Movies
A Mythical Panther Attacks Australia in Horror-Comedy ‘Bloody Legend’
Mysterious sightings of a large black panther-like creature roaming the Australian bushland have been reported for decades, with dozens of alleged encounters logged each year.
The enduring piece of Aussie folklore is the inspiration for upcoming horror-comedy Blood Legend, Variety reports.
Yaz Haddad, co-host of Yaz & Feras on Sydney’s 2Day FM, will star as Benny, a social-media obsessive from Western Sydney whose bid to capture proof of a mythical big cat on camera spirals into something far more dangerous.
The film leans into the legend’s comedy potential while pushing into genuine horror territory as Benny’s viral ambitions put him and his friends, played by Hamze Taha, Marcus Trgo, and Tony Rahme, in mortal danger.
Natassia Halabi, Fady Kassab, Cameron James, Ben Fransham (What We Do in the Shadows), Dom Littrich, Kathleen O’Dwyer, Will Ward, Benjamin Cremen, Sarah Michaels, and Nariman Dein round out the cast.
Catherine Stone and Susan Taylor co-direct from a script by Taylor.
Taylor and Bianca Austin produce under their Thundercat Productions banner along with Stone via Crybaby. The picture is independently financed by the producers and is also raising funds through the Australian Cultural Fund.
“I wanted to make a film in the spirit of those iconic and incredibly original Aussie comedies we all grew up watching, and luckily, I found a crew of absolute legends who wanted to jump in and help me do it,” Taylor said. “The world certainly needs more laughter right now.”
“On the surface it’s loud and dangerous, but underneath it’s about ego and the cost of chasing validation in a world obsessed with going viral,” Stone added. “You’ll be laughing hard with dips of fear.”
“It’s raw, funny, tense and feels like the missing piece to Aussie film,” Haddad commented. “I also love that it puts second generation Australians front and center, which we don’t see enough of in Australian movies and TV.”
Bloody Legend enters principal photography in Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains of New South Wales this month.
Top row (L-R): Hamze Taha, Yaz Haddad, Marcus Trgo. Second row (L-R): Catherine Stone, Susan Taylor, Bianca Austin, Tony Rahme
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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