User Reviews

A married graduate student takes some time off to work on her thesis and play housewife to her doctor husband while living in a University apartment complex. One day, a plumber shows up unannounced claiming he needs to do routine maintenance but ends up making a terrible mess of her bathroom. Soon, she finds the plumber is always around, a bit snoopy, and may have ulterior motives. The Plumber is pretty good, especially considering it was apparently a TV movie, but it is a bit on the dull side. As seems to be a theme with Mr. Weir, this film explores the concept of The Other within the framework of a horror-thriller. I'd argue this is even more successful to me than Wave or Paris were, perhaps because it's main focus was on two individuals. It explores both sides and the ambiguity serves the narrative instead of causing confusion.

Peter Weir shows how a good film can be made from a solid script and very little money.

A student of anthropology attempts to understand aboriginal tribes, but is completely baffled by the cultural chasm that separates her post-graduate sensibilities from the working-class plumber who is sent to work on her apartment. Is he malicious or misunderstood? The script is delightfully ambiguous.

A little low-budget gem.

I found my copy of "The Plumber" at a yard sale.

I have this silly habit of renting or buying what appear to be low-budget, very campy, or exploitive features to enjoy a good laugh or perhaps spot a popular celebrity paying their dues in the early days of their career. To those degrees, I was a little disappointed with The Plumber (although the low-budget part appears to be true).

I fully expected a "slasher-fest" and screams galore. Instead, The Plumber is about a doctor's wife left alone in the company of an annoying fellow (perhaps a plumber, perhaps not) who proceeds to annoy the hell out of her for the duration of the movie. I agree with the previous reviewer that this theme was duplicated later in "The Cable Guy" with Jim Carey. This bloke is dying for someone to either impress or simply alleviate the loneliness in his life. In the end, we're not sure if he's getting what he deserved or we should feel sorry for him. Indeed, this was a story of psychology, and how we may react in a similar situation.

It's possible I may watch this one again one day, but it's not a movie I would keep with my favorites. Still, it's funny, a little creepy, and definitely worth the 50¢ I paid at that yard sale :)

What a straight-up quirky little gem from Peter Weir. Proof indeed that you do not need big budgets to make celluloid winners. Weir has such a great talent for drawing out the extraordinary from the most ordinary of scenarios. A bush-walk that defies explanation at HANGING ROCK, a country town with a lurid secret in THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS, oveflowing domestic storm-water in THE LAST WAVE and here, the humble PLUMBER, or maybe the stranger from Hell?

Filmed for the most part in Jill Cowper's (Judy Morris's) apartment, if not the bathroom itself, her nightmare starts when she has need to call a tradesman to fix faulty plumbing in her bathroom. Whether Max has multiple pre-emptive social issues to deal with or simply reacts later to her upper-class dismissive treatment of his blue-collar status is not made clear. In the bathroom however he rules unchallenged and Jill finds herself at the mercy of what appears to be a serially disturbed tradesman.

Less of a thriller and more a black comedy, Weir places his protaganists each in unfamilar locales. Jill, a highly educated anthropologist, married to a doctor and studying indigenous behavioural activity has absolutely no idea how to respond to this intrusive workman who stops for 10 minute tea-breaks every five minutes and composes a rock-song for which he asks her considered opinion. While the situations thrown up are critically funny at times (Kants gives his greatest performance here) an air of extreme unease pervades proceedings. By degrees, the bathroom is totally destroyed as Max works to compensate for that social-class chip on his shoulder, the size of a Redwood! The scene of the dinner party wherein an overseas guest is trapped under collapsed rubble in the bathroom is a hoot.

After Morris has hit rock-bottom and realises that fear is the key, she devises a way to get back at him. Some viewers regard the end as "soft" if not a total cop-out. What it actually shows is that just sometimes, fighting fire with fire works!

THE PLUMBER was filmed in Adelaide and originally received limited theatrical release. It was not until it was shown on television however that the "legend" of this great little movie was founded and its popularity mushroomed.

