinks they\u2019re all overly ambitious.\u201d<\/p>\n Crocodile Dundee was a product of ambition, though. It made so much money for Hogan, Cornell and a reported 609 investors (ranging from $5000 to $500,000) that the Australian Taxation Office spent years chasing the duo for alleged unpaid tax of more than $150 million from the franchise, which they -denied, before reaching a confidential settlement in 2012.<\/p>\n Related Article Looking back, it feels like Crocodile Dundee was part of an optimistic reframing of Australian identity in the Hawke-Keating era. While women, Indigenous Australians and ethnic communities still struggled for a seat at the main table, a blond father of five from Sydney\u2019s western suburbs who had worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge triumphed around the world.<\/p>\n An updated 4K restoration, Crocodile Dundee: The Encore Cut\u00a0(2025)<\/a>, deletes the two most problematic moments: when Mick grabs a bar patron in the groin and declares, \u201cThat was a guy, a guy dressed up like a sheila,\u201d while someone else yells \u201cf—-t\u201d; then a later scene where he does the same to a partygoer, saying, \u201cI was just making sure.\u201d Still in, though, is Mick dismissing land rights as being like two fleas arguing about who owns the dog.<\/p>\n In 2016, Hogan joked that he was \u201cprobably the world\u2019s leading one-hit wonder, but it was a mighty hit\u201d. In four decades, only the Mad Max films have rivalled it for international accomplishment. Only Australia (2008) has approached it at the local box office, still falling $10 million short. Cornell was right: Crocodile Dundee was a gusher.<\/p>\n Get the best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ee1d7898edd42e045f2e68468aedf036afc2b66e.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/a22de8bd3c055320b23e7b3116b9bb5d35953e04.jpeg\")
Paul Hogan and John Cornell on set in the mid-1980s. Crocodile Dundee producer Cornell had to mortgage his house to fund the film. <\/p>\n![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/86aa09f75eb4375f5e70caa804fc1e1a77d5c5fe.jpeg\")
Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski and David Gulpilil in Crocodile Dundee. When it was released in the United States, the film took an unthinkable $US175 million at the box office.Everett Collection Inc \/ Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/b15c5a8530a8bd892341f337b36b9da8e1bd94d3.jpeg\")
Paul Hogan co-hosted the Oscars in early 1987. With Ken Shadie and John Cornell, he was nominated for best original screenplay.AP Laserphoto<\/p>\n
lacklustre that it was impossible to believe a sophisticated woman could be won over by a \u201cblend of the macho, the philistine, the chauvinist and the National Party ideologue\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"Chinese](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ed4bf5a42eb7d5ad22ab0ee2ad92de37aeb16a2fe5750e84909f6fe797e0c462.jpeg\")
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