Before directing Hollywood hits like The Dead Poets’ Society and Master and Commander, Australian New Wave maverick Peter Weir burst onto the scene with a string of four environmentalist allegories that ultimately led to The Last Wave, his boldest take on the topic.

The Last Wave follows David Burton (Richard Chamberlain), a Sydney defense attorney who takes on the case of Aboriginal men accused of murder. However, as Burton investigates the case, he finds it may be linked to strange weather patterns erupting around Australia: the signs of an incoming ecological catastrophe.

Combining elements of hard-boiled detective fiction and supernatural horror, The Last Wave is one of many 70s films that approached environmental concerns through a genre lens, a tradition embodied by arthouse films like Penda’s Fen (1974) and Stalker (1979), as well as pulp classics like Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971), Phase IV (1974), and The Grapes of Death (1978). Still, The Last Wave isn’t quite like any of its contemporaries, nor anything that’s been seen since: a true original, as relevant now as it was then.