Not to be missed under any circumstances.

In Adelaide, the wife of Dr. Brian Cowper (Robert Coleby), Jill Cowper (Judy Morris), is developing her thesis at home to finish her Master in Anthropology. When the plumber Max (Ivor Kants) unexpectedly arrives for a routine check and maintenance of the piping in the bathroom, Jill stays alone at home with the talkative weird stranger. Along the days, he tells that he spent some time in prison, making Jill frightened with his presence. Her friend Meg (Candy Raymond), her husband Brian and the super's wife finds Max a simple, but nice man, but Jill does not agree. When there is a problem in her bathroom and Max needs to stay with her for a longer period, the tension between them increases and Jill finds a way to get rid off the plumber.

This low budget and theatrical film is a claustrophobic and scary study of human nature, based on the relationship of two different characters of different social classes spending a period together. It is also impressive how far a stressed person with culture and education may go and how amoral can be her behavior staying alone with another disturbed and lonely person that she can not understand. The direction and performances are outstanding in this suspenseful and efficient thriller. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Encanador" ("The Plumber")

A young couple, living in a campus apartment complex, are repeatedly harassed by an eccentric, Bob Dylanesque plumber, who subjects them to a series of bizarre mind games while making unnecessary repairs to their bathroom.

For me, this may be Peter Weir's first really strong work. "Cars That Ate Paris" didn't resonate with me. I love "Picnic at Hanging Rock", but I assume it is very divisive -- the film is not for the general film-goer. But "Plumber" is very much a modern thriller, and in many ways very American. Aside from some accents, the story could have taken place anywhere in the English-speaking world.

Others have noted how it can be seen as a precursor to "The Cable Guy". I can see that, and don't know if it's intentional or not. But I will say "Plumber" is more successful, at least for me. Jim Carrey's character was too dark, and ultimately turned me off to that film. Here, the plumber is creepy but never so dark that the comedy is forgotten.

With "The Cars that Ate Paris", "The Last Wave", and especially "Picnic at Hanging Rock", the genius Peter Weir made three of the greatest cult movies in the history of cinema. "The Plumber" plays in a different league, also because it's a made-for-television film, but it's nevertheless REALLY good as well, and it once again demonstrates what a versatile and expert director Weir is/was.

"The Plumber" is a simple but effective, and moreover very recognizable, story about a housewife becoming increasingly agitated because of a friendly but intrusive plumber who nearly breaks down the flat's entire bathroom. Whilst her workaholic husband is too preoccupied with a potential promotion to Geneva, Jill is slowly going mentally insane and feeling like a prisoner in her own house.

The climax comes abrupt, but it's brilliantly honest and confronting. Also, if there's one thing that makes "The Plumber" painfully clear, it is how people are falsely polite - hypocritical, even - and how we would do pretty much everything in order to avoid direct confrontation. Thank you very much for holding up this mirror, Mr. Weir...

Little known Australian gem that takes the old 'girl stalked by psycho' theme and gives it a fun twist with some astute social commentary. A highly intellectual, educated women suddenly finds herself being manipulated by a slovenly, low class plumber. She is an expert at primitive cultures, yet is unable to deal with her own 'civilized' culture. As he tears away at her bathroom, he also tears away at the line that seperates the classes. Playfully pokes at everything from how much control one really has on their enviroment, to how vulnerable we ALL are and how no one is really that far removed or 'above' anyone else. Also aptly displays how our social mores, customs, and status are only their as long as everyone respects them. Yet the best thing about this sleeper is how everyone, including her friends and husband, are so caught up in their own little worlds that they cannot fully fathom the extent of her fear. Bringing to light the old adage of us all having our own 'private hell'. Mono sound and a bit of a 'cop out' ending are the only detractions.

...and by that I mean the final line. Watch and find out what I mean.

