Near Drownings, Camel Milk, And Mass Puking: The Making Of Motel Hell

Learn about Haz’s desert-dozing Landy in his new Ferrari Boyz ep.

The mere mention of Harry Bryant and Dave Fox’s Motel Hell should, at the very least, trigger a Pavlovian gag reflex — milk curdling at the edge of your throat as flashbacks from a bad trip claw at your mind. If it doesn’t, you need to watch it again — an era-defining symphony of recklessness, bodies twisted by heavy water, and a creative vision that could only come from chugging a litre of pure, unfiltered space-milk.

Every great cinematic masterpiece demands a behind-the-scenes reel — and this one, more than any other entry in the surf film world, deserves its own story time. 

“It was a culture shock for me — sleeping in a swag in the desert, driving around for hours, looking for the heaviest waves I’ve ever surfed,” recalls Stab High Japan winner and Motel Hell co-star, Eithan Osborne. “I was seconds away from vomiting, then shitting myself, knowing what we were about to do. Then Noz (Deane) starts suiting up, and I thought, fuck it, I’m here and this is what I signed up for. But then it was bigger and scarier than I ever imagined. As soon as I got one, though, the adrenaline kicked in, and I just stopped giving a fuck about what happened to me.”

The South Australian Desert has a romantic reputation — wide open, only the Southern Ocean separating you from the frozen hell at the bottom of world. But it’s a place of chances — scorched earth that looks beautiful in the half-light, but will burn you alive when the sun’s up. Empty waves, ready to either take your life or inject it straight into you, fish that are big and pissed, and a population of societal outcasts ready to spin you the yarn of your life. Eat the wrong dim sim, though, and you might find yourself praying for the sweet release of death.

“That dim sim had probably been sitting there for a couple of weeks, I reckon,” Haz recalls, describing a fateful decision to satisfy his munchies with a suspicious-looking, backseat dimmy. “In the middle of the night, I was hunched over, spewing. Woke up in the morning, let Barry (Haz’s loyal border collie) out of the car, and he ate my spew. We kept driving, but he was a ticking time bomb, running around the car. Then, out of nowhere, he just exploded.”

The footage doesn’t hold back, showing the full scale of the carnage, with the rest of the crew, traumatised by what they’d witnessed, forced to eject their own stomachs. “We had to sacrifice a lot of our stuff that day,” Haz says, deadpan.

Later in the film, as Wade Goodall recounts a near-drowning, the mood shifts into something heavier. “I thought I was just going to hit something really hard, but I never did. Then, all of a sudden, my board was squashing me. I tried to move and I couldn’t. I was in a cave, and the board had capped the exit, so I was stuck behind it,” Wade remembers, describing the slam that nearly claimed his life.

“It took me a while to wrestle past the board, but eventually, I started swimming for the surface thinking, ‘Oh sweet, I’m out of that,’ and then just stopped dead. My board was still in the cave. I tried to reach for my leggy, but I couldn’t. I had a moment where I just stopped and thought, fuck, I’m going to die here. I started thinking about my family, and then I got a surge of rage and pulled my leg as hard as I could, snapped my board in half in the cave, tore my groin, and then I was able to pop up. For about two weeks, every time I closed my eyes, or when I was about to fall asleep, I was back under water again.”

It’s rare when the ‘making of’ a movie can hold a candle to the original — especially one with the cultural clout and creative vision of Motel Hell — but with 35 minutes of prime B-side clips, skits, camel milk cleanses, and some stories from the cast and crew that’ll rattle your bones, this ones a golden goose amongst pigeons. Grab whatever milk you’ve got in the fridge, pour yourself a drink, and hit play.