Night Bus to Cohuna (1972) – A Retrospective Review of a Forgotten Footnote in Australian Cinema
There are films that terrify with blood, guts, and gore. There are films that haunt with ghosts, killers, or monsters. And then there is Night Bus to Cohuna (1972), an oddball entry in the Ozploitation canon whose horror doesn’t come from what lurks in the shadows, but from the relentless weight of boredom itself. Originally released in the novelty “Big Cohuna Vision” process — a half-baked hybrid of 3D projection and quadrophonic sound — this film’s sensory gimmicks were less about dazzling spectacle and more about amplifying tedium. In a perverse twist of marketing genius, the rattling of the bus engine was pumped into all four corners of the cinema. The audience felt every lurch of the suspension, every cough of the driver, every monotonous fly buzz reverberating in their skulls. The result was an endurance test. No air conditioning in the cinema mirrored the no air conditioning on-screen. The padded vinyl seats of the theatre grew sticky and unbearable, as though you too were...
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