Class warfare, Aussie style, in this good early film from Peter Weir which, in its early 80s mixture of comedy and menace, brings to mind the good early films of Brian De Palma. Yes the basic situation is ludicrous with nobody but the "over imaginative" housewife seeing what a wacko the plumber is. But there are fine performances from Judy Morris as the strangely passive victim of angry resentful Max the Plumber, Ivar Kants in the title role with his creepy grin and thrusting, insinuating body language as Max, and Robert Coleby as the detached, materialistic Yuppie academic husband who is the real villain of this piece. It is only when a subtle contrived scheme by Judy Morris' character effects the husband's pocketbook and his own sense of privacy does her status seeking husband act.

P.S. If you didn't know by the accents that we are in 1980 Australia, then the scene where a woman lights up right after a meditation class should clue you in.

Search for any kind of movie in the video stores and you'll discover that somebody had to accomplish something in the motion picture industry. THE PLUMBER is the perfect example, coming from a man who may win special honors for THE TRUMAN SHOW. Calling it a horror movie is an exaggeration on its own, but the plot is nerve-tingling as a plumber disrupts an Aussie woman's life through his wild behavior. It all adds to the panic of suspense. To make a political statement about this film, it shows that social and moral values decay in this global community we live and breathe by. Peter Weir must be given a big hand on his films, and this one needs not to be left behind in the abyss of forgotten movies.

Hearing about this great little film from many people, I spent tireless hours on retail sites tracking a VHS copy down. Finally I caught a cheap copy on Half.com and it came several days later, (cut to one month later, when Weir's "Cars that Ate Paris" debuted on easily-accessible DVD format with "The Plumber" as a double feature. Go figure.) But I sat down to watch it and proceeded to laugh for quite some time.

The story is basically about this Aussie anthropologist studying Aboriginal tribes as her boring nutritionist husband is constantly talking shop. She's constantly left to her solitude and values her privacy, which makes it all the more irritating when a strange plumber invades her life. Somewhat threatening and somewhat a misunderstood doof, this plumber spends hours holed up in her bathroom doing nothing but lounging around, hammering shower tiles, writing folk songs and ripping pipes from the walls.

It's a precursor to "The Cable Guy," but don't let that discourage you, (I liked "Cable Guy" myself). It's funny as hell and has a great ending. I'll even forgive it for the nutritionist's ponderous subplot that goes nowhere. It's only 79 minutes--whaddaya got to lose?

Movie: A

This is more of a riff, a ditty in between major projects. Supposedly born from a friend's own experience with a problematic plumber, Peter Weir's The Plumber is a television movie of awkward and dark humor, the sort of thing that Weir was obviously amenable to considering the humor of Homesdale and The Cars that Ate Paris, though this is a bit more successful than his two earlier attempts. I wonder if Weir, who also wrote the film, would have taken more time to craft the script, bringing together its different ideas more fully, if this had been a theatrical feature film instead of a television film.

At a university dorm for professors lives Dr. Brian Cowper (Robert Coleby) and his wife Jill (Judy Morris). Brian is a nutritionist with a potentially life-changing visit from WHO scientists to look at his research on New Guinean diet, and Jill is an anthropology masters student who has accompanied Brian on some of his journeys. Working alone in their dorm apartment one day, she greets the building's plumber, Max (Ivar Kants), who says he's there on a routine visit to just check the pipes. She lets him in, and he soon reveals that there's a problem with them. The pipes are too small, and he needs to replace them all.

This is the setup for Max to completely invade Jill's life in some kind of psycho-sexual terror campaign that drags on for days. The invasion of her home while she's trapped there with him puts her in the path of this guy with a mysterious, shifting past and propensity for, potentially, showering instead of investigating the pipes, creating this kind of potentially harmless but obviously implied threat that is meant to wear her down.

