{"id":46837,"date":"2025-03-27T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T04:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=46837"},"modified":"2025-03-19T22:33:15","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T02:33:15","slug":"street-rat-studio-co-owner-dusty-austen-interview-women-in-horror-month-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/27\/street-rat-studio-co-owner-dusty-austen-interview-women-in-horror-month-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Street Rat Studio co-owner Dusty Austen Interview [Women in Horror Month 2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Meet Street Rat Studio co-owner Dusty Austen:<\/p>\n

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To start, please introduce yourself:
\n<\/b>Thank you so much for including me! WIH continues to\u00a0live on thanks to you and so many other wonderful women, and I’m honored to be included among them!\u00a0 I’m Dusty Austen, I’ve been involved in the indie horror film sphere for over 20 years. I co-own Street Rat Studios with my wife Athena Murzda (a very\u00a0talented actor and producer in their own right) and I’ve been a horror kid all my life, because\u00a0do you ever really stop being a horror kid? Street Rat itself was born out of Athena and I wanting to form a company that would be an inclusive safe space for marginalized filmmakers. So I focus\u00a0on that full time now, I’m very lucky in that regard.<\/p>\n

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What is horror to you, what makes a work of art one in the horror genre?<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n
Horror is the ultimate creative playground and just complete freedom. It’s the only genre that includes all genres. It’s also the most fearless. Horror is the ultimate platform for social commentary and always has been. Horror historically\u00a0is born from societal fears, monsters are just the ultimate metaphor, from Carmilla to Night of the Living Dead, Buffy, Frontiers, to 2013 Evil Dead, the list goes on. You also have the perk of it sometimes being just the most fun, where else can you design any creature you can imagine and go wild with it?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n
What made you want to work in horror?<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n
When I was a little kid my dad took me to the video store every Sunday, it’s one of my most cherished memories.\u00a0 We’d rent a batch of movies and soak them in all day with a round of snacks. I was always asking about those lurid-looking box covers there so finally he caved and rented me American Werewolf in London, which then and there cemented my love of horror, and sparked an intense obsession with how they’re made, especially the beasties, and I’ve never really lost that obsessive impulse of making genre films.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Where do you get your inspiration?<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n
From everything. Films, books, comics, and especially music. Music drives every moment of my life and inspires the most vivid images for me. As a late 90’s teenager, MTV got me hooked on music videos, and I still love that art form, especially from an\u00a0editing\u00a0standpoint. I’m sure my penchant for rapid cuts and syncing as many scenes as possible to a\u00a0song comes from there.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
What would you like your legacy to be in the genre (or elsewhere)?<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n
Wow. This is a question I haven’t gotten before and is so cool. I just want people to look at my work and always be able to say she swung big, never compromised her or others’ visions, and was never afraid to try and push past the expectations of what “low budget” typically means, and most of all, she supported fellow filmmakers and their projects. We’re never in this alone and I hope I can be remembered for believing in that.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n
What is Women in Horror Month to you and why is it still important this many years later?<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n
Especially now WIH\u00a0is more important than ever! It’s something we NEED. In a year where we celebrated The Substance, it’s saddening to me that so many of our rights are up for sale, so to speak. So putting a spotlight on women creators, especially in horror where we can say the most, is necessary. Also, the numbers are still skewed, right? For every Coralie Fargeat\u00a0<\/span>there are dozens of male directors. There needs to be a balance there, and it’s a wonderful thing like WIH\u00a0that gets us closer to that goal.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n
Who are some of the Women in Horror who you look up to and who do you want to bring attention to in your field or others?<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n
My first answer will always be Spooky Madison hands down. Just an amazing and inspiring voice that captures everything I love about the genre, and art in general, in these wonderfully personal, challenging, and exciting projects. They also have this shared desire to push the boundaries of not just the storytelling of indie films, but how they’re made and how much you can truly\u00a0put on screen when you have so much passion, and I can’t say I’ve ever met another person who is as passionate about the genre as they are. I’d certainly like to point out Hope Madden as well, what a wonderful, creative, genuine artist who just lives and breathes this genre with boundless\u00a0energy. And of course my OGs Rachel Talalay and Mary Lambert.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n
What are you currently working on that you can tell us about?
\n<\/b><\/b><\/div>\n
We’re currently in post-production on mone and Spooky’s first co-directed film, a sapphic sci-fi horror film Fiber Burn which has pushed us further and harder in a post-production sense visually and vfx wise, we’re so excited to share our fever dream of a movie about, rockets, robots, and doomed love with everyone.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
We’re also in pre-production on Spooky Madison’s beautiful sapphic love letter to feminine rage that merges our shared adoration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jennifer’s Body, and Ginegrs\u00a0Snaps and twists it into this fresh exciting, and deeply personal story that I think is going to resonate with so many people. That’s what you always hope for when you make anything right?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
We have some other things brewing in our cauldron of chaos and we’re super excited to continue our relationship with FinalGhoul Films.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n
Where can readers keep up with you?
\n<\/b>I’m an Instagram kinda gal. So ours IGs are @streetratstudiofilm and you can follow Athena @athenamurzda
\nSpooky @thegoodbyeghoul and FinalGhoul\u00a0<\/a>@finalghoulfilms<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet Street Rat Studio co-owner Dusty Austen:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2673],"tags":[477,1550],"class_list":["post-46837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wihm","tag-horror","tag-women-in-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46838,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46837\/revisions\/46838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}