a soldier played by John Waters who would be killed within the opening ten minutes by one of their own men. This film was based on the book 'The Night the Z Men Landed' written by Gene Janes under his pseudonym of several military books, Owen Gibson, in the 1960s and published by Calvert Publishing in Sydney. There was a legal dispute between the author and McCallum Productions over the screen rights. Janes took the production company to court holding up the release of the film and was finally awarded the rights in an out of court settlement. Reception Attack Force Z was only released theatrically in Australia in Melbourne, where it took $88,000 at the box office, which is equivalent to $364,484 in 2022 dollars. After the film's release, Tim Burstall was quoted as saying: It sold everywhere, sold all over the world, and it got its money back. And it did perform the task of getting some co-productions going with the East, which was useful and very important. But it's always awful when you take over from somebody else - and Phil is a friend - but he really wanted to do something quite different and I was regarded as much more of a whore, I suppose. Mel Gibson later called the film "pretty woeful... it's so bad, it's funny." John McCallum later said he and Robinson wanted to make another film in Asia, about drug running in Thailand "starting from the poppies and the hill factories where they distil the damned stuff and send it down to Bangkok" but were not allowed to make it because of the dangers involved in filming in Thailand. See also The Highest Honor — Another film about Z Special Unit made by the same producers in 1983. References External links Attack Force Z at Oz Movies Attack Force Z at the National Film and Sound Archive 1982 films Pacific War films Australian war drama films Taiwanese war drama films World War II films based on actual events 1980s English-language films War adventure films Films directed by Tim Burstall 1980s war drama films 1982 drama films English-language Taiwanese films