Helensvale’s house of horrors reel deal
BURIED in the midst of suburbia in the city’s north is a horror house where the most gruesome of nightmares has been unfolding for months.
Pulling up outside the house on a quiet Helensvale street, it looked like a normal family home with brick walls, a green roof and a large front lawn.
It’s what was behind the house which was unsettling.
Approaching the shed, I noticed a blood-drenched mannequin without a head sitting on the ground next to a commercial spray bottle filled with fake blood.
Inside the shed was a mock home with mouldy looking carpet and vintage photos hanging from dirty green walls – filled with a dozen people chatting.
This is the set for one of the Gold Coast’s latest horror films, House of Inequity.
Josh Hale, from Halestorm Productions, wrote and directed the American-funded independent film and hired a Gold Coast and USbased production team, actors and special effects experts from Stingray Sushi Studios.
Actors David Cook, Stephanie Castles, Brittany Bell, Todd Leigh, Parker Little, Stephanie Ranty, Kyle Elliott and Keyth Williams are the stars of the film.
House of Inequity has been shot in two locations on the Gold Coast – an abandonedlooking wooden house in Jacobs Well and the makeshift derelict home inside a Helensvale backyard shed.
“It was very serendipitous. We needed a house in the middle of nowhere. We started driving ... floated around the fields a bit and just kept making turns,” Mr Hale said.
“All of a sudden we see this house and thought ‘that’s it’. It’s on top of a little hill. It was perfect.”
They spent six days shooting at the Jacobs Well property and would return to the shed afterwards, where everyone from the production team was hands-on constructing a mock kitchen and lounge room, spraying the walls with coffee to make them look dirty.
Once the inside was completed, the team spent the next three months working from 5pm to 3.30am filming.
“Sometimes the nights drag on and the sun comes up and everybody’s like ‘nope, we are going to get it done’. Everyone has an above and beyond kind of attitude,” Mr Hale said.
As someone who is squeamish, I was reluctant to watch a short clip from the film shot the night before I was on set.
Just a still image from a scene on an iPhone – which I cannot give away – was so horrific I couldn’t look at it.
This isn’t the first film Mr Hale, a former Californiabased producer and director, has worked on. In 2017 he premiered his first feature film, comedy Digital Athletes: The Road to Seat League, at the Gold Coast Film Festival at HOTA, which won several awards.
But he wasn’t always into making movies, going to law school before quitting to photograph and film skateboarders.
“I was sick of being the 35year-old lying in the gutter filming people doing skate tricks,” he said.
“I tried to make my own film in 2009 and failed miserably. I was overly ambitious.
“I didn’t know anything except I wanted to make a film.
“I always loved writing so it was a natural progression.”
Mr Hale attended the Southport-based New York Film Academy, which he now works for.
He said House of Inequity came together naturally, with the first draft only taking him 16 days to write.
“I thought ‘no one is going to read my notebooks but if I put it on film someone maybe will watch it’,” Mr Hale said.
Filming will wrap up on Tuesday. House of Inequity is expected to premiere at the end of the year.
IT WAS VERY SERENDIPITOUS. WE NEEDED A HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE ... ALL OF A SUDDEN WE SEE THIS HOUSE
JOSH HALE