As Time Goes By (1988 film)

As Time Goes By (originally titled The Cricketer) is a 1988 Australian science fiction comedy film directed by Barry Peak and starring Max Gillies, Bruno Lawrence, and Nique Needles. A few bars of the title song (extracted from the film Casablanca) are heard in the Australian version of the film but not in overseas prints, because of its high cost.

Plot synopsis
Mike, a surfer from Penong, South Australia, receives from his dying mother a letter, written 25 years earlier, instructing him to meet its author at a spot 50 mi west of the small town of Dingo on a certain date in 1989. The writer turns out to be an oddball alien in a time-travelling spaceship disguised as a roadside diner, "Joe Bogart's", dating from Manhattan project-era Los Alamos. On the way he encounters Ryder, once a famous cricketer but now a small-town policeman, on the trail of a murderous motorcyclist and his sidecar-riding sidekick — accomplices of Weston, a land-grabbing weather watcher who believes the desert is about to become valuable pasture, and who develops a temporary alliance with McCauley, a UFO hunter who will stop at nothing in his quest for fame and fortune.

It is the surfer's pre-ordained purpose to recover the spaceship's power module, which had been lost overboard, but is frustrated in his quest by Cheryl, a ditzy fellow-hitchhiker, who fancies it as a hat (it is disguised as a "King Beer" emblem) and the UFO hunter, who believes he can discover something by prising it open. He is assisted by his love interest Connie, a beautiful Mini-moke-driving farmer. Other characters include a weathered old bone collector, who hauls his "finds" in an ancient hand-cart, and Dingo's town storekeeper, involved in a never-ending fight against dust in his shop.

Cast

 * Bruno Lawrence as Ryder
 * Nique Needles as Mike
 * Ray Barrett as J. L. Weston
 * Marcelle Schmitz as Connie Stanton
 * Mitchell Faircloth as James McCauley
 * Max Gillies as Joe Bogart
 * Deborah Force as Cheryl
 * Christine Keogh as Margie
 * Don Bridges as Ern
 * Jane Clifton as Mechanic

Accolades
Nique Needles won Best Actor in A Science Fiction Film (billed as L'Australieno) at the 1988 Fantafestival.

Tony Harrison called the film "bizarre and entertaining".

Home media
The film was released to VHS but not DVD.