The Herald, Melbourne (Australia) 04.08.1988

American Rebel

Directed and written by Will Roberts

Opens tomorrow, State Film Theater

FEW people here heard of the late Dean Read, the expatriate American singer who been described as a mixture of Pat Boon, Pete Seeger, Elvis Presley and someone called Raffi. The few, I discovered when checking him out, are nearly all Latin American migrants.

Reed had been a minor singer in the US, but became a very big name ín South America in the sixties and seventies.

He had its own TV show first in Santiago, Chile, later in Buenos-Aires, Argentina - before both countries expelled him.

As well as being a regular chart topper with forgettable rock and country and western numbers Reed was also very political.

Chile's Frei administration (the one before Allende and Pinochet) tipped him out for washing the stare and stripes outside the US embassy in a well-published demonstration against the Vietnam war.

Later, he earned the ire of pre-junta Argentinian government for his participation in the peace movement.

So, it was off to Europe (first Italy, later the USSR and East Germany) for this good-looking, moderately-gifted all-American boy with strong leftist leanings.

And In Eastern Europe he became a superstar.

Will Roberts' somewhat scrappy but quite fascinating documentary describes how the film-maker first saw Reed being mobbed by autograph hunters in Red square (he was known there for records, concert tours and a number of East German films).

The documentary contains examples from the films, which include sauerkraut westerns, interviews with Reed and his loving, but frankly puzzled middle-American parents and clips of him playlng to everyone he admires - from Yassar Arafat to Chilean miners.

(When Reed returned to Chile several years ago, Pinochet promptly expelled him too.)

An undisclosed final irony is that after American Rebel was completed Dean Reed died aged 48, in East Germany.

He died in circumstances mysterious enough to bring the official verdict of accidental drowning into question.

Like much else in the singer-actor-politician's vivid life, that makes you think.