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Strange Country - Episode 05: Life Before Jackson
New Zealand horror did not start with Peter Jackson.
In 1984 a gory little film about mutants on an island won the grand prize at a Paris festival of fantastic cinema, with Alejandro Jodorowsky heading the jury. It was called Death Warmed Up. It came out three years before Bad Taste.
This episode goes back to the country before the rupture. A small, broke, isolated film culture that made only five feature films in the thirty three years to 1972, then cracked open after Sleeping Dogs in 1977 and started making genre films soaked in dread. The three films that all claim to be the first New Zealand horror. The gothic novelist who died certain no one would ever read him. And the blind spot underneath all of it: a settler cinema that found horror in small towns, empty roads and borrowed American slashers, and looked straight past the oldest seam of the supernatural on its own islands. That material had to wait for Māori filmmakers, and they arrived in the very same year Jackson did.
Films and works covered:
Death Warmed Up (1984, dir. David Blyth)
Strange Behavior (1981, dir. Michael Laughlin)
The Scarecrow (1982, dir. Sam Pillsbury)
Mr Wrong (1985, dir. Gaylene Preston)
The Quiet Earth (1985, dir. Geoff Murphy)
Under the Mountain (1981, TVNZ)
Angel Mine (1978, dir. David Blyth)
Sleeping Dogs (1977, dir. Roger Donaldson)
Ngati (1987, dir. Barry Barclay)
Mauri (1988, dir. Merata Mita)
Cinema of Unease (1995, Sam Neill)
In this episode: Why New Zealand barely made films for most of the twentieth century, and the cultural cringe that kept it that way. Ronald Hugh Morrieson, the king of New Zealand gothic, and the most famous opening line in the country's writing. Sam Neill's "cinema of unease," and how geography became a national mood. The three way fight over which film is really the first New Zealand horror. The Māori thread, and why Māori authored cinema arrives at the Jackson boundary, not before.
Coming up: Late Fees with Mat Dalby launches Thursday 25 June, a fortnightly review segment. First up: Wake in Fright (1971). Next narration episode: Picnic at Hanging Rock, Thursday 2 July.
Every film mentioned is in the Video Vault, the database of Australian and New Zealand horror, at strangecountry.com.au.
Strange Country. A field guide to Antipodean horror.
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By Mat DalbyNew Zealand horror did not start with Peter Jackson.
In 1984 a gory little film about mutants on an island won the grand prize at a Paris festival of fantastic cinema, with Alejandro Jodorowsky heading the jury. It was called Death Warmed Up. It came out three years before Bad Taste.
This episode goes back to the country before the rupture. A small, broke, isolated film culture that made only five feature films in the thirty three years to 1972, then cracked open after Sleeping Dogs in 1977 and started making genre films soaked in dread. The three films that all claim to be the first New Zealand horror. The gothic novelist who died certain no one would ever read him. And the blind spot underneath all of it: a settler cinema that found horror in small towns, empty roads and borrowed American slashers, and looked straight past the oldest seam of the supernatural on its own islands. That material had to wait for Māori filmmakers, and they arrived in the very same year Jackson did.
Films and works covered:
Death Warmed Up (1984, dir. David Blyth)
Strange Behavior (1981, dir. Michael Laughlin)
The Scarecrow (1982, dir. Sam Pillsbury)
Mr Wrong (1985, dir. Gaylene Preston)
The Quiet Earth (1985, dir. Geoff Murphy)
Under the Mountain (1981, TVNZ)
Angel Mine (1978, dir. David Blyth)
Sleeping Dogs (1977, dir. Roger Donaldson)
Ngati (1987, dir. Barry Barclay)
Mauri (1988, dir. Merata Mita)
Cinema of Unease (1995, Sam Neill)
In this episode: Why New Zealand barely made films for most of the twentieth century, and the cultural cringe that kept it that way. Ronald Hugh Morrieson, the king of New Zealand gothic, and the most famous opening line in the country's writing. Sam Neill's "cinema of unease," and how geography became a national mood. The three way fight over which film is really the first New Zealand horror. The Māori thread, and why Māori authored cinema arrives at the Jackson boundary, not before.
Coming up: Late Fees with Mat Dalby launches Thursday 25 June, a fortnightly review segment. First up: Wake in Fright (1971). Next narration episode: Picnic at Hanging Rock, Thursday 2 July.
Every film mentioned is in the Video Vault, the database of Australian and New Zealand horror, at strangecountry.com.au.
Strange Country. A field guide to Antipodean horror.