Welcome to the next in our series of ‘Divertissements‘, in which pop-culture critic Martyn Pedler explore ballet’s strange cameo role in film and TV.

French-born, Melbourne-raised director Philippe Mora is responsible for many of Australia’s infamous cult movies of the 1970s and 1980s. But did you know he’s responsible for one of the most memorable ballet sequences ever to appear on film?

Mora’s films often exhibited a theatrical flair. His first feature film, for example, was the “Bretchian musical” Trouble in Molopolis, filmed during the height of London bohemia. Later, he made The Return of Captain Invincible, starring an alcoholic superhero who sings and dances while resisting temptation.

When Mora got his hands on the second sequel of horror franchise The Howling, however, he transformed it into a uniquely Australian satire. (There’s even a cameo by Dame Edna Everage.) Howling III: The Marsupials’ 1987 ballet scene goes like this:

Olga, a ballerina defecting from Russia (played by Dagmar Bláhová), is in her dressing room at Sydney’s Opera House. She says: “I don’t think I should dance tonight. I feel … strange.” Later, rehearsing on stage, she pirouettes – and with each rotation, she sprouts more hair, her face elongating into a snout, until she’s a fully-fledged werewolf in a pretty red dress. Her fellow dancers start screaming, but the male lead, oblivious, jumps into her waiting maw.

It’s a scene that even the New York Times review had to grudgingly describe as “spiffy”.