Tom Chapman

Jarred by the loss of his closest friend, a farmer on Tasmania’s remote West Coast, begins to mentor at-risk local youth. In an area renowned for its poverty, low literacy, and high suicide rates, Stafford Heres is determined to provide opportunities for kids who have few. Eden Alone Surpasses Thee explores his relationship with the land, loss, and the young men he takes under his wing.

Something of an anomaly, this cornball early Sin City feature is about relatives scheming to get Big Daddy's inheritance as he lies on his deathbed. Line readings are consistently dull, and the portly actor Robert Dunn playing Big Daddy gets to ham it up. Star billling goes to his nurse Tanya Rivers, a hint that she will have more to do in the story than all those greedy relatives. There's no screenplay credit and it stinks. The many sex scenes mix and match cast members and make no sense, just "time for a threesome" or other porno logic at work instead. There's nobody to root for, building to a surprise, very stupid ending. The only point of interest for me was wondering who played the doctor, who is uncredited. He returns at the end with a long recitation scene, and I realized it is Jake Jacobs, the cinematographer (and later actor playing "older man" roles as "Jay Crew").