From the director of 'The Truman Show' and 'Dead Poets Society' comes Peter Weir's early exploitation genre masterpiece that inspired "Mad Max" and countless other small town terror movies. With great thespian turns from John Mellion and Chris Heywood this film is still very effective today and has a strange power on the viewer. "Cars..." reveals the potential of the so called exploitation or genre picture. Would anyone have judged or guessed the depth and brilliance of Weir's potential and career from this one film? The perceptive would say yes. Look at the ideas. Mythology, imagery, 'the message', the subtext of technology. The keys to Weir's later work are found here and the discovery of these paths is a worthy challenge to the cinephile.

Made in the early '80's this film captures the nihilism and misanthropy of a group of four girls and their drug addled cough mixture drinking pal. One of the girls is going to NYC and is given $5,000 by her dad. Later that night the girls go on a binge of drug snorting, nightclubbing, getting laid and pissed on the seedy streets of Sydney. The $5,000 goes missing and the girls have to face the stark reality of their friendships, bonds and lifestyle. Done in a completely emphatic and non-condescending style with deep sympathy for the characters this a chance to see this Aussie classic on the big screen. A brilliant drug counter culture movie that will have you partying like it's 1979. Haydn Keenan does an excellent job with the ensemble capturing the mood of the early eighties perfectly. Introduced and Q& A by Haydn Keenan.

The great Richard Franklin's early horror, yes I said horror, film shows a path that Australian cinema unfortunately has not followed too extensively to now. Robert Thompson is Patrick, a supposedly comatose patient who develops psychic powers powers after killing his parents, he wreaks havoc at a mental institution in film that anticipates "Scanners". Just the message we need to teach the youth of today! Franklin is an underappreciated Australian auteur whose early work we are happy to excavate for you. Don't miss this one, it's pretty cool and spooky.

Just your normal modern day vampire film about contemporary blood suckers keeping human cattle to milk for blood, with David Hemmings administering psychedelic drugs and the undead "Brotherhood" processing the blood for consumption. Yes this film is Australian! Believe it or not. We love it here at MUFF. Max Phipps, Henry Silva (recently seen in "Ghost Dog") and Rod Mullinar. Some Oz film is really interesting and this is an example. This baby you just have to see. The Australian vampire film rules!

When Australia's original underground feature first scorched a screen in 1975, politicians gasped, censors censored (hence PURE S), and film reviewers formed a queue to point-out the "terrible" production values, "bad" acting and moral "irresponsibility" of this incendiary work of oz cinema. And, of course, film festival programmers didn't want to know about it. Sound familiar?

PURE SHIT documents 24 frenetic hours in the lives of four junkies looking to score some righteous H on Melbourne's mean streets, circa 1975. John Laurie, Carol Porter, Gary Waddell and Anne Hetherington are extraordinary as the quartet hooning around the inner suburbs in an old Holden, desperately seeking chemical satisfaction.

They crash parties, fix fast, fight cops, fix rough, rob chemists, fix wrong, get ripped-off, fix dangerous - in short, do absolutely anything to fix! Every scene is a classic, with a personal fave being the boys scoring from a couple of Fitzroy lowlifes and hitting-up their bug powder dust. Pukerama!

Funky star-spots include writer Helen Garner as a freaked-out clean-freak, Greg (HG Nelson) Pickhaver as a scumbag Heroin dealer, Max Gillies as a cold-turkey guru egghead, Bob Weiss as a shaggy Holden fan, and the legendary Phil Motherwell (BLOODLUST, REDBALL, PEARLS) as a bug-eyed, drug-fucked, paranoid gun fanatic.

After this, director Bert Deling went the way of Australia's other great visionary filmmaker, Sandy (STONE) Harbutt - his career evaporated! Producer Bob Weiss went on to make heaps of "respected" oz film and television, but we won't hold that against him. Not many people go to the mountain top on their first project like he did! And the film is still impossible to see (unreleased on vid), and a footnote (at best!) in the history books.

Graphic, insane, confronting, grungy, hilarious? Definitely! The greatest Australian film ever made? ABSOLUTELY!

