Lady Stay Dead (1981)

Highly strung and egocentric singer/model/actress Marie Coleby (Deborah Coulls, ex- Skyways) lives in a luxurious secluded beachside home on the Australian coast (location shooting was on Sydney’s Northern Beaches), where she employs Gordon Mason (Chard Hayward, best known in Australia for his role of camp old-movie fan Dudley Butterfield in the 1970s television soap opera Number 96) as her handyman and gardener.

Mason is obsessed with Marie, but she is a bad-tempered, stroppy diva who constantly berates him. Her taunts ultimately push Gordon past breaking point, and he rapes her and kills her (in a brutal encounter with a fish tank).

When caught out by the elderly neighbour, Billy (Les Foxcroft), Mason kills him and his dog, too.

Shortly after, Marie’s sister Jenny (Louise Howitt, from Young Ramsay) arrives at the property for a planned visit, unaware of what has transpired.

Attempting to maintain the facade that everything is normal, Gordon tells Jenny that Marie has gone away, but as Jenny settles in for the night, she begins to sense something is terribly wrong.

She finds Marie’s jewellery in the fish tank and discovers the neighbour’s dead dog floating in the surf.

Soon, Mason has transferred his murderous “affection” to Jenny, who must now use her wits to survive an escalating threat from a man who has already killed and has nothing left to lose.

Funded under the famed and notorious 10BA Australian film funding tax scheme, and written and made by renowned Ozploitation director Terry Bourke, the film went directly to home video without a cinematic release in most markets (including its native Australia).

Gordon Mason
Chard Hayward
Jenny Nolan
Louise Howitt
Marie Coleby
Deborah Coulls
Officer Clyde Collings
Roger Ward
Billy Shepherd
Les Foxcroft
Patrolman Rex “Pops” Dunbar
James Elliott
TV Director
Brian Hinzlewood
Businessman
George Murray
Security Man 1
Barry Donnelly
Security Man 2
James Moss
Chauffeur
Allen Scholz

Director
Terry Bourke