Luella Miller

Born from director Dane Giraud's desire to make an intimate melodrama, Luella Miller is the tale of a young woman who creates no end of drama. Sia Trokenheim (star of TV show Step Dave) plays Luella, who crashes into small-town Ketley — and into Lydia, the woman who lets her stay (Sara Wiseman, from TV's Mercy Peak and A Place to Call Home). In this opening excerpt, Lydia sets the scene, and first encounters Luella in unusual circumstances. Made on a low budget, the film was shot in the Hawke's Bay (partly in the town of Takapau) over 28 days. It later sold to leading American video chain Blockbuster Video.

I found the short story thumbing through one of my many horror anthologies. It is actually classified as a vampire tale, believe it or not. The supernatural elements of the text, to me, were only ever repressions of the sexual tensions in the story and that's what we went for. I wanted to make a melodrama — the thriller aspects were not so important to me. I wanted to make something intimate. Intimacy is the first casualty of commercial cinema.

– Writer/director Dane Giraud, The Big Idea website, 12 September 2007

Key Cast & Crew

Sia Trokenheim

As: Luella Miller

Owen Black

Writer

Sara Wiseman

As: Lydia

Robert Rowe

Producer, As: Garage attendant

Phil Brown

As: Christian

Dane Giraud

Director, Writer