Episode 786: Pandemonium (1987)

The Projection Booth continues its dive into Australian cinema with Pandemonium, the delirious 1987 feature from writer-director Haydn Keenan. A film that plays like a fever dream filtered through exploitation cinema, absurdist theater, and cultural anxiety, Pandemonium resists easy summary—and happily punishes anyone who tries.

The story unfolds through the fractured testimony of Kales Leadingham, an escapee from an asylum portrayed by David Argue, who recounts his time working as a surveyor at a decaying movie studio run by the grotesque siblings (or spouses?) EB and PB De Wolf. What follows is a barrage of unstable identities, pagan imagery, religious parody, sexual panic, fascist satire, and mythic nonsense, all orbiting the enigmatic “Dingo Girl,” whose presence seems to fracture reality itself.

Mike is joined by Heather Drain and Payton McCarty-Simas to unpack Keenan’s anything-goes approach to narrative, performance, and tone. The discussion wrestles with the film’s wild accents, confrontational humor, taboo imagery, and relentless escalation—from Nazi roleplay and talking mirrors to possessed dolls, zombie parties, musical numbers, and outright apocalyptic imagery.

The episode also features an interview with Haydn Keenan, who reflects on the film’s creation, its confrontational sensibility, and its afterlife as a cult object.

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