Tess O'Flaherty

After the death of his girlfriend, Travis, a thirty-something psychiatrist, struggles to keep it together. On the brink of a nervous breakdown he stumbles across a strange church run by a charismatic leader, Pastor Jay. In search of answers Travis is led deeper and deeper into the underworld of religious fanaticism, home to a Doomsday cult and a teenage girl named Grace.

After a decade in the making, including a rib-tickling behind the scenes chronicle at AFF2020 (Video Nasty: The Making of Ribspreader) Adelaide’s doyen of trash, Dick Dale, presents a gloriously unrepentant gore fest. Decades after his career as a tobacco advertising icon, Bryan Burns’ (Tommy Darwin) life is in ruins. After his mother dies of lung cancer, he is tormented by a talking cigarette on an anti-smoking billboard. He snaps and transforms into the Ribspreader, a killer stalking the city, extinguishing smokers and cutting out their lungs to make his macabre smoking jacket. Littered with excessive set pieces and moments of genuine hilarity, the precious gold is the brilliant cast of faces from Adelaide’s underground.