I think there's supposed to be this comparison or perhaps contrast between her investigative work of the New Guinean people and Max's visits, but it feels more like an idea thrown up without the real consideration that Weir was very capable of bringing to his films. There's something that could be an interesting supporting idea at play, but it feels so under-considered and under-utilized that it ultimately comes to nothing. Is Max's invasion of Jill's space the same as her sitting in her own tent in New Guinea and a local coming into the tent to yell at her for hours on end? Perhaps. What about her research in general? Is Weir comparing anthropological research to Max's invasion? I really don't know, but you can see the outline of what could have been an idea.

The other side of this is Brian's efforts to ingratiate himself to the WHO scientists looking at his research. He's distracted because his efforts aren't as intriguing to them as he had hoped, and he is more dismissive of Jill's concerns that he might otherwise be. There's solid stuff here, with some dark comedy involved around his efforts in contradistinction to Jill's plight, but it also feels less thought out than it should have been.

The real joys of the film, if you want to call them joys, are the deeply black humorous segments between Max and Jill. Max never quite crosses the line, but he's toeing it so aggressively and constantly that his interactions are so awkward and uncomfortable that it has a palpable effect on the audience. It escalates until Max has so completely destroyed the bathroom in the name of fixing it and sits upon the elevated throne of the toilet singing a song he composed to Jill really aggressively. It's hind of hilarious and just so awkward and intimidating at the same time.

There's a resolution that requires Jill herself to go over the line, and the film fully embraces its horror aspects without ever getting gory or explicit. If it had been more of a pure horror film without the pretensions towards symbolism, I think it might have worked better. As it stands, The Plumber is in between a horror film and something more intellectual. It's a ditty, something Weir pushed out in a matter of weeks for cash, and he could have done far worse.

"The Plumber" is a strange movie, dissatisfying, with an out-of-nowhere ending. Watching it, I kept thinking that it was well acted and fairly interesting, but a failure at generating suspense.

Seeing the surprising - though underwhelming - ending makes me wonder if it wasn't supposed to be suspenseful. But then what was it supposed to be?

The movie sort of flirts with psychological thriller and domestic drama, without committing to either.

The plot is familiar to anyone who has seen a psychological thriller before. It reminded me of the also mixed up and bizarre "Cable Guy": every time a young woman is alone in her apartment a weird plumber checks in and gets on her nerves. He is supposed to be repairing her bathroom but is really only making it worse. And he sings in the shower. She starts getting freaked out, her husband dismisses her concerns, and you assume the movie is heading for the moment where the plumber goes into full psycho mode.

I appreciated a take on this material that didn't feel as familiar as the material itself. There were so many thrillers like this in the '80s and '90s. However, in light of the ending, the movie is pretty unsatisfactory, and is definitely a minor blip in Weir's oeuvre.

"Dr. Matu spent three years studying the components of ice cream. The results are quite frightening. Plastic. That's what it is, basically. Plastic." Wow, with the rise of microplastics in our food, perhaps this film was prophetic.

The Plumber was tough to fully appreciate, in part because the title character is so outlandish and yet given such latitude. Something more restrained and subtle would have worked more for me. The husband's inaction is almost as maddening as the plumber's campaign of psychological terror. She tells her husband she thinks the plumber saw her changing; he asks no questions. He sees their bathroom absurdly destroyed when there was never a plumbing issue to begin with; he blithely goes off to work the next day. She tells him she's frightened; he says it's a bad time to call and to have her friend over.

I think a part of that was showing just how much a woman being victimized might lack agency, as everyone just kind of sloughs her off. To me that's what the film was best at showing. Still, I also wished she took more control, either leaving, calling the plumber's boss or the police, or demanding someone stay with her. How it plays out is too exaggerated and cartoonish.

There is a certain satisfaction in her ultimately turning the tables, but it's conflicting in how she goes about it. Perhaps that was the point, and along the lines of all the class commentary this film is said to have. Had the plumber just been an ordinary guy struggling to make repairs and had all of these assumptions made about him, I could have understood the praise in that regard. Maybe Peter Weir was making negative comments about both the intelligentsia, dispassionately studying indigenous people almost as if they were animals, the husband only snapping to attention when the expensive watch has gone missing, and blue-collar workers, lacking class and civility. If so, I don't think the plumber portrayal worked, and maybe that's where it fell short for me. It's reasonably entertaining though, and wisely only 77 minutes long.

