After studying at USC, director Richard Franklin returned to Australia, where he directed four episodes of the Australian police drama Homicide before making this film and Fantasm. Based on the folk poem “The Ballad of Eskimo Nell,” which is about well-endowed Dead-Eye Dick and sidekick Mexican Pete being unable to satisfy sex worker Eskimo Nell, this finds Dead-Eye Dick (Max Gillies) as a common peeper. He discovers a husband about to kill Mexico Pete (Serge Lazareff) for sleeping with his wife, so he saves him, and they head to Alaska to find Nell.

Franklin says it was never his intention to make a sex comedy, as he wanted to make something like Midnight Cowboy. The poem is known only in what Franklin called the English world of Canada, Australia, and England, so it had limited hopes in the U.S. However, as government funds were used to make this movie, a softcore comedy, people were not happy. Franklin said, “The theatres were picketed, and it was actually fairly successful in terms of damaging the picture. I thought it would be great publicity, but the one thing people don’t want to hear is that tax dollars have been wasted. The minute they hear that, they’re less inclined to throw good money after bad, if you see what I mean. So the film was not successful.”

It also didn’t help that a British film based on the same poem, Eskimo Nell, was released at the same time, when it didn’t make it to Australia until 1976, when it was called The Sexy Saga of Naughty Nell and Big Dick.

Or that sex symbol Abigail was upset about being fully frontal in this film. A public rift was reported in the Australian press between Franklin and the singer/actress, with the headline “Movie Producer Abigail: He Used My Body.”

If The Alaska Kid is familiar, it’s because he’s played by pro wrestler Paul “Butcher” Vachon.