Binge on these Australian horror films for Halloween
If you're off sugar during spooky season gorge on these gory movies instead.
If you're off sugar during spooky season gorge on these gory movies instead.
It’s October, and we’re in the mood for thrills and chills.
Australia has made its fair share of terrifying, creepy films that'll haunt you long after the credits stop rolling.
From '80s Ozploitations, to new classics like The Babadook.
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Wake in Fright (1971)
“Sweat, dust and beer ... there’s nothing else out here mate!” Director Ted Kotcheff’s rural noir was almost lost forever.
In Australia, it was a box-office flop that was massacred by critics and rejected by the public for its indictment of masculinity.
During one screening, one man stood up, pointing to the screen, and yelled ‘That’s not us!’ to which actor Jack Thompson responded, “Sit down, mate. It is us.”
For 40 years the film was thought to be lost.
In 2012, it was restored by the Australian Film Archive after the film's editor, Anthony Buckley, found the last surviving print in Pittsburg, in a box marked ‘for destruction.’
The brutal film takes place over an endless weekend in outback Australia.
John Grant (Gary Bond), is a proper schoolteacher travelling from Woop Woop to Sydney on vacation. He gets trapped on a stopover in a fictional mining town Bundanyabba (nicknamed The Yabba by locals) after losing all his money gambling in a game of Two Up. Stranded amongst a gaggle of hard-drinking, lawless ockers, the vacation spirals into a nightmare of drunkenness, rape, violence, and a particularly grizzly kangaroo hunting scene.
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Road Games
Quentin Tarantino considers Richard Franklin’s 1981 road trip thriller one of his favourite Australian movies ever, dubbing it “a truly magnificent film.”
"You could remake Road Games tomorrow and not change a damn word for it and it would scare the hell out of everybody.”
An electric Stacy Keach stars as Patrick Quid, an independent truck driver who travels across the country delivering meat with his pet dingo. He’s good natured, a bit of an oddball, that plays harmonica and talks to himself, inventing stories about people he watches on the road.
One evening, Quid observes a man in a green van checking into the last available room in a motel with a beautiful, young woman. The woman is later strangled to death with a guitar scene - it’s a hell of a stylish murder.
Back on the road, Quid learns there’s a psychotic killer on the loose, preying on young female hitchhikers. The chase begins. He takes it upon himself to embark on an amateur sleuthing mission, picking up “Hitch” (played by '80s scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis) on the way.
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The Cars That Ate Paris
Legendary director Peter Weir’s first full-length film is completely bonkers.
Part psychological horror and part black comedy, set in the isolated, fictional New South Wales town Paris.
It’s a town that lives outside law and order: populated by ruffians and hooligan teenagers. Paris survives on its junkyard barter economy, and the scraps are harvested from late-night road accidents deliberately caused by locals. The car parts are salvaged and sold, and the human remains are subjected to gruesome medical experiments.
It’s worth watching for the absurd souped-up cars alone. The “buzzards” in Mad Max: Fury Road are based on one of Weir's tremendous spiked up VWs.
Stanley Kubrick named it one of his favourite films of all time.
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Saw (2003)
A 10-minute, low-budget short that sparked one of the highest-grossing horror franchises of all time, and launched the careers of both James Wan and Leigh Whannel.
Affectionately dubbed Saw 0.5, the pair used the short to pitch their script for a full-length feature film to studios. Lionsgate picked it up, and funded the feature. The bones of the franchise, like the reverse bear trap and Jigsaw’s twisted games, are there. There’s also an excellent Nine Inch Nails remix.
You can watch the film in full here.
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Picnic at Hanging Rock (1971)
If you’re more “unsettling mysteries and beautiful dresses” than “people hacking their limbs off”, Picnic at Hanging Rock is the horror film for you.
A haunting mystery you can enjoy a cucumber sandwich with.
It’s Valentine’s Day, 1900, a group of girls from a boarding school go on a day trip to Hanging Rock.
Three of the girls and one of their teachers disappear. One of them is found a week later, with no recollection of what happened. The others are never found.
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The Babadook (2014)
A queer icon and a menacing on-screen presence.
Director Jennifer Kent’s debut film The Babadook is restrained, shadowy and totally petrifying. It’s about a lonely mother Amelia (Essie Davis) who, after the death of her husband, is tasked with raising their son, Samuel, alone.
She reads from a mysterious pop-up book that Samuel found and unwittingly releases a satanically-charged, top-hatted monster.
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The Loved Ones (2009)
High school sucks!
Sean Byrne’s directorial debut is deliciously deranged.
Lola (Robin McLeavy) is truly demented as a high school girl whose crush Brent (a shockingly good Xavier Dolan) rebuffs her prom invitation. Scorned, she and her murderous father host their own prom from hell, kidnapping Brent and subjecting him to a night of torture.
The violence is mean, mean, mean. Like, seriously brutal.
You will squirm and clench your teeth and pray that some force stronger than your voyeurism will turn off the telly for you.
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Next of Kin (1982)
A long-lost film from Australia’s Ozploitation boom that Tarantino once compared with Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining.
Linda Stevens (Jackie Kerin) inherits Montclare, a country mansion that was transformed into a retirement home by her late mother and sister. Yeah, there’s no way these walls of this gorgeous victorian mansion are going to be cursed by lingering malevolent forces or anything…
It’s a cold, detached, slow burn.
It’s very stylish - spiritually akin to Dario Argento and Mario Bava’s giallo greats. And underpinned by an epic, unsettling score, courtesy of one of the members of Tangerine Dream.
It also has one of the greatest final shots ever - which happened by complete accident (watch first, Google later.)
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