AustLit

'The three articles in this subsection return to scholarly debates at the core of research into Australian horror movies and Ozploitation cinema. In terms of the former, the horror film remains under-researched in Australian film studies. This is not surprising. On the one hand, since the mid-2000s the Australian film industry has produced a handful of popular, and internationally influential horror movies such as The Babadook (2014), Daybreakers (2009), and Wolf Creek (2005). On the other hand, the majority of Australian horror films rarely receive critical acclaim, nor are they widely discussed in mainstream film criticism; and for every Wolf Creek, there is a long list of movies such as Red Billabong (2016), The Pack (2015), Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse (2015), and There’s Something in the Pilliga (2014) that disappear into the long-tail of the market. Few local horror movies released each year secure cinema release and the average title circulates in home video markets, and/or subscription and pay-per-download services. As a conceptual category, Australian horror movies emerge at the intersection of cult cinema; Australia-international cinema that can be difficult to evaluate on the basis of cultural value (the setting of Triangle [2009, Christopher Smith] for instance is never specified although Australian actors play characters who speak with American accents); and genre film-making long associated with Hollywood-inspired film-making. As a consequence, until quite recently the subject has rarely been central to dominant discourses in Australian film studies concerned with distinguishing Australian cinema as a national cinema.' (Introduction)

'Edwin G. Bowen’s White Death (1936) is an Australian–American film about shark fishing that stars the American novelist and fisherman Zane Grey as himself. Set mainly at the Great Barrier Reef, it has a semi-fictional plot about Grey’s quest to kill a shark in the face of opposition from an anti-fishing activist, Newton Smith (Alfred Frith). Although White Death was financially unsuccessful and has received little attention in histories of Australian film or Grey’s life, it is significant in several ways. The film is unusual among early Australian productions for combining elements of the genres of travelogue documentary, fictional adventure film and exotic exploitation film. It reflects an American perspective of Australia as an exotic location. White Death is also linked to the interwar development of tourism at the Great Barrier Reef and foreshadows the growth of the environmental conservation movement.' (Publication abstract)