Celia (1989 film)
A 1989 Australian horror drama about a girl's fantasy and grim reality.
Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons
Celia (also released as *Celia: Child of Terror*) is a 1989 Australian film blending horror and drama, written and directed by Ann Turner. The story takes place in 1957 and follows a creative young girl living near Melbourne during the Red Scare, whose imaginative perspective on her surroundings leads to tragic outcomes. The film premiered in Australia in 1989 and reached the United States in 1990, earning critical acclaim for its acting, especially the performance of Rebecca Smart.
In 1957 Box Hill, eight-year-old Celia Carmichael is deeply affected by her grandmother’s death. After the funeral, she imagines a monstrous blue Hobyah hand reaching through her bedroom window. Her mother Pat comforts her, and they discover the noise is just a possum. The next day, Celia meets new neighbors, the Tanner family. On her birthday, she is upset to receive a bicycle instead of a pet rabbit; her father Ray dismisses rabbits as vermin. At church, the priest condemns the Australian Peace Council as a communist front. Celia finds solace in visions of her grandmother, especially when bullied at school by her cousin Stephanie. While playing with the Tanner children in a quarry, Stephanie and her brothers steal a wooden Japanese mask that belonged to Celia’s grandmother and chase her.
Ray becomes angry upon learning the Tanners are members of the Communist Party of Australia, creating tension between the families. He forbids Celia from visiting them and buys her a pet rabbit named Murgatroyd to placate her. When Celia is caught speaking to the Tanner children again, Ray grounds her and tells his brother Burke, the local sergeant and Stephanie’s father, about the Tanners’ political beliefs. Celia has a nightmare of her grandmother scratching at her window, followed by a gruesome Hobyah. One night, Celia and the Tanner children sneak to the quarry, make effigies of Burke, Stephanie, and Ray, and perform a ritual around a fire, stabbing the effigies with needles and throwing two into Stephanie’s window. Celia hides her father’s effigy in a cupboard; when he finds it, he beats her with a belt. After Evan Tanner loses his job because of Ray’s disclosure, the children burn Ray’s effigy, wishing him dead. Stephanie and her friends ambush them, lock them in a shack, and brand Murgatroyd with a hot poker. In retaliation, Celia and the Tanner children throw flour bags at Stephanie a
- Release year
- 1989
- Country
- Australia
- Director
- Ann Turner
- Genre
- Horror drama
- Notable cast
- Rebecca Smart, Nicholas Eadie, Victoria Longley, Mary-Anne Fahey
- Awards
- Grand Prix for best film at the 1989 Créteil International Women's Film Festival
Lore & Background
The film was inspired by an article about a rabbit muster in the 1950s organized by the Victorian government under premier Henry Bolte. Ann Turner, a graduate of Swinburne who had worked at Film Victoria and the Australian Film Commission, wrote the script in 1984, winning the AWGIE for Best Unproduced Screenplay. The film was co-produced by Gordon Glenn and Timothy White.
Celia opened at the 1989 Créteil International Women's Film Festival in France, where it won the Grand Prix. It was released in Melbourne on 3 March 1989 as part of the 'Women In Focus' film festival held by the Australian Film Commission. In the United States, it opened in New York City on 19 March 1990, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Department of Film of the Museum of Modern Art's New Directors/New Films series.
The plot follows eight-year-old Celia Carmichael in 1957 Box Hill, Australia, who is devastated by her grandmother's death. She envisions a monstrous blue hand of a Hobyah, and her fantasy world intertwines with real tensions over communist neighbors, a pet rabbit named Murgatroyd, and the Victorian government's ban on rabbits. The story culminates in Celia hallucinating her uncle Burke as a Hobyah and shooting him dead with her father's shotgun.
Reader's Guide
Celia is significant as a low-budget Australian horror drama that captures childhood anxiety and the shift from fantasy to stark adult reality. Critics praised Rebecca Smart's performance and Ann Turner's slow building of tension, though some found the last third excessive. Journalist Kim Newman lauded it as 'one of the great movies about the terrors, wonders and strangeness of childhood, and a still-undervalued classic of Australian cinema.' Chris Neilson from DVD Talk called it 'a low-budget forerunner of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.' The film was released on VHS in the United States as Celia: Child of Terror, and later on DVD and Blu-ray, including as part of the 'All the Haunts Be Ours' folk horror box set. Its legacy endures as a unique coming-of-age story set against the Red Scare and government rabbit eradication.
Did You Know?
- The film won the Grand Prix for best film at the 1989 Créteil International Women's Film Festival.
- Ann Turner wrote the script in 1984, winning the AWGIE for Best Unproduced Screenplay.
- The film was inspired by a newspaper article about a rabbit muster in the 1950s organized by the Victorian government under premier Henry Bolte.
- Celia was released on Blu-ray in December 2021 as part of Severin Films' 'All the Haunts Be Ours' box set.
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