Penny Lane is Dead: Trailer, Cast of the 1980s Ozploitation Horror

A new Ozploitation horror film is coming to Shudder in August. Penny Lane is Dead follows a group of friends who set out to have a fun night, but then things go horribly wrong.

Director Mia-kate Russell is widely known for her award-winning short films. Penny Lane is Dead marks her feature debut, and it already has critics raving. Dread Central’s Ashliene McMenamy offered this praise: “Russell’s take [on the subgenre] is brutal, but also darkly funny, fresh, and cathartic, with some brilliant performances and a sapphic love story at its center.”

Here’s everything we know about the movie.

What is Penny Lane is Dead about?

Here’s the synopsis from Shudder: “Set on a hot summer’s night in 1986 Australia, Penny Lane is celebrating getting into college with her longtime girlfriends Toni and Amy. The night, however, does not turn out as planned. After Penny’s jealous and troubled cousin Kat decides a cruel prank is in order, what begins as a thoughtless spiked cupcake game spirals into a night of bloodshed. In the Ozploitation tradition, Mia-kate Russell’s debut feature is a blood-soaked descent into love, betrayal and survival, infused with dark comedy and rage.”

Who is in it?

Members of the cast include Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn, Tahlee Fereday, Alexandra Jensen, Bailey Spalding, Ben O’Toole, Steve Le Marquand, and Fletcher Humphrys.

Who is Mia-kate Russell?

Mia-kate Russell directed Penny Lane is Dead. Here’s more about her from Shudder:

“An artist with an original voice and an unapologetic flair for thriller and horror storytelling, Mia-kate Russell’s directorial work is marked as much by darkness as it is at times a sly, even camp, humour. She has the gift of creating emotionally impactful stories that challenges the audience to examine their own behavior as her complex and flawed characters are forced to confront the consequences of their own. Mia-kate is committed to making wickedly entertaining character-based genre films with authenticity and a social conscience.

“As a writer and director, her short films have won more than 30 awards and screened at prestigious festivals all around the world including SITGES, Screamfest and Shriekfest.

“Her first short film Auditioning Fanny, starring Sam Johnson, won the Best Short Film award at the Phenom Film Festival (2012), her next short Swallow won multiple awards for FX Makeup and had the honor of being nominated for Best Picture at SITGES (2014), Death By Muff was a finalist of the ABCs of Death 2 and was included on the horror anthology ABCs of Death 2.5, Liz Drives (2017) won multiple awards at genre festivals both in Australia and overseas including Sydney Indie Film Festival and Monster Fest, and the award-winning Maggie May (2019) was a hit with audiences and critics at festivals all over the world, the last two surpassing 100,000 views each on online platform ALTER. Mia-kate’s work is featured in Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s 2018 book 1000 Women in Horror. ”