Dead Kids | 1981 | Australia/New Zealand | Michael Laughlin

Tonally inconsistent and amazingly evasive when it comes to a genre, this Ozploitation production is more commonly known as Strange Behaviour in today’s market. A series of bizarre killings perpetrated by local kids seem centered around the local Galesburg University, where professor Gwen Parkinson seems to be conducting unorthodox experiments on the students, at the behest of her mentor’s legacy. When the local policeman’s son, Pete, seems to be caught up in the happenings, his father John decides to find out the truth once and for all, uncovering a sinister plot behind the curtain. Heavily inspired by the pulpy science fiction horrors of the 1950s combined with the aesthetics of the 80s slasher flick, Dead Kids is a truly bizarre production that ought to be seen based on the weirdness of it all. It’s not necessarily weird that this one was seized though; a scene of an eyeball being injected, another of instructive wrist-slashing, and the coldly blunt title were perfectly adequate to get alarm bells ringing.