There are "Parasite" vibes here (Korean movie which got awarded with Oscar). Of course, not as brilliant and complex. Class conflict in a dark comedy "wrapper". You can argue if this is a dark comedy or a psychological drama/thriller, i think it is both of them. In any case, this is interesting. There are some intense moments, also some hilarious moments, keep in mind though humor is subtle and dry. Sure it's flawed and there are plot incosistencies but i enjoyed it, actors are good, pace too. There are no definite answers in the ending but i didn't mind it, viewers can make their own assumptions. Not a hidden gem but definitely a good movie.

Plumber lets himself in through my bathroom ceiling because I've locked the door? I'm dialing 9-1-1. Plumber tells me he's a rapist and then goes and locks himself in the bathroom? I'm dialing 9-1-1. There is nothing funny or eccentric about the plumber. He's just a menacing @zzwipe. The movie is not funny; not even black-comedy funny. It tells me nothing about class warfare. The Cable Guy - which a few viewers have compared The Plumber to - is like comparing a multiple Oscar winner to an 8mm home movie. And that self-involved jerk of a husband? The wife should have gone for the 2-for-1 special to deal with him, too.

In Australia, anthropologist housewife and thesis writer Judy Morris (as Jill) is startled when grungy plumber Ivar Kants (as Max) arrives unannounced, for a routine check into her bathroom's plumbing. Singing as he helps himself in her shower, Mr. Kants tells Ms. Morris her pipes are bad, and need replacing. "The Plumber" becomes a menacing presence in Morris' apartment, but neither husband Robert Coleby (as Brian Cowper) nor best friend Candy Raymond (as Meg) sees any danger. They think Morris is overreacting. Is Kants a convicted rapist, or a budding Bob Dylan singing "It's Me, Babe"? Written and directed by Peter Weir as a cheap TV movie, "The Plumber" is a hilarious take-off on horror, class and culture.

******** The Plumber (6/8/79) Peter Weir ~ Ivar Kants, Judy Morris, Robert Coleby, Candy Raymond

Awful, awful film. It scores 6.6 on the IMDb. WHY?????????? It's terrible. And it's so dated too.

The Plumber is supposed to be a horror. It isn't. Basically it's about an annoying plumber who messes up each job he goes to. In particular he visits a lady every day while her husband is a work.

She's doing her chores; he's in the bathroom. And that is supposed to be a horror movie??? It would be a comedy if there was anything to laugh at.

No scares. No terror. No nothing except a very poor script and awful acting.

As someone mentioned it's like the outtakes from some horrific Aussie soap opera like Prisoner Cell Block H, all stitched together.

Down-thumb this review all you like, it's still a horrific 1/10.

This obscure Peter Weir TV movie from the late 1970s is a little dated, but still very entertaining and suspenseful. The three main actors (Judy Morris, Ivor Kants and Robert Coleby) aren't exactly household names here in Australia but will be familiar to most TV viewers over the age of 30 for their roles in various soap operas and the like. All three are excellent here in what could be their best work. Morris and Coleby play married academics. Coleby is distracted and concerned about an exciting career opportunity, Morris is currently working at home engrossed in her studies of New Guinea culture, and is timid and less confident socially than her husband. One day the plumber (Kants) arrives at their flat, and from then on her life will never be the same again. Kants is charming but rough, and very odd. A Dylanesque folk singer with a "Liberals = less tax" message on the back of his jacket (Non-Australians note the Liberal Party is our equivalent of the Republicans in the US or Conservative Party in Britain), he plays mind games with Morris, who becomes increasingly uncomfortable, and ultimately terrorized. Weir keeps things quite ambiguous and we never really know whether Kants is a dangerous psychopath or just the biggest pain-in-the-arse you could ever wish not to meet. I enjoyed 'The Plumber' a lot, it's a very effective low-budget, low key thriller shot through with plenty of black humour.

