New Ozploitation horror is like Puberty Blues from hell

Penny Lane is Dead pairs gory horror with a queer love story Wed 22 Jul 2026 at 4:30am Warning: This article discusses sexual assault. Before Australian filmmaker Mia'Kate Russell had even put pen to paper for her first feature film, she was already known as The Blood Queen. The writer and director of new Ozploitation horror Penny Lane Is Dead has spent decades in the often overlooked Australian special effects and make-up scene. "Coming into horror, I don't know what came first: me loving gore or doing special effects, or did I start special effects as an excuse to love gore?" she tells ABC Arts. "When I started, there weren't that many of us … maybe four? I was in studios doing body castings and talking about intrinsic painting with silicone and how you can make blood come through here. "It's so creative and so much fun. I don't know why anybody would want to do anything else with their lives, to be honest." Dead as a doornail Mix together Puberty Blues and Wake in Fright, then run it through a night from hell and you'll have something that resembles Penny Lane Is Dead. Newly graduated Penny (Bailey Spalding) is the perfect picture of socially normalised femininity; blonde, beautiful, smart and finally confident enough to confess her love for long-time friend Toni (Tahlee Faraday). To mark Penny's acceptance into university, the girls and their friend Amy (Alexandra Jensen) head to a remote beach house for a 'no dick' celebration. The festivities are derailed when Penny's disgruntled cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelson) shows up toting drug-spiked cupcakes, her criminally entangled boyfriend Angus (Ben O'Toole) and his crew of reluctant henchmen. A night of dickless revelry quickly turns deadly as Kat takes out a lifetime of frustrations on her unwitting cousin. But as Angus's entitled fury spins out and Toni is left as the last line of defence the question becomes: is Kat a villain or a victim? "She's a victim of herself. Absolutely. Kat just digs her own grave one step after another and then blames other people," Russell says. "She's always been jealous of her cousin and the sad thing is, Penny would have let her into her world. It's as if Kat and Toni were almost the same person who made different choices in their life. I think Kat would love Toni to be her best friend but Kat made wrong choices and Toni made the right choice." As much as Russell says she's ecstatic to finally have a full feature to fill with her gory delights after multiple critically acclaimed shorts, she's also stoked to centre a queer love story within her yucky vision. "I grew up in a gay lesbian household and I was always made to feel different or told I was different. I identify as queer and when I was in my late 20s I had a girlfriend and we were always talking that there were no queer stories," she says. "If a queer story came out, it was such a big thing. "Have you seen the one gay film? Have you seen the one lesbian film? "So when I was writing this, I was like let's put that dream girl for girls into a film. Let's put an out rock 'n' roll chick into a film. Make it a love story. I love the idea of Penny being the most progressive and gay and not giving a f**k about it." Where's the line? In a movie full of shredded faces, punctured arms and general bloody viscera, Russell says there is one scene that is proving hard to watch for preview audiences. Early on, under Kat's encouragement, Angus sexually assaults an intoxicated Penny. Or at least this is what Russell implies. No assault is shown on screen instead Russell holds in tight on Kat's steely expression as the diegetic soundscape provides ample stomach-pitting horror. "The sexual assault scene took me back to when I was a teenager in the late 80s, these are things that happened. We didn't call that sexual assault back then, It was drunk guys rooting a drunk chick," Russell says. "If she was passed out, then she was a slut but it wasn't that she was sexually assaulted. That was the culture. "When I was younger, we used to say that sexual assault was a part of being a woman, which is a terrible thing to say, but I think if there's 10 women in a room, six of them have experienced it. It shouldn't be swept under the rug ever." After spending so long in the grubbiest parts of Australia's horror scene, Russell is delighted to see Penny Lane is Dead hit the silver screen alongside the women she came up with. "It's literally a dream come true. And I know I keep saying that, but it really is. I was talking to my girlfriend last night, Sandra Sciberras, and her film Seven Snipers came out last month," she says. "On the phone, lying in bed, comparing our animals. And I said, 'You know, if we die tomorrow, we've both made a feature film that's come out at the cinema. So we've done that thing and we should be proud'." Perpetually writing, Russell already has her eyes fixated on her next project and is heartened by Australia's robust and growing horror fare such as Adrian Chiarella's Leviticus - but she thinks there is always another line to push. "I would love for [Australians] to be able to not have to pull back as much," she says. "I would love for them to be able to say, look at what's happening in Europe. Look what we can do. We don't need to be like the Americans. Let's take the Europe vibe, and let's give us more freedom. And I had a lot of freedom. Let's go that little inch further. "Because the irony is, if you want horror, you turn on the news, what's happening in real life; horror films are nothing compared to that." Penny Lane is Dead is in Australian cinemas from July 23.