Shelley’s book on Australian horror films a disconnected mess

book-cover-australian-horror-filmsIt’s a rare day when I’ll outright dismiss a book on basis of cost, but Peter Shelley‘s new reference work, Australian Horror Films, 1973-2010, from McFarland Publishing, has so little to recommend it, the nearly $50 price tag seems vaguely obscene. While the introduction contains an excellent overview of the history of Australian cinema, it’s barely twelve pages.

The remainder of this rather hefty tome’s 300+ pages consist mainly of reference. Each film is presented with a plot synopsis, cast and crew details, then followed up with a more in-depth summary of the plot. Add in a few details pulled from the commentary on the DVD and a selection of some review pull quotes, and that’s it.

Shelley’s book is essentially a series of softcover Wikipedia entries. There’s minimal work from the author in terms of actual analysis, and how these films fit into Australian horror films as an overarching genre. Part of it may be due to the fact that Aussie films, existing as they did at the bottom of the world, had to resort to “aping American films” in order to turn a profit, not allowing them to develop the identity of Italian or British horror during the same time frame.

However, the author does the movies no justice in Australian Horror Films. Separating each into its own self-contained section — rather than taking films from certain time periods or settings (“lost in the Outback,” et al) and grouping them together in that manner — does nothing to set up “Australian horror” as an identifier that signifies anything.

It’s a point further diluted when Shelley states on the very first page that “some of the titles I have chosen have foreign cast and crew but have been included as Australian horror titles since they were filmed or partly filmed on Australian locations.” In terms of making a point about national identity influencing film, these included films serve only to further weaken any sort of structure Australian Horror Films might have had. Just because Tim Burton shot Batman in London does not make it a British film.

If one needs a way to get an overview of Australian horror, they’d do far better to view the excellent documentary Not Quite Hollywood, which does more to set up Australian genre films in terms of national identity in its first five minutes than Shelley does in his entire book.