When I first heard of this film sometime around 1986 I was employed as a plumber, so I of course I had to see it. I found it in the public library and ended up watching it with my eleven year old sister in law. Twenty years later I have long since stopped making my living as a plumber and my eleven year old sister in law hasn't been my sister-in-law for a decade. But I have a feeling that she still remembers this film because we both had a great time watching it, and we spoke of it for years afterwards.

The Plumber is not a big movie. It is a character study filmed in a very small setting. Although I usually see it categorized as either a thriller or as a horror movie, it is neither of those. It is a study of an obviously disturbed plumber who is set off for some reason by Jill Cowper, the tenant in the apartment where he is called to look at the plumbing. I say that he was "set off," because if he did in every apartment what he does in Jill's then he would have been locked up a long time ago. He could not have made a habit of behaving in the manner in which he behaves in the film. Although he really did not harm anyone, he made himself threatening and tore the bathroom apart for no reason - neither of which is conducive to being a satisfactory plumber.

I have to say that when I worked as a plumber I was quite competent and I did not wreck people's houses. I did clean work, as much as plumbing can be clean anyway, and I took pride in it. However, I have always had an odd sense of humor, and sometimes I would mess around a bit with the heads of my clients. Nothing mean or scary like our buddy Max in this movie, but funny nonetheless. I can recall one time when I was called out to an apartment that had water dripping into it from the unit above. When I arrived there was a college age girl there, but the water was not presently dripping and the tenants in the apartment above were not home, so I could not go upstairs and investigate. There was not much that I could do about it at the moment. So I started to ask the girl about the problem and she told me that water was sometimes dripping from the light fixture on the ceiling. I looked at her very seriously and asked "was it wet?" She asked me what I meant, and I said "this water - was it wet?" She looked confused and unsure of how to answer. I told her that I needed to know if the water was wet, since I could not go upstairs and see for myself. She continued to look confused and sort of stammered out something like "yeah I guess so" and looked quite baffled, as if she was wondering if there was something more to water than meets the eye that a plumber might need to know about, and what it could be and why she didn't know about it. She had that look about her like she suddenly found herself in an alternate universe, where the simplest things that she took for granted were all of the sudden strange and alien, and nothing made sense. I left soon after and never did tell her that I was messing around - I didn't make any money if I went to a call and couldn't do any work so I suppose that was my payment. I did a lot of things like that, certainly never harming anyone or even being mean but I did leave a lot of confused customers in my wake.

Anyway, as a plumber myself, The Plumber was doubly hilarious. Everything about what he did as a plumber was completely absurd. He was there for a very minor problem, yet soon he was carrying in all sorts of supplies that had nothing at all to do with the problem at hand. Cut to later shots of Max the plumber in the bathroom and we see sinks coming off of walls and, most absurdly of all, a full set of scaffolding covering the entire bathroom! That last one is so completely over the top that any plumber could not help but be struck by the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Then there was Max's piece de resistance. Cut the the bathroom again, and there is Max, sitting on the toilet with a guitar and one of those harmonicas in a brace that fits around the neck ala Bob Dylan, composing a song that must have been titled "I'm Me, Babe" but we don't know for sure. The whole thing just took the cake right over the top and heaved it over the fence. My sister in law and I sang that song for months afterwards. Think about it - not only is he in there with a guitar and singing when he is supposed to be fixing the plumbing, but he has a neck mounted harmonica too! It's a classic moment, and I don't use the word classic very often.

Overall, you don't have to be a plumber to enjoy this movie, but if you are, or even involved in a trade that brings you into people's homes, then the absurdity of the situations in this film will probably hit home a bit harder. And yes, as others have noted, the ending is bit weak; but there are enough "moments" in The Plumber to overcome it. You'll be singing "I'm Me, Baaaaaaabe" long after you've forgotten the ending.