About this episode

Mia-Kate Russell discusses her debut Ozploitation slasher film Penny Lane Is Dead and her experiences in filmmaking.

Mia-Kate Russell talks with Mike about Penny Lane Is Dead, her Ozploitation slasher debut, now streaming on Shudder. After twenty years as a film and TV makeup artist, Russell wrote and shot the film off the back of five self-funded shorts, drawing on her own delinquent 1980s Australian childhood and a long-held urge to put a genuinely awful teenage girl on screen — the impulse that became Penny's cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn). She talks about landing at Fantasia and getting matched with producers at Umbrella Entertainment and Shudder, shooting in a wintry Adelaide with a cast and crew she'd mostly never met — including Bailey Spalding as Penny and Alexandra Jensen as Amy — cutting six pages from the third act mid-shoot after a scheduling error, and how filming in continuity meant her editor could hand back a rough cut every single morning. She also gets into the soundtrack, built around Aussie rock touchstones like AC/DC and The Angels' "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again," an in-joke for anyone who grew up in an Australian pub. Then there's Fantasia itself, where a scene involving a kitchen appliance made an audience member pass out mid-screening. Penny Lane Is Dead is…

People in this episode

Host: Mike

Guest: Mia-Kate Russell

Topics covered

• Ozploitation
• slasher film
• film production
• interview
• Australian cinema

Keywords

• Penny Lane Is Dead
• Ozploitation
• slasher
• Fantasia
• Shudder

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Umbrella Entertainment, Shudder

Products: AC/DC, The Angels

Books & works: Penny Lane Is Dead

Places: Adelaide

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