Debris trail leads to lucky boaties’ rescue
hits, though nothing compared to It which is a true global monster and unlike anything we’ve seen for a long time.’’
Timpson has had a sizeable influence film culture in New Zealand, from creating the Incredibly Strange Film Festival in the 1990s to launching the 48Hours film-making competition to producing his own features over the past decade. His horror titles range from The ABCs of Death and its sequel to heavy metal horror comedy Deathgasm and domestic horror Housebound.
From Death Warmed Up to Deathgasm by way of Braindead, New Zealand has stepped up. To generalise wildly, we used to do po-faced gothic and now we do horror for laughs. Harrington hopes to pin down the local style in a major research project. The big question: why must our horrors insist on being funny?
‘‘People like making horror,’’ she says. ‘‘People like watching it. And teenagers love it. How do we end up with What We Do in the Shadows?’’
Even if you chuckled along with Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s vampires-go-flatting mockumentary, you still have to wonder at the wider absence of seriousness. The Australians do it ( Wolf Creek, anyone?) so why don’t we?
The absence of seriousness is a sad thing, Timpson says. A couple of exceptions come to mind for him – The Irrefutable Truth About Demons and The Locals. But it is telling that both were better received overseas. Going back further, he thinks we copuld celebrate the 1981 film of Ronald Hugh Morrieson’s gothic classic The Scarecrow.
‘‘You can have gallows humour without resorting to pushing your tongue right through your cheek. I’ve been waiting years for an excellent, serious horror script to come across my desk from New Zealand and it just hasn’t appeared.’’
That sounds like an invite. Get writing, horror fans. A blue chilly bin floating amid the rain just outside the notorious Port Waikato bar was the first sign three people were in trouble in the water.
They had gone overboard when their 5.5-metre aluminium runabout overturned near the bar at the entrance to the north Waikato town yesterday.
The alarm was raised after a boatie who had just crossed the same bar spotted the chilly bin and shoes about a mile offshore around midday.
Then he noticed the debris, the overturned boat and one by one, three men scattered in the ocean, Coastguard duty manager Tony Winyard said.
Two were wearing life jackets.
‘‘Coastguard was alerted to a vessel capsized just outside the Port Waikato river bar. There was the vessel and debris – stuff on board – and the people. And they were all in different places.
‘‘It was relatively difficult because of the conditions. It’s raining and there’s poor visibility, so the member of the public didn’t see the people straight away. The first thing he saw was the chilly bin.’’
Waiuku Coastguard’s Nigel Griffiths said the three middle aged men from Pukekohe had headed out for a day’s fishing trip when they struck trouble in the middle of crossing the notoriously unpredictable bar at 10.30am.
Their boat struck a wave and capsized, sending them into the water.
‘‘They were all hypothermic and pretty cold as they had been in the water for a little while,’’ Griffiths said.
‘‘We weren’t able to see the rest of the boat, we could only see the nose of the boat sticking out of the water. It was on the seaward side of the Waikato bar.’’
The Port Waikato bar was a notoriously unpredictable place, he said.
‘‘It’s a funny bar, when it’s calm like it is today and the water is fairly flat, it has a tendency to stand up a wave out of nowhere, and once that set of waves comes through it calms off again.
‘‘At low tide that bar is very shallow.
‘‘When you end up with a low tide and a shallow bar there is the possibility there for the outboard to hit the sand on the bottom of the bar and stall - then you can’t do anything.’’
Griffiths said sea conditions were reasonably calm yesterday but there were some large waves coming through sporadically.
Lifeguards on duty at nearby Sunset Beach and Kariotahi jumped into IRB inflatables and responded to the call for help at midday. The police Eagle helicopter also made passes overhead.
They, along with the boatie, began scouring the water at the river mouth for the trio, Winyard said.
A St John spokesperson said one ambulance responded and gave two of the men a ride home.
One other was taken by ambulance to a local medical centre to be checked out.
But it was understood the trio had not logged a bar crossing report, leaving Coastguard unaware the vessel was on the water.
They were all hypothermic and pretty cold as they had been in the water for a little while.’