- Jon Hewitt

This is the weirdest and strangest film in our retrospective this year, if not the whole festival! We are talking Azaria Chamberlain, she was not killed by a dingo but saved and raised by said dingos. She is raised in an incestuous dingo environment and travels back to Sydney transformed as the second coming...a new messiah for a new age. She returns home to the demented family of a perverted movie producer and his wife trying to cover up their atrocities, two Nazi dykes busy raising up little Adolph with spankings and all, David Argue as a psychic investigator and incestuous dog boy, a mad scientist trying to discover the cure for AIDS and other diseases through human experimentation, its all here folks. "Pandemonium" is the castle of Satan in Hell and Keenan exposes the dreamscape of our unconscious in a daring and controversial film. "Pandemonium" is an acid trip of originality and vision that explores human dreamscapes and unconscious material with lucid brilliance and irony. Superb, a must see. Why hasn't anyone given Haydn Keenan pots of dough to create his unique art. Introduced and Q&A by Haydn Keenan.

From the director of "The Bone Collector" and "The Hunt for Red October" comes a tale of two 'free spirits' played by Tim Hunter and Gary Foley on the road stealing booze, getting high, shooting the breeze and talking the shit. Outstanding performances from Hunter and Foley as well as Zac Martin who was sadly gunned down by Australian Police(!) echoiong the movie. This politically incorrect road movie that says reams about the hypocrisy of people trying to paint over a real reconciliation process with idle talk and 'bread and circuses'. Political, emotional, real and touching... a great debut from Noyce who was snapped up by Hollywood unfortunately like most great Oz talent.

Remember those "Australian Lighting" late night ads? Did you realize that the salesman on those ads was a multi-media pioneer who made one of the first made for video features here in OZ if not the world. Yes Ollie Martin, raconteur and businessman paved the way for video features like "Marauders", "Bloodlust" and "Mad Bomber in Love" and other vid features. Featuring a wacky cast including Angry Anderson, Gavin Wood, Alan Dale and Christine Jetson with music by Brian Mannix, need we say more. A fun treat that is a slasher film that won't be seen at ony other Oz fest. this year we promise.

Post-modern exploitation film buff Brophy's twisted vision is realised in this bizarre mixture of drugs, gore, suburban mayhem and morphological consciousness. From the leisure resort Vimuville to the suburban nightmare of Homesville, Brophy gives us a cast including Gerard Kennedy, Andrew Daddo, Ian Smith, Lisa McCune(!) and Tiffany Lamb that plays like an episode on "Neighbours" on Crank, acid, Xanax and Vicadin. A real visionary classic that Brophy puts his distinctive stamp all over. A gem that should be seen on the big screen. Introduced and Q&A by Phillip Brophy.

The underrated and criticsed by the 'cabal'... best Oz film of last year, two tough cops on the trail of a paedophile serial killer. Shot on the lunch money of most Aussie movies and finished in style on 35mm once the government woke up to its brilliance. "Redball" points the way forward for guerilla filmmaking. Superb performances especially from John Brumpton and Belinda McClory rivet you to the seat for a no holds barred look at police corruption. Recent discoveries at St.Kilda Rd have revealed nothing has changed or ever will. Corruption is part and parcel of police work and this film waves the flag for a new morality and concept of a little corruption in order to stop the greater ills of society. Don't miss this hard-boiled Oz classic. Introduced and Q&A by Jon Hewwiit and Belinda McClory.

The early nineties vampire gangster picture years before from "From Dusk to Dawn" that has built a wee cult following over the years. Banned In Britain. Three vampires (Robert O'Neill, Kelly Chapman, Jane Wallace) need to leave town to escape the religious crusade of Brother Bem (Phil Motherwell) and decide to raid a casino (before Crown!) to get money to travel in style. Pure Australian expolitation fare with a large tongue in cheek slice of humor and self-parody. The film debut of Wolstencroft and Hewitt that launched their disreputable careers.

An Australian soft-core porn film from Richard Franklin, saluting the ŚKing‚ John the Wadd‚ Holmes and William Margold. Our very own Boogie Nights‚ masterpiece shot on film before the video revolution changed porn forever. A fun piece of 70's sleaze that is so kitsch and groovy it will have you swinging and jumping naked into swimming pools. "Fantasm" - all at MUFF salute you!