Shudder’s Penny Lane is Dead is a loving throwback to the gritty, grindhouse movies of the ’70s and 80s. It begins with an innocent party to celebrate its titular character’s acceptance into university and concludes with a blood-soaked, corpse-filled catastrophe of criminal carnage. Penny Lane is Dead is more than just a brutal blast from the past. It marks the return of horror’s dormant “Ozploitation” genre that was at its peak during the ’70s and ’80s. Penny Lane is Dead is an overt tribute to Ozploitation in all its grisly glory, but it’s a subset of cinema that’s slowly infiltrated the mainstream American horror movies. James Wan and Leigh Whannell, who are Australian filmmakers themselves, accredit Mad Max’s final scene, in which Max gives Johnny a hacksaw and an ultimatum, as the inspiration for the entire Saw franchise.
Ozploitation’s lurid, sun-baked ruthlessness has become one strand in modern horror’s DNA. Penny Lane is Dead succeeds as a strong introduction to Ozploitation in all its maximalist mayhem, but it’s also a modern subversion of these old-fashioned archetypes by operating as a positive and aspirational queer love story that’s looking to break free from this heightened horror story. It’s a film that works without any grander Ozploitation context. However, it’s also a great excuse to unpack Ozploitation and why it’s such an important subgenre.
Ozploitation films first found life in the early 1970s, partly as a response to the introduction of the R rating. Australia’s push towards low-budget exploitation films was also a byproduct of the Australian New Wave movement that grew during the ’70s and ’80s. Ozploitation allowed for a style of movies that were previously never possible. This largely included horror, but also celebrated biker films, martial arts movies, comedy, and sexploitation. Ozploitation is more broadly defined by its DIY spirit, sensationalist storytelling, and anti-authoritarian messaging with a disregard for censorship.
It’s about embracing these scrappy ideals and putting together something unfiltered and incendiary that rocks the status quo. It’s a philosophical filmmaking movement that perfectly meshes with Australia’s desolate and punishing outback. An ethos in which only the strongest survive is omnipresent in many Ozploitation features. Ozploitation horror films have a sweltering desperation and sticky terror that hits different, and Penny Lane is Dead puts it on full display.
The term Ozploitation, curiously enough, was coined in part by Quentin Tarantino, albeit as “Aussieploitation.” It was director Mark Hartley who shortened it to the superior “Ozploitation.” Tarantino’s Grindhouse segment, Death Proof, is riffing on a lot of genre classics, but it, in many ways, is a love letter to many foundational Ozploitation classics.
John B. Murray’s The Naked Bunyip from 1970 – a mockumentary that’s based around a sex survey – is considered to be the first Ozploitation film, which set the tone for pushing censorship boundaries. The following year introduced Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright, a haunting psychological thriller that presents the outback in all its unforgiving glory, a film that established high standards for cruel killers and manic murderers. Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock would match Wake in Fright’s eerie blend of psychological terror and gothic horror. Early ’70s Ozploitation would continue to experiment with different genres in the sex comedy Alvin Purple, the biker gang movie Stone, and 1975’s martial arts and action pastiche, The Man from Hong Kong.
George Miller’s Mad Max also closed out the ’70s on the best note possible with its post-apocalyptic premise that helped Ozploitation transform and take even bigger swings. There’s no way that Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Turkey Shoot, a bleak “death sport” action film that’s set in a dystopian future where “social deviants” are imprisoned in re-education camps where they must fight for their lives, exists without Mad Max first opening that door. Russell Mulcahy’s Razorback from 1984 is also the definitive Ozploitation creature feature that’s Australia’s answer to Jaws. Razorback is one of the most chilling and visceral “man versus animal” survivalist horror stories that’s become a reference point for so many modern killer animal movies, with 2017’s Boar bringing this loop full circle.
Razorback’s Russell Mulcahy, along with Philippe Mora, Richard Franklin, and the aforementioned George Miller, Peter Weir, and Brian Trenchard-Smith, represent top Ozploitation directors. However, Razorback’s screenwriter, Everett De Roche, is also one of Ozploitation’s most formative voices. De Roche wasn’t a director, but he’s responsible for scripting some of Ozploitation’s most important films, like Road Games, Razorback, Long Weekend, and the absolutely gonzo Harlequin and Patrick. These two films incorporate psychic powers and dark fantasy elements into Ozploitation’s unnerving thrillers. They’re must-watch films that are some of the most interesting horror films to come out of the ’80s, Ozploitation or otherwise, that feel like classic Cronenberg.
Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek from 2005 is one of the more interesting modern Ozploitation fascinations that at times can almost feel like parody when it comes to its brutal boogeyman, Mick “The Outback Killer” Taylor, who is portrayed like Crocodile Dundee meets Freddy Krueger. Every Mick Taylor massacre is more or less the same, yet his extreme antics have fueled two movies, a 12-episode TV series, and a legacy sequel on the way. It’s a franchise that’s proven to have surprising staying power, largely because of its Australian identity. It’s not just a serial killer slasher story.
It’s also a franchise that was fortunate enough to have its viciousness coinciding with American horror’s equally graphic “torture porn” fascination. In fact, it’s hard to watch most of the torture porn films from the 2000s – Hostel, Wrong Turn, Turistas, Eden Lake – without early Ozploitation masterpieces coming to mind. Wolf Creek highlights how Ozploitation horror took the already-outrageous staples of the ‘70s and pushed them even further. Wolf Creek takes ideas from Wake in Fright and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock from three decades earlier, while new horror films are pulling from Wolf Creek and this genre’s ever-evolving identity.
One could argue that James Wan’s Malignant, in all its silly, extreme glory, is his attempt to embrace that looser, do-it-yourself quality of ozploitation filmmaking. The same is true for Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade, which was actually made with the type of low-budget that pushed vintage ozploitation filmmakers to get creative. The boundaries between low-budget DIY ozploitation flick and indie festival favorite with an A-list star have become increasingly blurred. 2024’s The Surfer, for instance, is an Australian psychological thriller that doubles as an unconventional character study that hits all the major Ozploitation notes, but also happens to star Nicolas Cage. Ozploitation is no longer just a freeing way for new filmmakers to get their foot in the door, but also a place of creative refuge and spiritual inspiration for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Ozploitation’s imprint on the horror genre cannot be underestimated. There’s been a heavier embrace towards grittier and more unforgiving horror stories that are set within brutal environments. However, ozploitation has also transformed global genre cinema and helped spotlight international film and prove that some of the industry’s most interesting stuff isn’t coming out of America. There’s an extremely strong roster of established Australian filmmakers that continue to innovate, such as George Miller, Jennifer Kent, Baz Luhrmann, Cate Shortland, and Justin Kurzel, while new and emerging voices, like Penny Lane is Dead’s Mia’kate Russell, are positioned to usher in a new age of Ozploitation horror.
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